Office Building Where Hugh Hefner Once Worked Is Getting A New Life

The former home of Chicago’s 20th-century millinery industry, with ties to Esquire magazine and Hugh Hefner, has worn many hats over the years and is preparing to take on a new one.  

The Millinery Building, at 65 E. Wacker Place in what was the city’s furniture row district, was built in 1928 to centralize Chicago’s hat-making industry. With its carved arches, tiered stepbacks and ornamental accents, the building stands as an example of Chicago's art deco architecture. 

When millinery fell out of fashion, the building was converted into offices. Esquire magazine leased 10 floors in 1948, according to a Chicago Tribune article from that same year. In the early 1950s, Playboy founder Hugh Hefner roamed the halls of Esquire's offices in the infancy of his publication career.

Nearly a century after its construction, the 25-story, 248K SF tower is adding a new feather to its cap with its conversion to luxury apartments.

Wacker Place, the updated moniker for the historic property, is one of the projects fueling Chicago’s standing as the home of the third-largest pipeline of apartment conversions in the country.

The tower will house 252 luxury apartments across the building’s fourth through 24th floors. The first through third floors will feature a redesigned lobby and building services area, while maintaining the popular street-level retail tenant Morton’s The Steakhouse.

Mavrek Development and Acres Commercial Realty Corp. secured financing for the project last September. They brought in a $62.4M senior loan from Derby Lane Partners, an $11M loan from Hoyne Savings Bank and $17M in federal and Illinois historic tax credits monetized by PNC Bank. 

“We've gotten a lot of buy-in, from investors to bankers to [general contractors] to say, ‘Yeah, this will work,’” Mavrek Development Chief Operating Officer Peter Koch said. “But you don't see it happening that often because of how hard it is.”

Before financing was even secured, the preconstruction sequence was lengthy. Mavrek worked with a third-party historical consultant to obtain approval for layouts and finishes for the past couple of years, Koch said. This included keeping or matching certain elevator doors, windows, elevator car indicator lights and even a nonoperational mailbox in the lobby. 

Then, the development team needed to figure out the price point for those design elements and work subcontractors into the process.  

“To make these successful, all of this planning has to be done before,” Koch said. “If you see someone swinging a hammer or cutting a two-by-four, he better have all the answers well before he even gets on site because that's where the cost is.”

McHugh Construction began work on the project in October, starting with demolition and selective structural work to prepare the building to accommodate new residential layouts, building systems and amenity spaces. As a part of the process, the company is removing three of the building’s former elevators and replacing them with a staircase. 

The company has also taken a floor-by-floor approach to installing mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems, implementing components in waves. With a conversion project, construction work must navigate around in-place steel beams and precise locations for fresh air and utilities.     

“We're coordinating with existing conditions, the first one being existing structural ceiling heights, second one being the actual structural design of the building,” McHugh Construction Project Manager Michael Sinickas said.

While making headway on the conversion, the construction company has also had to work around Morton’s The Steakhouse's schedule.

When work first started, McHugh sorted out which utility systems were connected to both Morton’s and the base building. To switch over to a new power system, the construction team had to coordinate with the restaurant to supply backup generators so the steakhouse could stay fully operational.  

"It's always a complex coordination effort in a new building,” Sinickas said. “This one's even more complex because of an existing tenant.”

The first 12 floors of the building are slated to be ready for a portion of prospective tenants to move in around the end of June. Construction work is expected to be fully complete by November, said McHugh Construction Project Executive Bill Stephan. 

When Wacker Place is fully operational, it will offer a mix of 105 studios, 105 one-bedroom and 42 two-bedroom apartments. Each residential floor will include approximately 12 apartments, with units ranging from about 450 SF to 900 SF. 

The 25th floor will feature an indoor-outdoor rooftop deck with skyline and river views.

The building will enter its new life with a tip of the cap toward its hat-making origins, with architectural features and finishes from a long-gone era anchoring the new concept in the 20th century. Koch sees a market for people who love old, historic buildings. 

“There's a portion of it of storytelling, too,” Koch said. “You’re building that story so people move in.”