Older apartment buildings along Sheridan Road in Uptown. Photo: Warren LeMay from Chicago, IL, United States / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
Jay Michael started FLATS Chicago after concluding that the city’s mid-market renters were being ignored. Developers, as he saw it, were building either luxury product or bare-bones units, with little in between. He and his business partner, Alex, set out to fill that gap with apartments they describe as small but mighty.
FLATS is one of several projects under Cedar Street Companies, which works mainly in real estate, hospitality and entertainment. Michael pitches FLATS as a lifestyle brand: well-designed, amenity-heavy buildings with rents that ordinary tenants can manage.
Adaptive reuse
The company’s method is adaptive reuse, the rehab of older buildings rather than new construction. Michael’s goal is to produce better housing inside the walls that already exist. In Uptown and Edgewater, that has meant taking over aging buildings and redesigning compact units so that a small footprint still works for daily life.
When the company entered Uptown, Michael has said, the partners wanted redevelopment that meant something to the neighborhood. He sees FLATS as a kind of social entrepreneurship and describes its relationship with Uptown as a good match, adding value to the community while the community adds value to the business.
A long lead time
The process has not been fast. Permits, building acquisitions and the rest of the puzzle stretched the timeline, and for a long stretch the plan existed mainly in his head. Michael says he had to keep reminding himself to be patient. Now several Uptown and Edgewater buildings are leasing, and he says they look the way he pictured them.
FLATS has also worked with neighbors outside real estate. When actor David Dastmalchian shot his film “Animals” in Uptown, the company gave the production a day of access to its buildings.
Michael says one of the things he likes most about Uptown is how many business owners get involved in the neighborhood’s future. It isn’t required, he notes, but it shows.
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