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The controversial Maple Street Lofts (MSL) development could get approval at tonight’s (April 3) Mount Prospect Village Board meeting.
The Mount Prospect Planning & Zoning Commission has sent the proposal to the board with a positive recommendation vote of 5-2. Residents who live in the immediate vicinity of the planned unit development (PUD) have worked hard to have their objections heard since the plan was introduced last September. Efforts have included attending Village Board, and Planning & Zoning Commission meetings; emailing and calling trustees, the mayor, and village staff; creating a group called Citizens for Responsible Growth in Mount Prospect (CRGMP); alerting neighbors through flyers, newsletters, a website with an online petition against MSL, and lawn signs. Objections range from the height of the apartment buildings, zoning amendments, classroom overcrowding, traffic congestion, and more. Located at Prospect Avenue and Maple Street the property, formerly the Parenti & Raffaelli site, is now owned by Nicholas & Associates (N&A). In partnership with Wingspan Development, N&A is looking to develop the six-acre parcel into a mixed-use commercial and residential complex which will encompass the village-owned Maple Street commuter parking lot. During the course of expressing concerns to the board, residents have emphasized they are not against developing the site, but feel the overall size of the project and height of the buildings is excessive. “It can’t go more than four stories to stay consistent with the character of the neighborhood,” said CRGMP organizer Stephanie Kenny. The original plans included two apartment buildings, seven and eight stories in height respectively, 66 rowhomes and a three-story parking deck. In response to resident concerns the developers have reduced the eight-story building to six-stories and the number of row houses to 56. Asked for her thoughts on the changes Kenny remains unconvinced. “The people in the neighborhood, who moved here, like the low-profile,” she said, “The were attracted to the family-feel of the neighborhood.” Director of Community Development for Mount Prospect, Bill Cooney, told Planning & Zoning Commissioners, at the March 14 meeting, that neither school district 57 nor 214 had voiced a concern about the approximately 24 additional students MSL will generate. Kenny said she thinks the projected student increase is being under-reported, citing school enrollment documents, “Two to three bedroom townhouses in the area are showing twice as many students,” said Kenny. Cooney also said the current parking agreement with the existing townhomes on Maple Street will be maintained and applied to the parking deck.
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Pat Ferrier, Fort Collins Coloradoan Published 11:56 a.m. MT March 20, 2019 | Updated 8:33 a.m. MT March 21, 2019  A proposal from Fort Collins developer JD Padilla would create nearly 250 new homes on Timberline Road across from Bacon Elementary School. The area is also home to the Hansen Farm, which is also slated for a single-family development and apartment project. (Photo: Jennifer Hefty/Coloradoan) Fort Collins developer JD Padilla has submitted preliminary plans for nearly 250 new homes to be built on South Timberline Road.
The vacant agriculture land, part of the Rennat property, would be subdivided into 246 lots for single-family home lots as well as two-family units, according to preliminary plans filed with the city of Fort Collins. Padilla is scheduled to meet with city planning officials Wednesday, March 27, for a preliminary design review. He did not return phone calls seeking comment. The 57-acre triangular parcel owned by the Harry O. Rennat Trust and Ingrid M. Rennat Family Trust, has small frontage along Timberline Road across from Bacon Elementary and Zephyr Road in southeast Fort Collins. It is just south of the Hansen property slated for development and just north of the Crowne at Timberline apartments. Access to the property would be served by a public street connection from the Hansen property and an extension of Zephyr Road and Rosen Drive to the south and east, according to plans. The site is adjacent to two other residential projects working their way through the city's planning and development review process. Wingspan Development Group, with offices in Illinois and Wisconsin, has proposed 240 apartments on 10 acres of the Hansen Farm northwest of the intersection of Timberline and Zephyr roads. It is adjacent to 55 acres the Landhuis Co. plans to develop into 184 single-family detached and attached homes on 55 acres of the Hansen Farm. The opportunity exists on the Rennat project to coordinate the extension of Zephyr Drive and other street connections to Hansen Farm and south to the Linden Park neighborhood, a future neighborhood park, off-street trail network and the initial phase of a commercial center, Senior Planner Pete Wray said. This Rennat property is among a handful of sites Padilla is developing throughout Fort Collins. Construction is in full swing on The Wyatt, 366 apartments on the southwest corner of Harmony and Strauss Cabin roads. He owns the property just east of The Wyatt at Harmony and I-25 on which he is planning a mixed-use project, and he is also planning Morning Star, a senior-living complex in Old Town Fort Collins at North College Avenue and Cherry Street. Pat Ferrier is a senior reporter covering business, health care and growth issues in Northern Colorado. Please support her work and that of other Coloradoan journalists by subscribing: See Coloradoan.com/subscribe to learn how.  Mount Prospect resident Stephanie Kenny makes a comment the Maple Street Lofts development plan during a Thursday's night planning and zoning commission meeting. Steve Zalusky | Staff Photographer Mount Prospect's Maple Street Lofts development cleared a major hurdle Thursday when the village's planning and zoning commission, by a 5-2 vote, recommended the plan, despite objections raised by concerned neighbors, including building height, traffic and school impact.
The matter now moves to the village board for approval April 3. Revising plans that originally included an eight-story building, the developer, Nicholas and Associates, offered a plan that includes a six-story, mixed-use building with 192 apartments and more than 14,000 square feet of retail space, and a seven-story building with 65 apartments and 56 row homes. The project would be in the 300 block of South Maple Street, the 200 block of East Prospect Avenue and the 200 block of East Lincoln Street. The same developer is building the 20 West apartments on the other side of the railroad tracks. The project involves $110 million in private investment and use of around $11 million in tax increment financing funds, including $6 million for a new parking deck. It would be located on the former site of wood product manufacturer Parenti and Raffaelli Ltd., which relocated to the Kensington Business Center with the assistance of $3 million in TIF funds. TIF funds are property tax revenue generated by new development that is diverted from other governments, such as schools, to help pay for expenses related to the new development. During the 4½ hour meeting, attended by around 100 people, commissioners were split between those seeing the need for greater density in the downtown to benefit business and those concerned about issues raised by the neighbors. Among the former was Augie Filippone, who is also running for a spot on the Mount Prospect Village Board in April. "For me, this project needs to go forward," he said. "We need to look at what we're doing. Are we committed to Mount Prospect's future?" He also stood up for Nicholas and Associates, a Mount Prospect firm, after hearing the public's comments. "I haven't seen anyone else step up. They're the only ones that have come up to take the risk. And if we're treating a hometown business like this, that has put so much into our community, I can only imagine what outside developers are thinking," he said. Members of a residents group, Citizens for Responsible Growth in Mount Prospect, spoke against the proposal. "All the streets around that development, all the way down to Lincoln, those are residential streets," Stan Kaniecki said. "What's happening here is an expansion of the core business central area of Mount Prospect north of the tracks to what arguably is a residential area. You're bringing high density (and) two high buildings into a residential area that can't handle the traffic." Their arguments resonated with two of the commission members, Sharon Otteman and William Beattie, who cast no votes. Otteman praised the project but said, "I don't think that all of the research has been done with traffic, and I'm very concerned about the numbers for the schools." Beattie asked, "Does anybody know what could Lions Park (School) handle before we get back into the too many students and they are building the temporary classrooms in the parking lot again?" When asked if whittling down the height would be a breaking point, Christopher Coleman of the Wingspan Development Group, a member of the development team, replied in the affirmative. "That's the difference between green light and red light," he said. "I know other developers who have looked at this site. They like the site. They could not make the economics work. Could not make the deal work." Public comment was not exclusively against the project. "We have not been able to house people who want luxury apartments," said Dawn Fletcher Collins, executive director of the Mount Prospect Chamber of Commerce. "Our business community is struggling. They need this development." By Richard Mayer The developer of the proposed Maple Street Lofts project in downtown Mount Prospect feels concerns shared by a newly formed group of citizens will be helpful moving forward.
Plans call for two apartment buildings, seven and eight-stories high respectively, 66 single-family rowhomes, a parking garage, retail and commercial space. The project site is located on the former Parenti and Raffaelli property, 215-225 E. Prospect Ave., at Maple Street. Formal plans have yet to be presented to the village board for approval. According to Chris Coleman from Wingspan Development, which is part of the development team with developer Nicholas & Associates, recent discussions on the project are helpful. “We appreciate and actively solicit input from the community and stakeholders,” Coleman said. “That’s always important. For this particular development, it’s even more important. As we have been listening to residents’ comments, questions and concerns, most of what we’re hearing is positive. When you give people a forum to ask questions and they get the answers, most are satisfied.” Two groups that have been consistent supporters of the development, he said, are the Mount Prospect Chamber of Commerce and the Downtown Merchants Association. He said both groups are excited about the possibility of more residents moving to downtown — residents that would likely patronize local businesses. Chris Bozonelos of Mrs. P & Me restaurant, and head of the Downtown Merchants Association, is one of those supporters. Mrs. P & Me is located one block west of the Maple Street Lofts site. “They hosted one of the information sessions here at Mrs. P & Me, and over 100 people attended,” Bozonelos said. “The downtown merchants support the development and I personally support it. I work and live right here in the neighborhood, and I’ve been here for years, so I have a unique perspective. I’m excited to see something happen with the property after all this time. I think the plan is great.” Both the chamber and Downtown Merchants Association on Feb. 4 submitted a letter to the village in support of the project. According to Bozonelos and chamber Director Dawn Fletcher Collins, traffic concerns expressed by opponents of the project are “exaggerated.” “The population of Mount Prospect has tripled since 1960,” the letter says. “Traffic in the city of Chicago at rush hour is traffic; what we have in our village are minutes of delay when hundreds of commuters are traveling to and from work during very specific times of day. This is anticipated and expected in every community.” Both stated in the letter they are not sure what people mean when they say the proposed project is “out of character.” “The current character or ‘feel and appearance’ of that block of the neighborhood is that of a factory,” they said. “Density and residents are necessary to support existing businesses and the kind of businesses younger residents expect in their downtown. Mount Prospect needs to meet the needs of its residents and that includes the younger demographic.” According to Bozonelos and Collins, the younger population that will likely occupy the majority of Maple Street Lofts will utilize the train and frequent local businesses. “This is part of long-term goal planning and something which has been discussed at length for over a decade with many residents and business owners during that time period,” they said in the letter. They added the downtown business community can only be as robust as the number of residents who live in the downtown area, and critical mass is vital to business survival. “We are excited and proud of this and all proposed residential development projects and strongly encourage the board to move forward with Maple Street Lofts project,” they concluded. According to Coleman, a formal submittal will be presented soon. “We’ve been listening to comments for months and modifying our plans to address their concerns,” he said. “I think when the public hearings actually happen, people will see that we took their concerns to heart.” Asked about the group Citizens for Responsible Growth in Mount Prospect, that’s concerned about the size of the proposed development, Coleman said, “There will always be some people you can never please, that’s to be expected. Often, that minority is very vocal so they get a lot of attention. We try to focus on the concerns of the majority of residents and work with them to deliver the best possible development.”
Based on recent deals, the two properties could fetch more than $100 million combined.  The developer of two shopping centers in northwest suburban Kildeer has put them up for sale, testing investors’ enthusiasm for retail buildings in a shaky market.
Bond hired CBRE to sell Kildeer Marketplace and Kildeer Village Square, fully leased properties totaling about 265,000 square feet at Rand and Plum Grove roads. Bond built Kildeer Marketplace, a 65,500-square-foot shopping center anchored by a Whole Foods Market, in 2012, and in 2017 completed Kildeer Village Square, a 198,900-square-foot property with tenants including Nordstrom Rack, Art Van Furniture and Sierra Trading Post. Though the real estate investment market overall is strong, investors are having a harder time figuring out what a shopping center is worth these days. Retail vacancies in the Chicago area are elevated after a wave of store closings, and healthy retailers aren’t expanding the way they used to. After the demise of the Carson’s department chain, many investors are waiting for other shoes to drop—the fate of Sears Holdings will be decided soon by a bankruptcy judge—and the outlook for the market is unclear as online shopping continues to grow. Strip center values nationally have started to fall: An index of U.S. strip center values calculated by research firm Green Street Advisors declined 2 percent last year. Yet the Kildeer properties are full of strong tenants in a healthy trade area, and investors are still willing to pay up for quality. “The sky isn’t falling and our retailers are doing well,” said Robert Bond, co-founder and president of the Chicago-based developer. ADVERTISINGHe’s said he’s willing to sell the shopping centers together or apart—or not at all. “We’re evaluating market value, just like we would with any asset,” Bond said. “If the market agrees with my perception (of value), we’re sellers. If the market doesn’t agree with my perception, we’re not.” He declined to say what he thinks the properties are worth, as did George Good, executive vice president at CBRE. But a back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests the shopping centers could fetch more than $100 million combined. The properties generate annual net operating income of $6.3 million, according to a CBRE website marketing them. Similar shopping centers have sold the past couple of years at capitalization rates—first-year returns—of roughly 5.5 to 6 percent. In that range, the properties could fetch $104 million to $114 million.  While 2018 sales hit record volume, things did slow in Q4. Find out what buyers expect from the year ahead. Even as the cycle matured, and interest rates rose in the fall, investors kept buying apartments in 2018.
More than $172.6 billion of apartments changed hands last year, which was a record level of deal activity and a 12 percent increase compared to 2017, according to New York-based Real Capital Analytics (RCA). Sales of single apartment buildings drove the sales flurry in 2018. Single-asset sales rose $12.6 billion from 2017 to reach $130.1 billion in 2018, according to RCA. Additionally, portfolio sales rose 15 percent and entity-level sales climbed 23 percent, driven by Brookfield’s acquisition of Forest City for $4.6 billion. Volume for mid- and high-rise apartments rose 34 percent in 2018, while garden apartment sales only rose 2 percent, according to RCA. Cap rates for garden apartments averaged 5.5 percent, while mid- and high-rose cap rates were at 4.9 percent. “This growth in volume is occurring in the face of record high prices,” RCA wrote in its US Capital Trends report for Apartments, which was released on Jan. 23. “The RCA CPPI for the apartment sector climbed 8.9 percent in 2018 from 2017. This growth late in the cycle is impressive, but it is a slower pace of growth than recent trends. Prices grew at double digit rates from 2014 to 2017.” While sales increased in 2018, many buyers endured a problem similar to what they encountered in previous years—a paucity of good apartments to buy. “We like to say there will be plenty of buying opportunities in our markets, but last year was pretty tough,” says Doug Root, Co-Founder & Managing Partner of Blackfin Real Estate Investors. When the 10-year Treasury rose above 3 percent in September and October, it did create a pause in the market, which provided an opportunity for buyers. When rates rose, Root thinks the buyers’ side of the market absorbed roughly the first 50 basis points. “Then there was another tick up that I think caused buyers to pause a little bit,” Root says. “I think sellers were scratching their heads because they were able to name their price for a long time now. Now they were getting pushback from buyers. We saw that a lot at the end of the year.” Deal volume did slow as the year wore on. It was only up 9 percent year-over-year in Q4 after growing at 14 percent earlier in the year, according to RCA. As of late November, brokers were calling Matt Ferrari, Senior Managing Director of TruAmerica Multifamily, and encouraging him to pursue their listings because there was less traction or bids from potential buyers. “I don’t know if that [trend] was because of volatility in the markets or buyers had hit their allocations for the year and were waiting until next year to pursue deals,” Ferrari said at the Bisnow Multifamily Annual Conference East conference in Tysons Corner, Va., in November. Root was hearing similar things from brokerage firms, but by January he says those firms cleared out their backlog. “I just made four or five phone calls today to different brokerage shops that cover huge volumes of deals,” he said in early January. “They cover a lot of volume and they said they cleared all of their deals by the end of the year.” Despite that, Bobby Lee, President and COO of JRK Property Holdings, thinks 2019 will bring more buying opportunities than 2018. “The recent dislocation in the equity markets and corresponding view of the economic health and chance of recession seems to be trickling into the multifamily sector,” Lee says. “There seemed to be slightly less competition for assets in Q4 versus earlier in the year.” TruAmerica Multifamily purchased $1 billion of apartment properties in 2018 and plans to acquire roughly the same amount in 2019. “We will continue to look for under-managed assets or assets with renovation upside in first- and second-ring suburbs around primary and secondary metros,” Ferrari says. “Ideally these suburban assets will be in submarkets that are insulated from new supply.” While many apartment owners plan to buy as much as they purchased in 2018, if not more, most buyers still expect tough competition as they pursue new deals. “It is still very difficult,” says Lance Swank, President of Sterling Group. “We have a defined structure and very defined return expectations that we stick to. Some of that is driven by our investment partners, but we are pretty rigid. We might underwrite 100 communities and go under contract with one.”  Buckingham Place Apartments was recently honored by the Home Builders Association of Greater Chicago at the 2018 Key Awards.
Each year, HBAGC honors outstanding achievements in housing design, architecture design, interior design, community design, landscape architecture and remodeling. Buckingham Place interior designer Eleni Interiors was honored with a total of six awards, including two for the interior design of Buckingham Place. Community Design / Amenities – Honoring multi-family project amenity space and clubhouse facilities Platinum Winner – Eleni Interiors Interior Design – Honoring accomplishments in multi-family interior design Platinum Winner – Eleni Interiors For more information on our artfully designed community, please reach out to the Buckingham Place leasing office. MOUNT PROSPECT, IL, UNITED STATES, January 25, 2019 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Wingspan Development Group, LLC continues to implement the growth strategy its principals outlined at the company’s founding. Wingspan is currently active in Illinois, Wisconsin, Florida and Colorado. “From the outset, we had identified certain markets that we wanted to be in. This next phase of our growth strategy is a natural progression,” said Nick Papanicholas, Jr. President of Wingspan Development.
In Illinois, Wingspan has a presence in multiple Chicago area submarkets including the NW & O’Hare submarkets with active projects in in Des Plaines, Mount Prospect, Arlington Heights and Wheeling. Strong employment growth was a key motivation for Wingspan to also enter the southwest suburban Plainfield-Naperville RSA. In Wisconsin, Wingspan is working on projects in Oak Creek and Brookfield. In Colorado, Wingspan is securing entitlements on projects in the greater Denver MSA. The company’s Florida focus is in the Tampa - Orlando corridor with one project scheduled to break ground in early 2020 and a second to follow shortly thereafter. When asked how expansion markets are chosen, Jason Macklin, Director of Development responded, “Like most developers, we have our proprietary underwriting methodology but some of the basic elements center on demand drivers. Each market we penetrate must have a strong and specific thesis and key indicators. When the indicators and an opportunity coincide, we take advantage of it.” Another important variable is personal experience. “The markets we’ve identified are markets where we’ve had personal experience”, said Chris Coleman VP of Development. He added, “We’re not going into markets where we don’t have local knowledge and existing relationships. That’s a real asset of our team.” Where will the next phase of expansion take Wingspan? “The next markets we’re moving into are Georgia and North Carolina,” added Macklin. “Specifically, we’re vetting sites and opportunities in Atlanta, Raleigh, Durham and Charlotte.” He continued, “Not only do we know those markets but so does our team of consultants and partners. Our alignment with strong in-market partners will always be a priority and advantage for us.” Wingspan Development Group delivers the highest quality projects across multiple real estate segments; multifamily residential, commercial and land development. The firm’s core team has over 80 years of real estate and construction experience combined with an unparalleled commitment to detail and execution. By blending broad capabilities and a nimble organization, Wingspan capitalizes on diverse market opportunities to create value through quality for clients and stakeholders. Wingspan has offices in Illinois and Wisconsin. For more information, contact 847.394.6200 or info@WingspanDevelopmentGroup.com.Christopher Coleman Wingspan Development Group +1 847-394-6200 email us here Visit us on social media: Boulder Group Arranges $14.8 Million Sale of Property Net Leased to Jewel-Osco in Metro Chicago1/24/2019
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AuthorChris Coleman, VP of Development at Wingspan, periodically shares his thoughts and observations on property development news. 
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