The Fulton Market neighborhood is about to get two new skyscrapers. Developer Trammell Crow Co. paid about $77 million for a pair of sites just west of Google’s Fulton Market complex, county records show, where it will soon launch construction of a 410-foot office building and a 369-foot apartment tower with 377 units. Both plans were approved last year by the Chicago City Council.
The parcels, located at 315 N. May St. and directly north at 1112 W. Carroll St., had been owned by Climatemp Service Group, according to CoStar. The family-owned HVAC company was started by the late Victor Comforte 72 years ago and eventually employed hundreds, one of many small firms that started leaving the former industrial area once Google arrived in 2015 and commercial real estate developers began spending millions to buy up neighborhood properties.
The pandemic didn’t slow the Fulton Market boom. Developers added almost 4 million square feet of office space in the past three years, CoStar found. And corporations such as Aspen Dental, John Deere and Boston Consulting Group, among many others, kept signing lease deals, making Fulton Market the city’s hottest office market.
That’s led to soaring land prices in Fulton Market. Trammell Crow also just bought 1150 W. Carroll St., an adjacent parcel owned by developer Shapack Partners, for $23 million, according to CoStar. Shapack bought the site in 2019 for $11.2 million from SBC Asset Management, which paid $3.1 million in 2005.
And Shapack is part of a joint venture with CRG which in June paid $60 million for the former Bridgford Foods Corp. processing plant at 170 N. Green St., and plans to develop a mixed-use complex with 250 apartments, a 150-room boutique hotel and 350,000 square feet of office on the 1 ½- acre site. The City Council approved the proposal in April.
A Trammell Crow spokesperson said she couldn’t disclose when it would break ground on the two towers, or its plans for the 1150 W. Carroll property.
The company is already one of the most active developers in Fulton Market. In 2020 it opened the 14-story 1375 W. Fulton St., phase one of Fulton Labs, the company’s life sciences campus, and finished the second phase, a 16-story building at 400 N. Aberdeen St., earlier this year.
