Best known for its office projects in Fulton Market like Google's Chicago office at 1000 W. Fulton St. and 333 N. Green St., Sterling Bay has dabbled in the corridor's residential boom. The developer landed financing in early 2022 for a 282-unit apartment building at 160 N. Morgan St. just as interest rates were starting to spike, and completed that 30-story project last year.
The 350 N. Morgan tower would rise 434 feet and include a five-story podium at its base, according to the zoning application. The building would comply with the city's affordable housing requirement ordinance by offering 115 units, or 20% of the total project, at rates that are affordable to households making an average of 60% of the area median income, the application said.
A Sterling Bay-led venture bought the 350 N. Morgan St. property just before the onset of the pandemic from Pioneer Wholesale Meat, one of the last remaining meat companies in Fulton Market that relocated to new facilities elsewhere in the city amid the neighborhood's changing character.
Sterling Bay had a deal around the same time to sell the site to Google and develop a new 18-story building there for the company, part of a massive office expansion by the tech giant on the Near West Side, according to a lawsuit filed in 2020 against the developer involving other Fulton Market properties.
But Sterling Bay's agreement with Google fell apart as the public health crisis upended the office sector, pushing Google and almost every company to evaluate their future office needs, the complaint said.
Sterling Bay razed the former Pioneer building on the property in 2022, and the site bounded by Morgan and Carpenter streets, Carroll Avenue and the Metra tracks running through the neighborhood has sat vacant since.
Google, meanwhile, has set its sights on a much larger office presence in the Loop, where it is transforming the James R. Thompson Center into its future Chicago home.
