1900 South State Condo For Sale

Make your next home in Chicago's dynamic & bustling South Loop. Visit www.1900SouthState.com for more information.

This bright, sunny west facing condominium will make anyone an affordable great home. This newer construction phase 2 improved layout one bedroom, one bathroom condo being offered for sale was finished in 2006 and it features include an open and sunny living/dining room with hardwood floors and private balcony. This home also includes upgraded Cherry kitchen cabinets with granite counters and stainless appliances and floor to ceiling wall time in the bathroom as well as in-unit washer and dryer. In addition to the indoor parking space and ‘cage' storage this home comes with an additional private secure storage room unique.

Relax each morning looking right out your private balcony with tree-top views towards the skyline to right (not direct) and watch the sunsets over Chinatown to the west. East access to transportation including one block to the Red Line "L" Cermak Chinatown stop, Metra Train or catch one of the CTA buses right out front on Archer. Expressways such as Lake Shore Drive and I-55 are very easy access from the building.

Hop on the lakefront trail and take a bike ride or jog to the Field Museum or Shedd Aquarium and Lake Michigan in just a few minutes. Clean and move-in condition. Solid association. Low taxes and monthly assessments at $279 include Electric/AC, Heat/Gas, Cable & Fitness Room.


Accessible from within the building are retail shops and stores such as the local cleaners, restaurants, coffee shops, Athletico gym, Chase Bank and other businesses right in building (walk indoors during cold winter months). Other restaurants in the area include Room 21, Cuatro. Bongo Room, Cafe Bionda and Chicago Firehouse.

Right around the corner from The Pointe 1900 are Chess Records studios where "the blues gave birth to rock and roll" in the 1950's and its one block from the site of Al Capone's headquarters at the Lexington Hotel whose vault was filmed live on television in 1986 by Geraldo Rivera only to find them empty. Lots of history made and being made in this great vibrant South Loop community.

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location, location, location

Average, Not Speculative, Buyers Moving Market

The stories are similar across the country. More homes for sale and fewer people buying. The National Association of Realtors reports sales of existing homes fell for the fourth straight month.

David Hanna is the treasurer for the Chicago Association of Realtors.

"Overall, the market has just gotten back to a pace where it's more about the average person going out and buying a home, and that's what's driving our market today versus the investment activity that we were seeing before," said Hanna.

The American dream of buying a home isn't as easy as in some Chicago communities. Geoff Smith is the research director for the Woodstock Institute where they track financial services in Chicago's minority communities. He says foreclosures have gone up 50 percent since last year and he says that only makes it harder for low income families trying to buy or keep a home.

"It's going to be more difficult for borrowers who are having problems with their mortgage to refinance their loan because credit terms are going to be more restrictive. It's going to be more difficult for them to sell their homes because there is a much larger supply of homes on the market," said Smith.

In addition to sub-prime lenders aggressively marketing their mortgages to those who couldn't afford them, sometimes a job cutback or illness may put homeowners behind in payments. If that happens, housing experts recommend calling the lender immediately to work out some arrangement to change terms or work out a way to get up to date.

Mega South Loop Development

3,000 housing units, hotel on drawing board for vacant riverside site

Two Chicago developers aim to build as many as 3,000 homes, a hotel, stores and a marina along the Chicago River just south of downtown, transforming an 8-acre tract that has sat empty for 36 years into a densely packed urban neighborhood.

Estimated to cost $1.6 billion, the 3.5-million-square-foot project four blocks south of the Sears Tower would mark a big step forward in the South Loop's residential renaissance and bring life to a dead stretch of the Chicago River. Sources say the developers, Rokas International Inc. and Frankel & Giles, have agreed to pay about $55 million for the parcel, which, like Block 37 in the central Loop, has stubbornly resisted development.

"That site is a gaping hole," says architect Dirk Lohan of Chicago-based Lohan Anderson, who did planning work there in the early 1990s.

The question is whether Rokas and Frankel & Giles can succeed where others have failed. It's unclear whether the city will grant them the zoning change they need to build such a dense project, which would jam into the site about a million square feet more than current zoning allows. The developers, who decline to comment, also plan to ask the city for about $25 million in tax-increment financing to help pay for a riverwalk and other infrastructure, a source says.

Another challenge: the slumping condo market, which could make financing the development difficult.

Designed by Adrian Smith & Gordon Gill Architecture, the project would include as many as eight buildings — one exceeding 80 stories — and about 125,000 square feet of retail space. The residential component would be a mix of condos, apartments and senior housing. A hotel, with as many as 500 rooms, and a 40-slip marina would round out the complex.

With its riverside location and proximity to downtown and public transit, "it's a great piece of real estate," says Peter Dumon, president of Harp Group Inc., an Oakbrook Terrace-based development firm that has reviewed the latest proposal for the property.

Yet he declined an offer to develop the hotel in the project, noting that hotel guests are unlikely to venture south of the Congress Expressway. Harp instead is considering buying development rights for an apartment tower on the site.

Known as Franklin Point, the property is the former site of Grand Central Station, a rail terminal demolished in 1971. The developers have signed contracts to buy the tract from Jacksonville, Fla.-based railroad company CSX Corp., which owns 6 acres of the site, and D2 Realty Services Inc., which owns about 2 acres. CSX did not return calls. David Kleiman, a D2 principal, declined to discuss terms.

SEEKING APPROVAL

The developers are negotiating with city officials over rezoning the property and will also need support from neighborhood groups and Alderman Bob Fioretti (2nd).

Then there's the challenge of selling enough condos to land a loan for the project. The condo glut could ease by then, but the supply of unsold units downtown reached 6,507 at the end of the first quarter, up 62% from a year earlier, according to Chicago-based consultancy Appraisal Research Counselors.

Founded in 2000 by Lithuanian immigrant Andrius Augunas, Rokas has developed several smaller condominium projects in the South Loop but nothing on the scale of Franklin Point. Frankel & Giles, which also specializes in the South Loop, has a longer résumé, including a 274-unit condo tower at Prairie Avenue and 18th Street.

If it comes to fruition, the Franklin Point project would anchor and enliven the western edge of the South Loop, where residential development has been slow to take off. D2 Realty proposed a less-dense project there than the current proposal but dropped the plan about two years ago amid an impasse in talks with the city. In the early 1990s, Harris Bancorp Inc. scratched plans to build a back-office building on the site.

"It's kind of like Block 37," says Mr. Kleiman, referring to the central Loop parcel that is finally being developed after a 15-year delay. "Hopefully, this will be the time."

©2007 by Crain Communications Inc.