COSTAR NEWS
April 23, 2025
Ryan Ori



Chicago developers have bought River North land where they plan an apartment project that they believe will be big enough to help meet high rental demand but small enough to get financed and built.

Local developer Zev Solomon’s firm ZSD and former Sterling Bay executive Reed Edwards envision a 149-unit multifamily project that would replace much of a surface parking lot along Huron and Orleans streets, the firms said.

ZSD earlier this month paid $9 million for parcels at 310 W. Huron St. and 707 N. Orleans St., according to Cook County property records. The seller was an affiliate of North Wells Capital, which previously planned an office tower on the site.

The sale price was well below the $15.8 million that the North Wells venture paid for the land in 2019, before the onset of COVID-19. Edwards said the developers are planning a nine-story project with about 4,000 square feet of ground-floor retail rather than something larger because it will require only small zoning variances, and it will cost around $50 million including the land purchase.

The relatively small scope of the project is important given continued high borrowing and construction costs and newer U.S. economic concerns such as the potential effects of high tariffs. “We love the location, the proximity to public transportation and the size of the project,” Edwards told CoStar News. “We feel a boutique execution is the right scale at this time. With such an imbalance of supply and demand, we feel the timing is opportune.” Broader economic hurdles have slowed the pace of multifamily construction in Chicago in recent years, despite continued rent growth and high demand for new, well-located apartments.

ZSD and Edwards plan to address that by lining up debt and equity in the coming months and breaking ground around Nov. 1. They plan to complete the project by spring 2027, Edwards said. “It is extremely difficult to execute a large-scale, ground-up project right now because of the challenges with costs and interest rates,” Edward said. “It has exacerbated the supply. There’s a steady stream of renter demand. Given the dip in supply, Chicago has seen some of the strongest rent growth in the country. That’s what makes us so bullish on the project.”

It’s not clear why North Wells Capital decided to sell the land near elevated train tracks, and the firm did not respond to a request for comment from CoStar News. The land sale and new owners’ plans previously were reported by Crain’s Chicago Business. North Wells Capital and its parent company, Urban Innovations, are
longtime real estate investors in River North. That includes a 15-story boutique office building that North Wells kicked off in 2022 and completed in 2024 across the street at 311 W. Huron.

At the time, the developer said it planned to also develop an office building on the land that it has now sold to ZSD. ZSD’s other Chicago projects include plans for a 272-unit tower at 1333 N. Kingsbury St. along the Clybourn Corridor shopping district on the city’s North Side. That project is a joint venture between Structured Development and ZSD.