Loop building goes residential in latest wave of office conversions

A Wacker Place building that once served as a hub for manufacturing women’s hats then the offices for Esquire magazine is close to taking on its next life as apartments.

Chicago-based Mavrek Development and Cross Street, along with capital partner ACRES Commercial Realty, have started pre-leasing for Wacker Place at 65 E. Wacker Place. The first residents will move into the 252-unit building in August.

The building has had a colorful history over its nearly 100 years in Chicago — commonly recognized as the Millinery Mart Building. The terra cotta, limestone and brick-clad structure was designed to be the Merchandise Mart for the millinery, or hatmaking, industry. Wholesalers for women’s hats flocked to the building, with roughly one-third of the city’s millinery wholesalers occupying the space.

“In the ‘20s, hats were huge,” David Zielinkski, senior project architect at Pappageorge Haymes Partners, said.

The building was designed in 1928 by Rissman & Hirschfeld, which later became FitzGerald Associates Architects. In addition to being a hub for hatmaking, the building was once the offices for Esquire. Today, Morton’s The Steakhouse occupies the bottom two floors, where it remains open during construction and will be the building’s sole commercial tenant once the conversion is complete.

Alicia Frame, director of operations and communications at Mavrek, said the team plans to celebrate the building and its history as it approaches its centennial. While working on the building, the team found original blueprints for the building, among other artifacts. Frame said the team plans to place those blueprints and other findings throughout the building’s residential floors.

Other historic elements of the building, which sits in the Michigan-Wacker Historic District, will remain. An ornate door has been moved up to the third floor to serve as the entryway to the building’s fitness room. An original U.S. Postal Service mail shoot, now decommissioned, will remain in the renovated lobby. The Wacker Place logo, a flower, is a nod to the terra cotta flowers surrounding the building’s front doors, Frame said.

The $106 million project is being supported by $17 million in historic tax credits, according to Frame.

Construction has been underway since September 2025, according to Michael Sinickas, project manager at McHugh Construction. The residential floors — four through 24 — each have 12 units, which span from studios and convertibles to one- and two-bedroom floor plans. Monthly rent starts from $2,195. Of the 252 units, 51 will be designated affordable under Chicago’s Affordable Requirements Ordinance.

Apartments include in-unit washer and dryers, quartz countertops and luxury appliances.

Erin Higgins, vice president of leasing and management at Cross Street, said pre-leasing is off to a “strong start.” The building will be fully delivered by November.

When complete, Wacker Place will have a suite of amenities, including a fitness room with a yoga studio, coworking lounge and a resident lounge with a fireplace and demonstration kitchen.

The 25th floor — which Zielinkski said used to house a “card room” for exclusive games — is being built out to include a rooftop lounge with wraparound views offering a glimpse of Lake Michigan to the Carbide & Carbon Building as well as the Chicago River.

“We’re in the center of … historic Chicago and newer Chicago,” Zielinkski said.

Wacker Place joins a slew of office-to-residential conversions in the city’s core that are giving new life to empty office buildings. But unlike other conversions — like those under the city’s LaSalle Corridor Revitalization initiative — the lack of city funding has allowed it to progress at a faster speed.

As of June, 25 office-to-residential conversions are underway in Downtown — more than the last 20 years combined, according to the city’s Department of Planning and Development. And the conversions will create more than 3,900 units of housing and will replace 4 million square feet of vacant office space.