Vacant Ravenswood building readies for apartment and retail adaptive reuse

A new development looking to bring dozens of new apartments to an old Lawrence Avenue industrial building is ready to break ground in Chicago’s Ravenswood neighborhood.

The project recently landed a $5 million permit to construct a sizable two-story addition to the vacant Surpless, Dunn & Co. building at 2150 W. Lawrence Avenue. When complete, the expansion will house 59 one- and two-bedroom rental units ranging from roughly 800 to 1,000 square feet in size plus ground floor retail space, a green roof, a rooftop deck, and parking 50 vehicles.

First introduced to Ravenswood neighbors in May of 2016, the plan comes from developer Sonco Real Estate and Chicago-based MWorks Architects. According to documents posted to the website of 47th Ward Alderman Ameya Pawar, the team estimates a 12-month timeline from permit date to delivery.

The project joins a number of new developments sprouting up along Lawrence Avenue. These include a 39-unit building at the corner of Ashland and Lawrence, 166-apartment complex headed to 1825 W. Lawrence, and a pair of smaller multi-family developments slated for the east-west thoroughfare’s 2200 block.