A Chicago real estate firm has bought up an entire city block of century-old apartment buildings in Lakeview, closing an off-market deal on August 12 for a nine-building, 182-unit portfolio along the 3400 block of North Elaine Place that was roughly 95 percent occupied and carried a total capitalization near $78 million. The buildings, constructed between 1894 and 1959, sit on a stretch of the North Side where undeveloped land is scarce, and rents keep climbing.
The deal, first reported by The Real Deal, adds up to roughly $61.5 million in purchase price paid to seller CLK Properties, according to the outlet. Concord Capital principal Drew Millard worked with Berkadia's Jason Bond to arrange a debt package covering 80 percent of acquisition costs and 100 percent of construction costs for future rehab and new units, per REJournals. Millard told The Real Deal he had never had a loan structured quite like it. Velocity Group Real Estate has been retained to handle leasing across the portfolio, according to REJournals.
A Full Block With Room to Grow
What makes the Elaine Place deal notable isn't just its size — it's the zoning underneath it. The full block site carries floor area ratio entitlements allowing up to 306 total residential units, REJournals reported, though The Real Deal's seed reporting put current zoning capacity at up to 124 additional units across the portfolio as it stands today. Concord's stated plans focus on rehabbing the existing 182 apartments and adding garden units by reworking lower levels, a strategy the firm has already used to add hundreds of units elsewhere.
Those lower-level conversions are now possible thanks to a citywide policy shift. The Chicago City Council passed a revised Additional Dwelling Unit ordinance in September 2025 that took effect April 1, legalizing basement conversions and coach houses across the city, according to the Chicago Association of REALTORS. Secondary residential units had been banned under Chicago zoning codes from 1957 until pilot programs launched in 2020, the association notes, so the ordinance clears a path Concord says could yield up to 26 garden units within the Elaine Place buildings alone.
The Parking Lot Could Become Apartments
Millard has also expressed interest in replacing the portfolio's 105-space surface parking lot with a new apartment building altogether. The Real Deal reports the proposed structure would total about 98 units across four to five stories of living space, with a ground-level parking structure built in. Any such project would likely require community review in Ward 44, raising open questions around aldermanic approval, neighborhood parking impacts, and affordable housing requirements under the city's Inclusionary Housing rules that remain unresolved for now.
Parking remains a real selling point for tenants in this densely built stretch of Lakeview, according to The Real Deal's reporting, which could complicate any pitch to swap the lot for housing. Still, the math behind infill plays like this one is straightforward: Lincoln Park and Lakeview have posted some of the most dramatic rent growth in the country, per the outlet, and CBRE data cited by Hoodline showed Chicago apartment rents rose 4.6 percent year over year in the third quarter of 2025, with 3 percent growth projected to continue in 2026 amid tight supply.
Why Developers Keep Circling Chicago's North Side
Ground-up construction has become a tougher bet across the city. High interest rates, high construction costs, restrictive zoning, and fluctuating property tax bills have all stymied new building in Chicago, The Real Deal reported, and CoStar figures cited in the same reporting show new apartments completed over the past 12 months amounted to just 0.8 percent of existing inventory, with permits down almost half since 2022. Chicago's average rent reached $1,956 a month in 2025, according to CoStar data in the outlet's reporting — numbers that help explain why investors like Concord are targeting mature buildings instead of empty lots.
That same dynamic played out just blocks away this summer. Hoodline reported in July that the Wirtz Corporation sold its 171-unit tower at 422-424 West Melrose Street for $34 million, or about $199,000 per apartment, to local investors Aris and Mexhit Sulejmani — another sign of sustained investor appetite for older North Side rental stock.
Concord's Wider Bet on Old Buildings
Elaine Place is one piece of a broader infill strategy for Concord, which was founded in 2022 after Millard sold his prior firm, 33 Realty, which he had built alongside broker Sean Connelly starting in 2008. Connelly, notably, represented CLK Properties on the Elaine Place sale. Millard sold 33 Realty's property management and leasing divisions to Cupertino-based Poplar Homes in September 2022 while retaining its investment brokerage arm, according to Multifamily Dive.
Concord has also pushed into office-to-residential conversions in River North, where it bought a loft office building at 226 West Ontario for $4.1 million and now plans to spend $20 million converting it into a 70-unit apartment building, adding two floors to the existing six-story structure. The firm secured a $16 million construction loan from First Bank Chicago for that project, with completion targeted for February 2028, The Real Deal reported. Concord separately purchased a stalled development site at 42 to 46 East Superior Street for $4.4 million, where it plans to preserve the historic facades while preparing the site for new use.
Seller CLK Properties, based in Woodbury, New York, had owned the Elaine Place buildings for more than a decade and refinanced the properties for $43 million in 2019, according to The Real Deal. The firm has stayed active in Chicago-area real estate financing more broadly, having secured a $115 million Freddie Mac refinancing loan in February for a separate multi-building apartment complex in suburban Des Plaines, Hoodline reported.
Tenant Pushback Elsewhere in the City
Concord's value-add model — rehabbing units and pushing rents at turnover — has not gone unchallenged. In 2025, the firm faced a six-month rent strike and organized tenant pushback led by the Belden Sawyer Tenant Association and All Chicago Tenant Alliance after it issued non-renewal notices tied to planned luxury renovations following its acquisition of a Logan Square property, according to Shelterforce. It remains an open question whether similar friction could emerge at Elaine Place if renovation plans there lead to turnover pressure on existing tenants.
The 3400 block of North Elaine Place carries its own history apart from real estate. Hoodline has reported that the block was the scene of the unsolved March 2004 stabbing death of 31-year-old Kevin Clewer, a case Chicago police continue to investigate with an active $50,000 reward, and one that remains among Lakeview's highest-profile cold cases.
