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Apartment Too Small To Share With Visitors? LSD Tower Offers 'Guest Suites'

By David Matthews | February 16, 2015 5:33am
 500 N. Lake Shore Drive is expanding a popular amenity for its residents: guest suites, an alternative to steering visitors to a hotel or pumping up an air mattress.
500 LSD guest suites
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STREETERVILLE — Lauren Ziskie, 28, and Kyle Kindzierski, 33, said they stuffed their one-bedroom apartment with four adults, a newborn baby and an English Bulldog the Fourth of July after moving to 500 N. Lake Shore Drive.

"It was tight," Ziskie said.

Now their landlord, Chicago-based developer Related Midwest, is helping out by expanding one of the high-rise's perks: "guest suites," a popular alternative to steering visitors to a hotel or pumping up an air mattress.

The luxury Streeterville tower now has three guest suites where residents can put up visitors, up from one back when the building opened in 2013. Priced from $150 to $250 per night, the suites are booked 20 days out of every month, the developer said.

Residents can choose to rent a convertible or one-bedroom guest suite, depending on availability. Every guest suite includes a full kitchen and extras like chocolates left on a bedside table, in addition to access to the building's common amenities.

"Our residents appreciate the ability to provide their guests with the same level of comfort they enjoy year-round," Related Midwest Resident Service Specialist Bryan Tank said via e-mail.

Meanwhile, a night's stay in the nearby W Chicago Lakeshore hotel, 644 N. Lake Shore Drive, starts at $159, according to its website.

The guest suites at 500 N. Lake Shore Drive are another prevalent weapon in an amenity arms race among developers building a record number of apartment towers Downtown.

Sixteen new apartment towers with a total of nearly 6,000 units are slated to open by the end of 2016, according to Chicago consulting firm Appraisal Research Counselors. Rent at the average Downtown luxury apartment tower rose to $2,596 per month at the end of last year.

For now, the guest suites are available only to residents of 500 N. Lake Shore Drive, where the average apartment rents for nearly $2,700 per month, according to Appraisal Research Counselors.

Kindzierski and Ziskie said they've rented a guest suite for visitors "five or six times" since that jam-packed Fourth of July weekend. They'll use them again at least one more time: their weekend wedding in June.

"Everyone's first reaction is 'This is better than a hotel,'" Ziskie said.

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