The former Briar Street Theatre, best known as the longtime Chicago home of Blue Man Group, is officially headed for a new life as housing. A building permit has been issued for a mixed-use conversion at 749 W. Briar Place in Lakeview, allowing local developer JAB Real Estate to move ahead with plans to turn the two-story theater and its adjacent parking lot into apartments with ground floor retail. The project was first proposed in 2025 and won a zoning change from the City Council last summer, and the new permit lets structural work and additions finally begin.
According to Urbanize Chicago, the permit covers renovation of the existing two-story theater, the addition of three new residential stories above it, and a five-story infill building on the current surface parking lot. In all, the plan calls for 66 apartments, roughly 1,200 square feet of retail space at the corner of Briar and Halsted, 14 off-street parking spaces and 66 bike parking stalls.
Project details and unit mix
The building will be heavy on smaller layouts. The Real Deal reports a unit mix of 45 one-bedrooms, 19 two-bedrooms and two three-bedrooms, including eight lofted apartments on the ground floor and a second-floor fitness center for residents.
Block Club Chicago has noted that the design keeps much of the theater’s street-facing shell intact and that the structure is “orange-rated” on the city’s historic-resources survey, a status that helped push the project toward an adaptive reuse approach instead of a full teardown.
Approvals and next steps
Chicago’s City Council approved the zoning reclassification needed for the redevelopment on July 16, 2025, according to Chicago Councilmatic, which hosts the text of the ordinance along with the project’s application materials. With zoning in place and the building permit now issued, general contractor Midwest Heritage Builders can proceed with the adaptive reuse of the existing structure and construction of the new infill building, although a detailed construction timeline has not been made public.
Urbanize Chicago notes that the developer has not yet announced a formal start date for work on the site.
What this adds to Lakeview
The project is slated to meet the city’s 20 percent affordable housing requirement by delivering 13 affordable units, ten to be included on site and three to be satisfied through a fee-in-lieu payment, according to The Real Deal. Preservation advocates and local reporters have framed the plan as a middle-ground adaptive reuse that keeps the block-facing façade while adding much-needed housing in a dense North Side neighborhood.
The permit caps more than a year of planning and approvals for a property that began life as a Marshall Field & Co. stable and later hosted decades of live performance. For now, the redevelopment remains a set of plans and permits, waiting for construction crews to mobilize and fresh filings to hit the city’s public records.
