CRAIN'S CHICAGO BUSINESS
June 24, 2026
Dennis Rodkin


A prolific Chicago development firm is starting a West Loop project that will place 16 condominiums that are all four bedrooms or larger near a main attraction for families in that booming neighborhood, a highly rated Chicago Public Schools elementary school.

ZSD plans a building called 1282 Washington on West Washington Boulevard about two blocks north of Mark T. Skinner Elementary West school on Throop Street.

“In the West Loop, you have an extraordinary elementary school and an inordinate number of young families,” said ZSD’s principal, Zev Salomon. “There’s demand, but no single-family zoning. That’s why our single-family alternative lands well.”

Evidence of the demand showed up in pre-sales, Salomon and his development team members said. By June 17, the day the city issued a demolition permit for the existing one-story building on the site, future buyers had put contracts in on 12 of the 16 units, Salomon said.

That’s a faster pace than at ZSD’s past two West Loop developments, which also had family-sized units, according to Cory Robertson, the Jameson Sotheby’s International Realty agent whose Corwin Partners Development Strategies is leading sales.

Prices on the 16 units ranged from $1.75 million to $3.2 million. The four units that remain for sale are priced from $2 million to $3 million, Robertson said.

The developer and sales team are not authorized to give details on how many of those buyers are households with children who might enroll at Skinner, but given the preponderance of strollers on the surrounding streets and families showing up at the WNDR Museum, the Chicago Children’s Theatre and Mary Barthelme Park, it’s likely their representation is high.

That’s to say nothing of the appeal of being walk-to-school distance from Skinner, the only CPS elementary in a downtown neighborhood to rank in the top 20 on Chicago magazine’s 2025 list of the best schools.

ZSD paid $5 million for the site in April, Salomon said. Previously owned by a toy company, the site is 18,000 square feet, according to Bret Gray, ZSD’s director of development.

The project is a five-story building with outdoor space for every unit, Gray said, designed by Sullivan Goulette & Wilson, the same architecture firm that did the Hampdens, a family-scaled development ZSD launched in 2017 in a dense part of Lincoln Park.

This firm is certainly not the only one to catch on to families’ desire to stay in — or move to — the West Loop once they enter their child-rearing years. Four-bedrooms were part of the offering at the condo developments called Embry, Hayden and Noir, among others.

But the number of family-sized condos is small. Of the 695 new or existing condos sold in the West Loop in the past 12 months, 28 were four-bedrooms, according to data from Redfin. That’s about 4%.

Robertson said the firm’s research indicates that within the district boundaries of Skinner West, 97% have three bedrooms or fewer. At the ZSD development, every unit is four bedrooms or five, all with a family room.