If you want to put a little “Opa!” in your life, a new mixed-use development is underway that may be just the flaming cheese your Greek alter ego craves. 845 West Madison broke ground recently on the Greektown-adjacent block where the H2O+ personal care products factory once stood, behind the Mariano’s.
It’s a two-tower GREC Architects design for Lendlease and The John Buck Company that will being 586 new residences to Chicago’s Near West Side. Those homes will be in a pair of 17-story towers atop a podium with 10,000 square feet of retail space and a 278-space parking garage.
If you have a taste for something a little more personal, there will also be a baker’s dozen rental townhouses lining the two-story podium along South Peoria and West Monroe Streets — a significant improvement over the former industrial building’s blank facade, and a nice save from inflicting another parking garage directly on the neighborhood.
The units in this project are a little larger than most of the recent construction in the city. There are no micro-apartments, studios, or convertibles. It’s all one-, two-, and three-bedroom homes. Move-ins are expected to start in 2020, which sounds far away, but is really just a year and two weeks off.

Left to right: Peter Palandjian, chairman and CEO of Intercontinental Real Estate Corporation; 27th Ward Alderman Walter Burnett; Chicago Building Commissioner Judy Frydland; Tom Weeks, executive general manager of development at Lendlease; and John Buck, chairman and CEO of The John Buck Company (Courtesy of Lendlease)
Location: 845 West Madison Street, Near West Side