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Dennis Rodkin
Loft Takes Its Cue from the West Loop
By Dennis Rodkin
List Price: $1.15 million
The Property: Cue-wielding pool players get some of the best views in this 4,200-square-foot loft in an old West Loop industrial building. Look out one set of tall windows and they get a straight shot of the Sears Tower; look out the other and they see more old industrial buildings and a clock tower... Read more
Two Eco-Friendly Chicago Renovations
By Dennis Rodkin
Analysts are saying that home remodeling should pick up this year, and with rising energy prices a constant concern, it’s smart to factor resource savings into any rehab. At two Chicago homes, green was the key in nearly all aspects of their recent renovations... Read more
A Realistic Deal in Naperville
By Dennis Rodkin
List Price: $825,000
Sale Price: $775,000
The Property: Three of the strikes against this 13-room home in a high-end Naperville subdivision are hard to hide: the empty lot on either side of the house and the third vacant lot behind this property’s nicely landscaped quarter-acre... Read more
Going Green in Holstein Park
By Dennis Rodkin
List Price: $1.299 million
The Property: With its conservative brick and limestone façade, this house—in one of my favorite neighborhoods, the Holstein Park section of northwest Bucktown—doesn’t try to dominate its older neighbors... Read more
Bringing Stability Back to Chicago Lawn
By Dennis Rodkin
With its blocks of classic bungalows and brick two-flats, Chicago Lawn was for decades a Southwest Side bastion of middle-class stability. More recently it had become a glaring example of the devastation wrought by the foreclosure crisis... Read more
This Lincoln Park Home Was Brought to You by the Letter “L”
By Dennis Rodkin
List Price: $4.7 million
The Property: The 1880s charm of this Lincoln Park home is intact in its detailed brick façade and its tall Italianate windows, but a big rear addition opens the home up from the usual beeline-straight city-house floor plan to an L-shape that invites both family living and entertaining... Read more
Lawsuit Claims Developer Hasn’t Honored Buy-Back Contract
By Dennis Rodkin
In 2008, hoping to reassure potential condo buyers that any further slide in the market wouldn’t hurt them, the Kopley Group development company offered a full-price buy-back guarantee on two of its North Side developments. The company’s chief, Nick Kopley, told me then that this was an “absolute, no questions asked” offer; the company made similar comments to the Chicago Tribune and Yo Chicago... Read more
Foreclosed, Finished, and Flipped in Wicker Park
By Dennis Rodkin
List Price: $1.699 million
Sale Price: $1.475 million
The Property: The rectilinear components of this Wicker Park façade look pieced together as in a jigsaw puzzle—an apt analogy for the home’s piecemeal financial history... Read more
Former Tribune Chairman FitzSimons Sells His North Shore Home
By Dennis Rodkin
The former Tribune Co. chairman Dennis FitzSimons, on Monday closed on the sale of his house on exclusive Woodley Road outside Winnetka. The 13-room home on a little more than an acre sold for $2.478 million, about 78 percent of the $3.15 million that FitzSimons and his wife, Ann, paid for the home in November 2003... Read more