Fulton Market’s former meatpacking strip is set for another residential play, with a proposal for a five-story brick apartment building at 1133 W. Kinzie St. that would bring about 109 rental units to the block. The mid-rise from Range Group is pitched as masonry-scale housing at the northern edge of the neighborhood’s core, rather than yet another glassy tower.
Crain's Chicago Business reports that the developer’s filing calls for a brick-clad, five-story structure with roughly 109 apartments at the Kinzie address, with a design meant to sync up with the surrounding low-rise buildings while still boosting the area’s rental inventory.
Range Group is not a newcomer to the corridor. The firm highlights a five-story, 72-unit project at 455 N. Carpenter St. among its Fulton Market holdings; according to Range Group, that Carpenter building sits on the neighborhood’s northern end and adds multifamily stock to the district. Trade coverage has noted that pre-leasing is underway at the Carpenter project, a sign that demand for new apartments in the area has yet to cool, as reported by REBusinessOnline.
Fulton Market's Apartment Pivot
The Kinzie plan slots into a broader shift in Fulton Market as developers chase housing while speculative office deals take a breather. Recent Fulton Market land saga reporting at Hoodline flagged a half-acre site that returned to the market with entitlements in hand and a pitch geared toward residential buyers instead of office builders. At the same time, The Real Deal has tracked a run of apartment proposals and refinancings across the neighborhood. Taken together, those moves point to capital chasing multifamily projects in the corridor while financing for larger office towers gets tighter.
Approval Path And Timeline
If the 1133 W. Kinzie concept advances, it will head into the usual gauntlet of city design and zoning reviews, and could land on the agendas of both the Chicago Plan Commission and the City Council. The Sun-Times recently noted that the Plan Commission signed off on a 66-unit building at 1201 W. Kinzie, an example of how mid-rise multifamily proposals can navigate the review process on this stretch. Zoning bodies have been moving a steady stream of West Loop and Fulton Market items in recent months, according to a recap from The Daily Line.
Design And Neighborhood Fit
North of Hubbard, design teams have been leaning hard on brick and relatively modest building heights as a bridge between the high-rises to the south and the more residential blocks beyond. In covering the 1201 W. Kinzie approval, the Sun-Times reported that the project was described as “a straightforward and smallish project for this part of the Fulton Market,” a line attributed to the developer’s attorney. Ald. Walter “Red” Burnett called that building “a nice in-between,” a hint that at least some local leaders are more interested in measured infill than a wall of towers on every block.
Range Group’s Kinzie proposal will now be watched by city agencies and neighborhood groups as it moves toward formal filings and public hearings. As first reported by Crain's Chicago Business, the plan adds to Fulton Market’s growing apartment pipeline and the evolving list of projects reshaping the once strictly industrial district.
