Tall & Urban News

High-Rise Lab Planned for Chicago’s Fulton Market

14 May 2021 | Chicago, United States
A proposed 19-story life sciences lab building at 400 N. Elizabeth would join two other new lab spaces in Chicago's Fulton Market neighborhood. Image credit: Solomon Cordwell Buenz
A proposed 19-story life sciences lab building at 400 N. Elizabeth would join two other new lab spaces in Chicago's Fulton Market neighborhood. Image credit: Solomon Cordwell Buenz

Chicago developer Mark Goodman wants to build a 19-story life sciences lab building along the western edge of the Fulton Market District, a project that could boost an emerging cluster of properties for pharmaceutical and biotechnology research in the trendy former meatpacking corridor.

In one of the most ambitious proposals to date for a new life sciences development in the city, Goodman this week presented plans to a West Loop neighborhood group committee for a 46,452-square-meter (500,000-square-foot) lab and office building at 400 N. Elizabeth St., a spokeswoman for the firm confirmed in a statement.

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Designed by architecture firm Solomon Cordwell Buenz, Goodman's proposed building sandwiched between Metra rails at the northwest corner of Elizabeth and Kinzie streets would include three levels of concealed parking with more than 200 spaces, according to the CBRE document. It would also be adjacent to a location that Chicago Department of Transportation officials and other Fulton Market developers have eyed for years for a potential new Metra station that would serve the rapidly-changing western end of the gritty-turned trendy neighborhood.

Biotech and pharmaceutical startups born at local universities have historically relocated to more mature life sciences markets with more high-quality lab buildings when they grow. But developers have avoided adding more life sciences-specific buildings because they are far more expensive than other commercial buildings and difficult to repurpose when tenants move out.

That has started to change over the past two years, especially in Fulton Market, where Dallas-based developer Trammell Crow is building a 425,000-square-foot lab space building two blocks east of Goodman's proposed site and is converting much of an office building at 1375 W. Fulton Market into lab space. 

If he wins community and City Council approval for a project slated to cost US$218 million to build, Goodman would pay US$30 million for the Elizabeth Street property from a venture of Chicago-based Peppercorn Capital, according to Cook County property records and an offering memorandum from brokerage CBRE obtained by Crain's. The 5,760-square-meter (62,000-square-foot) site today has a 3,345-square-meter (36,000-square-foot) brick building that previously housed a Lakeshore Beverage distribution facility. 

The Elizabeth Street project wouldn't be Goodman's first in Fulton Market. He purchased an AmeriGas propane fueling and tank exchange station at 310 N. Sangamon St. in 2018 and later partnered with New York developer Tishman Speyer to redevelop the site with a 13-story, 25,084-square-meter (270,000-square-foot) office building.

Goodman is expected to file a zoning application in the weeks ahead for the project, which would take 18 months to complete once construction begins, according to the memo.

For more on this story, go to Crain’s Chicago Business.