Shopping Center Remake on Chicago’s North Side Could Include 500-Unit Apartment Tower

After losing the original Goose Island Beer brewpub, Patagonia and Bed Bath & Beyond as tenants, the owner of a shopping center on Chicago’s North Side is proposing a major redevelopment that eventually could include an apartment tower as tall as 520 feet.

CRM Properties is drawing up major changes to the mostly vacant, 3-acre Clybourn Place shopping center in Lincoln Park, the largest of which would be the addition of up to 500 luxury apartments in a later phase, according to preliminary plans provided to CoStar News.

If plans for an approximately 50-story tower are eventually approved by the city, it would bring significant changes to the Clybourn Corridor shopping district and nearby, low-rise residential streets east of Clybourn Avenue.

“The Clybourn Corridor is undergoing a major transition,” CRM Principal Jeff Malk said in an email. “Due to its underlying zoning, the strong retail core, its proximity to other affluent neighborhoods, and its prime access, the area has become a mecca for residential development. We believe integrating residential and retail together will only elevate the overall experience, for both residents and retail customers. Our hope is that the Clybourn Corridor will look very different in the next 10 years, as more large sites like ours transform into pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use developments.”

The plan would have 70,875 square feet of retail space and 447 enclosed and surface parking spaces, as well as pedestrian walkways on and around Willow Street. Community events could be held in the pedestrian boulevard between rows of shops.

The plan is coming into focus as other residential high-rises are planned within the nearby Lincoln Yards megadevelopment — where there is zoning approval for towers as tall as 595 feet — and other sites owned by developer Sterling Bay.

New York-based Georgetown Co.’s proposed 37-story, 396-unit apartment project, if approved, would replace a vacant former Bank of America building at 1566 N. Clybourn Ave. That parcel is near two SoNo towers: the Residences at New City and the recently completed Foundry project. Those residential towers are less than 30 stories.

Just over a mile east, Chicago developer Fern Hill is proposing a 44-story, 500-unit apartment tower at 1600 N. LaSalle Drive in Old Town.

In Lincoln Park, CRM’s shopping center runs along Clybourn and Sheffield avenues and the north and south sides of Willow. The redeveloped center would be renamed the Willow Street District.

Similar plans to add apartments to retail properties have played out in suburban shopping malls and urban centers throughout the country, including several completed and ongoing projects in the Chicago area.

CRM’s plans are preliminary and still could change.

The developer last week held its first meeting with the city’s Department of Planning and Development, with the proposal now under review, a spokesman for the department confirmed. The plan would require a zoning change, but a restriction on residential development in the corridor was lifted when its designation as a planned manufacturing district was unwound by the city a few years ago.

The developer, a longtime investor in the area, could encounter opposition from neighborhood groups already concerned about traffic congestion.

Malk emphasized that the residential tower is expected to come after retail construction is completed. Malk conceded that “the height will certainly be debated,” adding that for now, “we’d rather focus on the fact that we’re building one of the largest retail projects in the Clybourn Corridor in over a decade, and our intention is to make it first-class.”

No retail leases are signed, Malk said.

Most of the existing buildings on the site would be demolished under the plan, aside from preserving part of the former Bed Bath & Beyond structure and two decorative masonry towers remaining from a William D. Gibson Co. spring plant — and later a Turtle Wax plant — that was built on the site in 1908. CRM wants to create a third tower within a new retail building at Clybourn, Sheffield and Willow to follow the design aesthetic of the site, Malk said.

The residential tower would be on the southwest edge of the site along Marcey Street, replacing a vacant, single-story retail structure and surface parking. Malk said the firm plans to complete the retail redevelopment by early 2026 before going back to the city to seek approval for the residential tower later.

Deerfield, Illinois-based CRM’s ambitious vision for the site comes after Goose Island left its longtime home at 1800 N. Clybourn for a new space within the Salt Shed concert venue down the Chicago River at 1357 N. Elston Ave.

Under CRM’s proposal, that structure will be replaced with a building containing ground-floor retail below two levels of parking. The residential tower also would include a parking garage.

Other tenants that recently left Clybourn Place include Patagonia, which moved to a larger store in the city’s Fulton Market district, and Bed Bath & Beyond, which last year filed for bankruptcy protection.