WRIGLEYVILLE — A Harley-Davidson outpost will open inside the massive $140 million Addison & Clark complex across the street from Wrigley Field, developers said Thursday.
The motorcycle brand will join Lucky Strike, Shake Shack and Cinemex theaters inside the mixed-use development, which will also feature 148 luxury apartments, a 5,700-square-foot clubhouse, 400-some parking spaces and 150,000 square feet of retail space.
The Wrigleyville Harley-Davidson will join the Downtown and suburban Glenview locations, which are also owned by Michigan-based Fox Motors. The company operates 27 car dealerships and Harley-Davidson stores in Michigan and the Chicago area.
Anchoring the new, full-service location and its unique layout will be a showroom at Sheffield and Addison offering both new and used motorcycles. The store will have light maintenance, accessories and clothes, and large garage-style doors that will make for an open-air concept during warm weather.
Opening the merchandise store on the Magnificent Mile showed Fox Motors there was an untapped urban market in the city, said CEO Dan DeVos.
"We're trying to introduce new people and, frankly, younger people to the sport of motorcycle riding," DeVois told DNAinfo Thursday. "People can come in, see, touch and feel the bikes and learn how to ride. That experience can be intimidating if you have to make a trip out to this big store and not know anything about it."
Although it will have less inventory than the Glenview store, the Wrigleyville shop will be able to pull from its suburban partner, "so we can provide anything anybody needs, even though the store is small," DeVos said.
Harley-Davidson will occupy 10,000-square-feet of the building, about one-third the space allotted to both the movie theater and Lucky Strike bowling alley and entertainment venue. Together, the three leases account for about half the retail space inside the L-shaped site of Addison & Clark.
The Addison & Clark development, located across the street from Wrigley Field on the southeast corner of Clark and Addison and extending to Sheffield Avenue, is separate from the ongoing renovations at the ballpark, which include the now-complete Park at Wrigley and the in-progress Hotel Zachary.
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Addison & Clark, which broke ground almost a year ago and was formerly known as Addison Park on Clark, should be finished in summer 2018. The Harley-Davidson store will open later that year, according to Fox Motors.
Baseballism, a sports clothing store, will also open inside the complex.
"It's so rewarding to see iconic national brands like Harley-Davidson and influential local businesses like Fox Motors taking an interest in Addison & Clark," said John Bucksbaum, chief executive officer of Bucksbaum Retail Properties. "The plan with Addison & Clark has always been to create a live/work/play neighborhood anchor in Lakeview."
Bucksbaum also built The Maxwell complex in the South Loop, the New City development in Lincoln Park and the under-development Gateway Plaza.
The focus on national brands at Addison & Clark — the New York-based Shake Shack, Los Angeles-based Lucky Strike — is a departure from other projects on the block, which are almost all housed under the multi-business umbrella of the Chicago Cubs-owning Ricketts family.
While Zachary Hotel and the Park at Wrigley do have national tenants like McDonald's, Starbucks and Jostens, developers said they wanted to focus on Chicago-based restaurants and businesses. Among them are the planned Big Star, Smoke Daddy BBQ and new concepts Brickhouse Tavern and Lucky Dorr.
The Addison & Clark project, however, does leave two familiar Wrigleyville shops in place: Sports World and Luis Auto Repair.
First planned more than a decade ago, the development was stalled by foreclosure and failed financing, until M&R Development and Bucksbaum Retail Properties took over.
With bold new renderings released at the end of 2015, the project moved forward and longtime Wrigleyville bars and staples closed to make way.
The project will stand on a 2.3-acre plot of land that was formerly home to iO Theater, Goose Island Wrigleyville, Red Ivy, Mullen's and Salt & Pepper Diner.
The project also includes a $250,000 renovation of Juniper Park nearby.
The Cubs and Wrigley Field are 95 percent owned by an entity controlled by a trust established for the benefit of the family of Joe Ricketts, owner and CEO of DNAinfo.com. Joe Ricketts has no direct involvement in the management of the iconic team.
