DOWNTOWN — The builder who owns the Old Main Post Office, one of the biggest and most forlorn development sites in the city, has a new plan.
Bill Davies, the foreign investor who's controlled the giant empty post office straddling Congress Parkway since 2009, started marketing the 1,500 "micro" apartments he wants to build there last week, according to Ellen Phillips of Loop Apartments, which is handling leasing.
The apartments would be built in waves of 300, some of them in the empty 2.7-million-square-foot post office at 433 W. Van Buren St., and others in a new 100-story skyscraper nearby. Phillips deferred questions about the project's financing to Davies' company, International Property Developers, but said banks "want to see" what kind of leasing momentum the proposal can build before future phases of development can be pursued.
As proposed, the apartments would all be small and test the high end of the Downtown rental market. Units would range from a 280-square-foot studio with $1,140 monthly rent, to 625-square-foot, two-bedroom units charging $2,400 a month, Phillips said. The average median rent for a one-bedroom Chicago apartment is $1,970 per month, according to a data analysis by real estate listing website Zillow.
"I think this is the most viable plan," she said.
Davies, a British national who now lives in Monaco, could not be reached for comment. A representative of Chicago-based Antunovich Associates, the architect of the proposed high-rise, did not immediately return messages.
Martin Mulryan, an England-based consultant overseeing the post office development for International Property Developers, said in an email that the project's budget has not yet been determined. While the development's financing is not yet secured, it "should be in the next few weeks," he said.
Mulryan also believes small, so-called "micro" apartments are the right focus for the project, and for future residential developments Downtown.
"People don't want to spent 20 percent of their working life commuting, but people want to work in the big cities," Mulryan said via email. "As Mark Twain said: 'buy land, they're not making it anymore.' The demand for downtown housing will lead inevitably to micro apartments in the major cities of the world."
The plan, first reported Monday by Loop North News, is the latest in a series of ideas proposed and put off at the Art Deco post office, which has sat vacant since the postal service moved out in 1996. Davies first wanted to build a 120-story tower and retail in 2011 for the site, but has scaled back his plans repeatedly amid a lack of project momentum. He recently planned to sell the site to an Emirati developer, but nixed the deal last fall after Crain's reported a sale was in the works. Another local developer, Walton Street Capital, tried its hand at the hulking property from 1998 to 2009 before selling it to Davies, according to Crain's.
Other ideas floated for building included a 15-floor auto showroom, a casino, and a mausoleum that could entomb more than 1.2 million people, according to Chicago magazine.
Stay tuned for any updates. Until then, click the slideshow above or scroll down below for more renderings of the proposed mega-project:
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