Sterling Bay sells site near Lincoln Yards to co-founder Scott Goodman’s new firm

Sterling Bay sold an industrial site near its $6 billion Lincoln Yards megadevelopment to a familiar face. 

A venture of Scott Goodman’s Farpoint Development and Langdon Partners acquired property spanning 122,000 square feet at 1854 North Besly Court on Chicago’s North Side, Crain’s reported.

Goodman co-founded Sterling Bay in 1987 and served as a managing principal before launching Farpoint in 2016. It’s the first property sale between Goodman and his former company. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

The Besly site, comprising a row of connected brick buildings and a massive billboard, seems miniscule compared to the neighboring Lincoln Yards development, which has been stuck in the mud amid struggles to obtain adequate funds and the city’s sluggish approval process. Sterling Bay was planning to replace the brick buildings with a multi-modal transit hub, but a company spokesperson said the property “is not located within the Lincoln Yards planned development,” the outlet reported.

Sterling Bay is trying to close a new financing package with a big retirement fund for Chicago school teachers to keep its megadevelopment plans afloat for Lincoln Yards, the 53-acre site along the Chicago River between Lincoln Park and Bucktown where it wants to build office and multifamily complexes.

It’s unclear what Farpoint plans to do with the site, which has been used as a warehouse and storage facility for years. However, a source close with the firm told the publication Farpoint aims to convert a portion of the property into a self-storage facility. 

With Goodman and a handful of other former Sterling Bay employees at the helm after starting their new firm a few years ago, Farpoint has established itself as a major player in Chicago real estate, leading large-scale projects like the $4 billion Bronzeville Lakefront and Marshaling Yards redevelopments.

In December, the Chicago Transit Authority chose a Farpoint venture to build a $158 million,150,000-square-foot complex in Garfield Park to serve as a new control and training center for the Chicago Transit Authority.

And a joint venture between Farpoint and Northfield-based Saxony Capital is under contract to buy on the Magnificent Mile with a deal to pay more than $40 million for the empty 117,400-square-foot building at 830 North Michigan Avenue.

— Quinn Donoghue

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