A Guide to Chicago Avenue
ELECTRIC AVENUE: Once a stark thoroughfare, West Chicago Avenue is transforming into a stellar destination for BYOs, bars, and more
Ad Categories: Real Estate
A Good Deal on a Car Dealer’s Winnetka House
List Price: $1 million
Sale Price: $900,000
The Property: In 2006, federal marshals seized this 7,400-square-foot, five-bedroom Winnetka house after its owner was charged with selling scores of luxury cars to Chicago gang members for cash as a way of helping them launder millions of dollars in drug profits…
Loft Takes Its Cue from the West Loop
List Price: $1.15 million
The Property: Cue-wielding pool players get some of the best views in this 4,200-square-foot loft in an old West Loop industrial building. Look out one set of tall windows and they get a straight shot of the Sears Tower; look out the other and they see more old industrial buildings and a clock tower…
Two Eco-Friendly Chicago Renovations
Analysts are saying that home remodeling should pick up this year, and with rising energy prices a constant concern, it’s smart to factor resource savings into any rehab. At two Chicago homes, green was the key in nearly all aspects of their recent renovations…
A Realistic Deal in Naperville
List Price: $825,000
Sale Price: $775,000
The Property: Three of the strikes against this 13-room home in a high-end Naperville subdivision are hard to hide: the empty lot on either side of the house and the third vacant lot behind this property’s nicely landscaped quarter-acre…
Going Green in Holstein Park
List Price: $1.299 million
The Property: With its conservative brick and limestone façade, this house—in one of my favorite neighborhoods, the Holstein Park section of northwest Bucktown—doesn’t try to dominate its older neighbors…
Bringing Stability Back to Chicago Lawn
With its blocks of classic bungalows and brick two-flats, Chicago Lawn was for decades a Southwest Side bastion of middle-class stability. More recently it had become a glaring example of the devastation wrought by the foreclosure crisis…
Burr Ridge Mansion of Chris Kelly Sold at Foreclosure
List Price: $1.75 million
Sale Price: $1.6 million
The Property: This 18-room Burr Ridge mansion was the home of Christopher Kelly, the former Rod Blagojevich fundraiser who committed suicide in September 2009 just before going on trial with the former governor…
This Lincoln Park Home Was Brought to You by the Letter “L”
List Price: $4.7 million
The Property: The 1880s charm of this Lincoln Park home is intact in its detailed brick façade and its tall Italianate windows, but a big rear addition opens the home up from the usual beeline-straight city-house floor plan to an L-shape that invites both family living and entertaining…
Lawsuit Claims Developer Hasn’t Honored Buy-Back Contract
In 2008, hoping to reassure potential condo buyers that any further slide in the market wouldn’t hurt them, the Kopley Group development company offered a full-price buy-back guarantee on two of its North Side developments. The company’s chief, Nick Kopley, told me then that this was an “absolute, no questions asked” offer; the company made similar comments to the Chicago Tribune and Yo Chicago…