The “hipster highway” and an ice cream parlor that has been around for almost 100 years go well together, a Chicago real estate investor is betting.
Margie’s Candies has called a building in the quickly gentrifying Logan Square neighborhood home since 1921, and a recent sale of the building, announced Friday, won’t mean a change of address. The family-owned Chicago institution will remain a tenant for at least 15 years, the property’s new owner said.
Outpost Development and Baum Revision, both based in Chicago, acquired the Mil-West building at 1965 N. Milwaukee Ave., a stretch of road sometimes called “Hipster Highway” due to its heavy bike traffic.
Margie’s has signed a new lease and will remain in the building for at least 15 years and has options to extend the lease, Baum principal Scott Goldman said Monday.
“A lot of what’s going on in the culture is an appreciation for local concepts and businesses, especially ones with unique identities and souls,” Goldman said. “Despite that the business is old and perhaps can use some degree of renovation, it is a neighborhood staple that has been there a long time.”
Margie’s “in lot of ways has held the community together through good times and bad times,” Adam Radcliffe, Outpost managing principal, said Monday. Although it’s a relatively small tenant, occupying about 1,200 square feet, “we feel like Margie’s anchors this project.”
Another 13,000 square feet at the building’s ground level is vacant and will be remodeled. “There’s a good deal of interest from retailers and restaurants,” Goldman said.
Radcliffe said he doesn’t want the retail space to “become a field day for national tenants.”
“We want local owners and operators,” he said.
On the second floor, about 20 “very high-tech, superinnovative apartments” will be developed, with such features as doors that unlock without keys, he said.
Built in 1911, the building also has housed banks, with vaults and safe-deposit boxes still in the property’s lower level.
Peter George Poulos, Margie’s third-generation owner, couldn’t be reached for comment Monday afternoon.
“We made them what we felt was a fair proposal to stay in the project,” Goldman said of Margie’s, which isn’t required to make any renovations under the building’s new ownership.
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