Pioneer seeks $5M on empty 78-unit Jackson Park building

A New York investment firm focused almost exclusively on buying vintage Chicago multifamily assets is seeking a quick sale of a vacant 78-unit building near the Obama Presidential Center development site in Jackson Park.

Pioneer Acquisitions, led by co-founders L. Jayson Lemberg and James B. Peterson, Jr. hired Chicago-based brokerage Essex Realty Group to market the property at 6700 South Constance Avenue, and is asking $4.9 million, the Chicago Business Journal reported. Erica Trejo with Essex said the building is empty because residents were ordered to vacate due to repairs needed for its water pipes.

If Pioneer gets its asking price, it would net $600,000 more than the firm purchased the property for in 2020, when it bought the building for $4.3 million, according to Cook County records.

Pioneer’s strategy centers on properties originally built in the first half of the 20th century in certain Chicago neighborhoods because they have “seen tremendous rental rate increases in recent years, driving renters out of established neighborhoods that have become increasingly unaffordable,” the company’s website says. The firm has bought hundreds of units in areas it believes benefit from that relocation, and then upgrades them to provide housing at reasonable costs, it says.

Some residents of the area have been pushing for city officials to implement certain policies to preserve housing affordability in Jackson Park and the South Shore as the $830 million presidential center project drives more tourism and traffic to South Side neighborhoods.

Housing advocates have reason to worry, though the city hasn’t yet met some of their requests. As of earlier this year, the median price of a single-family home in South Shore had jumped 150 percent to $186,000 since plans for the presidential center were announced in 2015. That’s quadruple the rate of increase for homes citywide.

The South Constance Avenue property was built in 1920, and has 41 studio units and 37 one-bedroom apartments. There is a large basement, but no other tenant amenities like on-site laundry, which a buyer might want to add.

Essex Realty brokers Brian Mond and Jordan Gottlieb are marketing the building, which is among a flurry of properties near the presidential library development site that have been sold or experienced rising values as the massive Obama project progresses.

In August, a pair of out-of-state investors closed on a South Side apartment complex on South Stony Island Avenue, across from the site of the future Obama Presidential Center with a land lease that will keep it affordable for three decades. In that deal, New York’s Jonathan Rose Cos. and Boston’s Preservation of Affordable Housing paid $25 million for the 318-unit Jackson Park Terrace apartment complex at 6054 South Stony Island Avenue and a lease that runs for 34 years.

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Developers to keep Obama Center units affordable through 2056

— Victoria Pruitt