Mike Tauber
Feature: Downtown Digs
March 1, 2006
For more than 20 years, dr. jamie robinson woke well before dawn each work
day to drive the 35 miles from Buffalo Grove, Ill., to downtown Chicago in time for his first
appointment at 5:30 am. But these days, his commute is more often only three minutes long,
and on foot. Joining a growing number of empty nesters and baby boomers, Robinson moved to
where the action is by investing in a downtown pied-à-terre: a 500-square-foot studio
condo on the 46th floor of a high-rise with a long balcony overlooking the Chicago
River.
Overlooking Central Park, this Trump Tower condo is an ideal pied-à-terre for
those partial to classic New York opulence.
As city living has become more fashionable (U.S. census figures indicate that
the number of urban dwellers in the United States increased by 4 percent between
1990 and 2000), a new supply of downtown housing has been developed to meet the demand:
hotel-condos and pieds-à-terre. “There’s been a tremendous movement back into the cities,
where people can walk to everything: movies, nightclubs, along the water,” says Helen Jeanne
Nicastri, chairperson of Florida’s Master Brokers’ Forum. The pied-à-terre–literally “a
foot on the ground”–is usually a small city apartment for use by out-of-town owners when
they want to be in the heart of nearby cities. Hotel-condos, on the other hand, are
individually owned hotel rooms that can be rented out whenever the owners are away.; function voidFunc() { } voidFunc();)
This downtown Chicago condo, on the market for $3.95 million
through Christie’s Great Estates, features oak floors and a chrome staircase. Photograph by John Simmons Eckert (Click image to enlarge)
The popularity of these trends is tremendous. Condominiums have seen record sales in the last few years, as part of a national downsizing wave. And new hotel-condos are being built all over the country, while old hotels are quickly being converted. In New York, the Mandarin Oriental, the Plaza and the Mayfair are all becoming hybrids–part traditional hotels and part hotel-condos. In Las Vegas, MGM’s City Center project and a new Trump International hotel-condo are rising along the Strip. Low interest rates have helped the trends blossom, and people wary of the stock market feel safer investing in real estate.
Pied-à-terre purchasers tend to differ from hotel-condo seekers, according to the informal observations of several Realtors polled (there are no official statistics on hotel-condos and pieds-à-terre as of yet). Some pieds-à-terre are quite affordable–Robinson’s cost $125,000–and are used primarily by their owners, who maintain their family homes nearby. “People want to have their suburban house, but they’re tired of having to commute,” says Amy Maynard, a real estate agent with Chicago’s Koenig & Strey, GMAC, who sold Robinson his condominium. “Everybody wants to be downtown now.” Pieds-à-terre are also used as inner city vacation homes. “Instead of a cottage by the lake, they get a pied-à-terre,” says Maynard.
But pieds-à-terre are not just for commuters. Marilyn Corradini, an agent with New York’s Stribling & Associates, says her clients are primarily empty nesters in their 60s, folks who live in nearby New York City suburbs such as Long Island or Short Hills, N.J., and want a city stomping ground, primarily for the culture. They purchase these places, which often cost $2,000 to $3,000 a square foot, as investments, she says. “They’re doing it for their pleasure.”
Maynard’s clients also include people from other cities who frequent Chicago for cultural events and have grown tired of staying in hotels. No matter who is buying, there are some common requests: “It had to be walkable, it had to be affordable and it had to have a view,” Robinson says.
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