Broadway Antique Market, the sprawling Edgewater vintage mall that has outfitted collectors, designers and even a future Saturday Night Live cast member for nearly three decades, is officially for sale. Co-founders Duane Scott Cerny and Jeffrey Nelson have listed the 21,000-square-foot Art Deco building at 6130 N. Broadway for $2.5 million, with the business itself included in the deal, as they prepare to retire after nearly four decades in the antique resale trade.
Cerny and Nelson bought the building and opened Broadway Antique Market in 1998, turning it into what the store describes as the largest and oldest multi-dealer antique shop of its kind in Chicago, according to Block Club Chicago. The two-story building today houses roughly 50 independent vintage dealers selling furniture, dishware, clothing and artwork, and the market also works as a prop supplier for local film, television and theater productions. Before settling in Edgewater, the pair ran the Wrigleyville Antique Mall on Clark Street starting in 1988, moving north after they outgrew that space.
Cerny told the outlet the timing felt right to sell while the business is thriving rather than waiting for it to falter. “We were as busy as ever,” he said, per the same report, framing the decision as going out on top rather than being forced out. He said he hopes the next buyer preserves both the building and the business that has served antique and vintage shoppers since 1998.
Property Taxes That Topped Six Figures
Money pressures shaped the decision as much as sentiment. The building's owners paid more than $101,000 in property taxes in 2024, according to Block Club Chicago, with that bill more than doubling since 2020. Cerny said property taxes exceeding six figures were simply not sustainable for the business long-term.
The spike is not unique to Broadway Antique Market. The Cook County Assessor's Office found that non-residential commercial property assessments across Chicago jumped 27% during the 2024 triennial reassessment, pushing citywide assessed values up by $9.5 billion. That reassessment cycle has squeezed commercial property owners across the city, and Broadway Antique Market's tax bill is one visible local result.
Upzoning Reshapes the Broadway Corridor
Complicating the building's future is a citywide zoning shift that arrived just as the owners were weighing retirement. In October 2025, the Chicago City Council approved the Broadway Land Use Framework, upzoning a 2.6-mile stretch of Broadway through Edgewater and Uptown, including the market's block, to B3-5 and C1-5 designations that allow mid-rise residential and commercial buildings up to 80 feet, or seven stories, as-of-right, according to CBS News. Broadway Antique Market is now marketed by SVN Chicago Commercial as a potential redevelopment opportunity as much as an operating business, and Block Club Chicago reported the property sits on a 0.25-acre lot with 91 feet of street frontage.
That rezoning has not gone unchallenged. In January, a group called Edgewater Residents for Responsible Development, joined by 13 local residents, filed a lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court against the city, seeking to invalidate the upzoning ordinance over allegations of illegal process and threats to small businesses, per CBS News. The lawsuit reflects broader tension in the neighborhood over how much density the corridor should absorb, a debate the antique market's sale now sits squarely inside.
The Edgewater, Uptown and Rogers Park lakefront corridor is home to roughly 164,646 residents across 5.9 square miles, with a median household income around $63,000, according to U.S. Census Bureau data reported by the Loyola Phoenix. That density fuels the same foot traffic that has sustained the antique market for decades, even as it now underpins the case for taller redevelopment.
Art Deco Facade Faces an Uncertain Future
The building itself carries some protection, but not a guarantee. It holds an Orange rating from the Chicago Historic Resources Survey, which under Section 14A-4-407.6 of the city's building code triggers an automatic 90-day hold on any demolition permit while the Department of Planning and Development's Historic Preservation Division reviews it, according to Block Club Chicago's report. City officials use that window to explore preservation options, but the building is not an official Chicago Landmark, leaving its long-term fate to whoever buys it. Constructed in 1940 to house the Mann Furniture Store, the building includes one of the only Art Deco facades left in the area.
For now, Broadway Antique Market plans to keep its doors open through the rest of 2026 and into early 2027 while the sale is worked out, Cerny told Block Club Chicago, and the market will continue stocking new pieces in the meantime. Beyond the merchandise, the store has built a reputation as a neighborhood fixture; Chicago native and Saturday Night Live alum Aidy Bryant has said she was shopping inside the market when she got the call inviting her to audition for the show, according to a 2019 interview published by Columbia College Chicago.
A Founder Rooted in Chicago's Underground Scene
Cerny's path to running Chicago's largest vintage mall wound through the city's music underground. In the mid-1980s he co-founded Persona Records, an early Chicago house label that released pioneering vinyl for DJ Frankie Knuckles and put out underground tracks under Cerny's own band, Danny Alias, according to background published by Eckhartz Press. He later documented his decades in the resale business in the 2019 memoir “Selling Dead People's Things: Inexplicably True Tales, Vintage Fails & Objects of Objectionable Estates,” which The Advocate named a Top 20 LGBTQ Memoir of the Year.
Whether Broadway Antique Market's next chapter preserves the shop, the building, or neither remains an open question tied to the zoning fight now playing out in court and the redevelopment pressures reshaping the corridor. Cerny's hope, as he told Block Club Chicago, is that whoever buys the property keeps both the Art Deco building and the business it has housed since 1998 intact.
