A four-story condominium building is officially cleared for construction at 1257 W. Fry St. in Noble Square, after the city issued a full building permit for the roughly $1.1 million project this month. The site, a midblock parcel near the intersection of W. Fry St. and N. Elizabeth St., previously held a two-story residential building and rear garage dating to 1890, both of which have since been demolished.
The permit paves the way for VAM Development to break ground on four residential units, most likely condominiums, according to Urbanize Chicago. The new structure will rise approximately 52 feet, with two three-bedroom duplex-down units occupying the ground floor and basement and two more three-bedroom units filling the second and third floors. Each of the upper-floor units connects to a den on the fourth floor that opens onto an outdoor roof deck. VAM Development is serving as general contractor, while Hanna Architects designed the building, and the site includes four parking spaces in a rear garage accessed from the alley. No construction timeline has been announced.
From Single-Family Lot to Multi-Unit Zoning
Getting to this point required a formal rezoning. Chicago's City Council passed Ordinance O2026-0023980 on May 20, 2026, reclassifying the property from RS-3, which permits only single-family detached homes, to RM-4.5, a designation that allows multi-unit residential buildings, according to the Journal of the Proceedings of the City Council of the City of Chicago. The property sits in the city's 1st Ward, represented by Alderperson Daniel La Spata, and the rezoning needed local aldermanic review and passage by the Committee on Zoning before the full council could approve it.
Public property records show the developer bought the 1,600-square-foot residential building, built in 1890 on a 0.10-acre lot, for $585,000 on October 8, 2025, according to Zillow. City permit filings show a municipal wrecking permit was issued on July 8, 2026, authorizing demolition contractor Builder Luxury Inc. to tear down the existing building and garage, per data compiled by Building Permits in West Town. Municipal permit documentation tracks the estimated construction valuation for the new building at approximately $1.1 million, according to FieldFlowHub.
Staying Under the Affordable Housing Threshold
Because the project comprises just four residential units, it falls below Chicago's 10-unit minimum threshold that triggers mandatory affordable housing set-asides under the city's Affordable Requirements Ordinance. That means all four units at 1257 W. Fry St. can be marketed as market-rate housing without any designated affordable component, a pattern Hoodline has also documented in a Roscoe Village project involving the same design and demolition teams.
Lead architect John C. Hanna of Hanna Architects has designed dozens of multi-family infill projects across Chicago neighborhoods, including Noble Square, Wicker Park, Roscoe Village, Pilsen and Lakeview, typically specializing in buildings of three to eight units. Builder Luxury Inc., the contractor hired for the wrecking work on Fry Street, has simultaneously handled site clearing for several other Hanna Architects developments across West Town and Roscoe Village this year.
Part of a Broader Wave of Teardowns
Real estate market analysis indicates Noble Square has become a prime target for this kind of small-scale redevelopment because teardown parcels in the adjacent Ukrainian Village and central Wicker Park have grown scarce and cost-prohibitive, per Landis. Lower land acquisition costs in Noble Square allow four-story condo projects like this one to pencil out financially for developers.
The Fry Street project joins other recent infill activity along the same corridor. A five-story mixed-use building at 1361 W. Chicago Ave. received its full building permit in September 2025 for five residential units and ground-floor retail, according to Urbanize Chicago's neighborhood coverage. Hoodline has previously reported on 1257 W. Fry St. as part of a broader trend of multi-unit residential teardowns and infill developments spreading across West Town, replacing older 19th-century housing stock without adding any designated affordable units.
