Photo credit: Sterling Bay

Sterling Bay’s already massive presence along the North Branch corridor just got even bigger. A five-story warehouse building at 1907-1915 N. Mendell St. fetched $8.6 million for the Matanky Realty Group in a deal with the busy development company, The Real Deal reported. It’s not yet clear whether Sterling Bay plans to demolish or preserve the newly acquired building.

Sterling Bay’s $5 billion Lincoln Yards project promises to be a game-changer for the riverfront area, which will turn upwards of 70 acres of formerly industrial land located between Lincoln Park and Bucktown into a mixed-use sub-neighborhood with new park space, an extension of the popular 606 bike and pedestrian path, an updated Metra stop and even a 20,000-seat soccer stadium.

Just last week, revisions to the development’s plans were released, which trimmed some aspects of the ambitious project due to community pushback. Still, the North Branch Corridor will be nearly unrecognizable several years down the road when the project is done. Estimates for the number of people who will eventually be working in offices there run as high as 23,000 and the project is expected to deliver 5,000 new residential units to the area.

All those people will need ways to get in and out of the area. So it’s fitting that next week, per the Chicago Tribune, city council will vote on whether to take ownership of a set of abandoned railroad tracks that could allow a new transit line to serve the area.

In other real estate news:

• A new report by Corelogic outlines a lag the Chicago area faces in home equity gains relative to the national average. The report shows that the average home gained about $8,200 from the third quarter of 2017 to the same time this year—about two-thirds the national average of $12,400. The report looked at a total of 12 cities, and only Houston showed a lower gain in equity, with an average of $6,600 gained over the same one-year period.
• Several marquee real estate projects both downtown and in the city’s neighborhoods are set for a vote before the Chicago City Council on December 20. A rehab project, which will include new residential units and hotel rooms, would reopen the theater, which went dark in 2013, if approved. The long-shuttered Uptown Theater will be restored and its capacity upped to 5,800 if developer Farpoint Development can secure city approval. And owners of the Aon Center will ask for approval of a project calling for an exterior elevator and rooftop thrill ride that would swoop patrons over the edge of the 82-story skyscraper.