SLEEP AT THE OFFICE, PLEASE
| Offer Village Green an old office building, and it’ll offer you a great place to live. Two apartments in the 110-year-old company’s portfolio—it owns three historic high-rises downtown, as well as owning and managing 11k Chicago units (40k nationwide)—are renovated offices. This is great news for your co-worker dozing off at his desk. He just went from lazy to visionary. | |
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We snapped Village Green SVP Kellie Sanders showing us around the Fisher Building. The 114-year-old Burnham-designed former office still has the original doors with company names on them. The tiles and marble walls are also original. But old building doesn’t mean old technology. Partnering with VaultWare, Village Green has created an application that ties smartphone GPS to its apartments and returns price and floorplan. From there, the company signs leases for as short as one night and as long as two years. | |
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The living room of a unit overlooking Harold Washington Library. Village Green is also in the process of renovating 188 W. Randolph, another former historic office building, into apartments. The company is in the exploratory stage, but hopes to keep historic elements as it did at Fisher, as well as at the Medical and Dental Arts building, its other historic downtown high-rise. That building is decorated with a healthcare theme (who knew that would become all the rage?) Village Green also owns/manages new apartment complexes throughout the suburbs. |
