Mavrek Development has closed on 850 W. Washington Blvd. in Fulton Market for $16.5 million, finally securing a corner it has pursued on and off for years. The one-story property, currently home to West Loop Auto Spa and a parking lot, works out to roughly $660 per square foot for the 25,000-square-foot site.
The deal, reported by The Real Deal, caps a winding path to ownership. Mavrek picked up the parcel with a $9.5 million mortgage loan from Hoyne Savings Bank, using relatively low leverage to get the transaction done, and the seller, the Park1 Chicago venture, had sought roughly $14.5 million for the property a few years earlier, according to sources familiar with the transaction cited in the report. Mavrek and joint-venture partner GW Properties had first gone under contract for the site back in May 2023, after New York-based Tishman Speyer canceled its own contract to build an office tower there in mid-2022, citing rising interest rates and recession concerns.
A Site With a Long, Complicated History
Mavrek's own plans for the corner have shifted more than once. The firm had at one point lined up a hotel for CitizenM at the site, but CitizenM later dropped out of the project, and Park1 Chicago subsequently paused its own plans to sell the property for a couple of years before the current deal came together. Mavrek has separate experience delivering large residential product, having developed The St. Grand, a 21-story, 248-unit apartment tower at a Streeterville site.
The $660-per-square-foot price tag lands well above where Fulton Market land had been trading just two years ago. Land prices in the corridor dropped to roughly $400 per square foot in October 2024, when Sulo Development bought 1325 W. Fulton St. from Sterling Bay for $30 million, according to The Real Deal. Before the pandemic, top-tier corners in the neighborhood had commanded $500 to $600 per square foot, and Sulo's three-tower, up-to-243-unit condominium master plan at that same Fulton Street site, designed by KPF and ParkFowler Plus, cleared zoning and received City Council approval in early 2025, as Hoodline previously reported.
Zoning Questions Still Loom
The Washington Boulevard parcel currently carries DX-3 zoning, which permits roughly 75,000 square feet of development as-of-right. Mavrek says it is evaluating multiple development options for the site and plans to weigh whether to pursue a rezoning that would allow for greater density, though no formal application has been detailed.
Mavrek co-founder Adam Friedberg made clear the site has long been a personal target. “We think this is the best site,” he said, per the report. “I've been fixated on this site for a long time. Always had a love for it.” One block away, Related Midwest has planned an office high-rise for law firm Sidley Austin, underscoring the corridor's continued appeal even as much of downtown Chicago struggles with vacant office towers.
Part of a Broader Buildout Across Downtown
The Washington Boulevard purchase is just the latest piece of an expanding Mavrek footprint. The firm broke ground in September on Julep West Loop at 1016 W. Jackson Blvd., a 25-story, 380-unit apartment tower with the West Loop's first Aldi grocery store at 1000 W. Jackson Blvd., after securing a $130.4 million construction loan from an Affinius Capital affiliate, according to Capdex. The project, developed alongside Fengate Asset Management, is expected to include 76 designated affordable units and target completion in early 2028.
Mavrek is also active on the adaptive-reuse side. The firm opened pre-leasing this year at Wacker Place, converting the 248,000-square-foot, 1928 Art Deco former Millinery Mart Building at 65 E. Wacker Place into 252 luxury apartments with 51 on-site affordable units, and the property is already about 30 percent pre-leased. Separately, Mavrek is pursuing a $90 million office-to-residential conversion at 209 W. Jackson Blvd.
Fulton Market Bucks the Broader Office Slump
Mavrek's expansion comes as downtown Chicago's office market remains under heavy pressure overall, even as Fulton Market diverges from that trend. Central business district office vacancy reached 27.2% in the second quarter of 2026, but Fulton Market was one of the few downtown submarkets posting positive net absorption, gaining 259,000 square feet through midyear, according to Cushman & Wakefield data reported by Hoodline. Trophy building vacancy downtown, by contrast, fell to 13.4% during the same quarter.
The city is also leaning on office-to-residential conversions to soak up empty commercial space. Chicago had 25 such conversion projects underway across its downtown core as of June 2026, projected to create over 3,900 apartment units and repurpose roughly 4 million square feet of vacant office space, according to the Chicago Department of Planning and Development. That effort recently produced its first completed result under the LaSalle Street Reimagined initiative: The Bellwether Residences at 79 W. Monroe St., which turned 11 vacant office floors into 117 mixed-income apartments backed by $28 million in Tax Increment Financing, according to Bisnow.
For Friedberg, the flurry of activity reflects both a market gap and a shift in who is filling it. “Chicago has a lack of housing,” he said, and Mavrek is glad to provide it. He added a blunter assessment of the local development landscape: “There's a new guard in Chicago. It's pretty obvious who's taking the reins.”
