Has the SCB design (the nice one) been dropped? I don't like the combination of Gammonley as developer + Fujikawa as architect, which resulted in the fabulous 1111 S. Wabash concrete monstrosity.
______________________
May 31, 2007
By Eddie Baeb
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?post_date=2007-05-31&id=25187
Project including Sundance theater a marquee development for IBT
Gary Pachucki’s plan for a Near West Side development scored some A-list Hollywood firepower last week when Robert Redford’s fledgling Sundance Cinemas LLC announced it has leased space for an eight-screen theater there.
Now, some heavy-duty Wall Street backing may be on the way: Sources say
New York-based money manager BlackRock Inc. is poised to invest in the proposed $240-million retail and residential project.
The bicoastal support comes after nearly 30 years as a developer, much of which has been decidedly less glamorous, for Mr. Pachucki, a 51-year-old Milwaukee native who is president of IBT Group LLC.
The West Side project, planned for the site of a former Fannie May candy factory at West Jackson Boulevard and Aberdeen Street, in some ways signifies the arrival of Mr. Pachucki and the six-person firm he founded in 1999.
“This is the kind of project we have always wanted to do,” Mr. Pachucki says. “It’s exciting. It’s a complicated building project.”
There have been some unwelcome excitement and complications, however, as at least one civic group opposed a plan shown last year with a residential high-rise more than 25 stories tall.
Mr. Pachucki won’t disclose how high he plans to build now, saying only that he’s eager to come before the ward’s new alderman, Robert Fioretti (2nd), as well as civic groups and city officials to discuss the plans, which would require a zoning change.
Mr. Pachucki adds, though, that the residential portion is a “key component of the economics of the project.”
The development, which is to open spring 2009, would include 285,000 square feet of retail over three levels.
That includes Sundance, which would specialize in artsy, independent films and documentaries, and a second tenant: XSport Fitness, which is based in far west suburban Big Rock. Both the movie theater and gym have leased about 40,000 square feet each.
Mr. Pachucki says he is trying to land a grocery store, restaurants and apparel retailers.
The project has been renamed West Loop Promenade. [
] Its original name, Metro Center 290, was dropped in part to get a fresh, new name in front of brokers and because Metro Center 290 sounded “too officey,” Mr. Pachucki says.
Chicago-based Fujikawa Johnson Gobel is the architect.
Mr. Pachucki confirms that he is close to a deal to sell the residential portion of the project to LaGrange-based Gammonley Group. He says Gammonley would build either apartments or condos, depending on market conditions.
“You have the makings for an incredible project, one that will change the character of that area,” says Gerald Nudo, an investor in several IBT developments, including this one. “Gary’s a very conscientious, consistent, solid kind of guy. He doesn’t always do things the quickest, but he is very careful.”
After receiving an undergraduate degree in architecture in 1977 from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Mr. Pachucki went to work at a large architecture firm in Milwaukee while he began his graduate work.
He dropped out after a year to work full time at the now-defunct firm, where he soon found that he liked development more than being an architect.
In 1980, Mr. Pachucki left for a non-profit group that did development in Walker’s Point, a neighborhood on Milwaukee’s south side not far from the Allen-Bradley factory, now Rockwell Automation, where Mr. Pachucki’s father worked as a machine repairman.
Mr. Pachucki’s biggest project at the non-profit was getting the Milwaukee Ballet Co. into a former Schlitz Beer Garden.
After a couple years with a private developer that did projects nationwide, Mr. Pachucki moved to Chicago and eventually landed in 1988 with Opus North Corp., the Rosemont-based affiliate of Opus Corp.
He focused on industrial deals until an assignment in the early ’90s in Schaumburg. A retail developer failed to close on land Opus wanted to sell at Golf and Basswood roads. Instead of finding a new buyer as he was instructed to do, Mr. Pachucki convinced executives with Minneapolis-based Opus that the firm would do better to build its own retail there — the first retail development ever for the company, which has since completed more than 160 retail projects totaling 22.4 million square feet.
Mr. Pachucki landed Kohl’s and Barnes & Noble as tenants, and the once-skeptical Opus executives asked him to keep doing retail deals.
“It was a big leap for them,” says Mr. Pachucki. “It wasn’t that I’m this great salesman. A lot of it was timing. The markets were bad, there was not a lot going on with office and industrial.”
Prev
That alone speaks volumes about how fortunate Chicago is right now.
Linear Mode
