Trammell Crow’s Big Bets in the ‘Burbs
This late in the cycle, multifamily developers have to be very selective. (It's the opposite of how it works at the bar.) With the market’s robust product pipeline and rising construction costs, Trammell Crow’s counting on a pair of TOD suburban sites to support healthy rents.
High Street Residential, the residential subsidiary of Trammell Crow, and JV partner The Carlyle Group just picked up a 3.6-acre site in Park Ridge for Park 205, a planned 115-unit luxury apartment community (for delivery in Q4 2015), SVP Johnny Carlson (left, with Trammell Crow's Grady Hamilton) tells us. It’s part of their team’s strategy of transit-oriented projects (this one’s near the Metra) in first ring suburbs. The firm liked the area’s high-income demographic, little new product nearby, plus you can’t beat sharing a property line with Whole Foods, he says. And Park Ridge has yet to see multifamily of today’s luxury vintage, which means LEED certification and downtown-caliber amenities (pool deck, cabanas, dog spa, etc.).
Here’s a rendering, above. Park 205 will incorporate lifestyle trends Trammell Crow has been implementing at 138-unit Midtown Square, its Glenview project (below, including 9,000 SF of retail) being delivered this November. The tenant profiles are similar, Johnny says, though Midtown offers only one- and two-bedrooms and Park 205 will also include a stack of three-bedrooms. While young professionals, couples, and families with young children will be the primary tenant base at Park 205, its target demographic will also include empty nesters, he tells us. (Folks selling their homes to winter in Florida who want a maintenance-free lifestyle.)
A diverse tenant base means designing a more balanced unit mix and forgoing studios typical to urban markets, Johnny says. The weighted average unit sizes at the property will be at least 100 SF to 200 SF larger than the typical urban product, with rents ranging from $1,500 to $3,000-plus/month, he adds. The Trammell Crow Chicago team has had a busy summer keeping tabs on their $200M-plus in projects under construction in Chicago and Minneapolis, yet they still found time to hit the links.
