To any 12-year-old boy from Rockford trekking to Chicago in 1960, the seemingly endless view of the city found at the top of the Prudential Building would have been an awesome one.
But for one Rockford boy, the sight may be even more incredible 32 years later. That`s because today the adult Dan McLean can peer from the Top of the Rock and see the effects of his own hand on the city he once gazed upon only wistfully.
Looking south from One Prudential Plaza today, McLean`s latest city home- building project is clearly visible off the far end of Grant Park: the townhouses and condominiums of Burnham Place, the first portion of the $3 billion mixed-use Central Station project to get under way.
For McLean to see the other residential enclaves he has built, from Lakewood Commons to Dearborn Park II to the Embassy Club, he`d have to observe from the John Hancock Center or the Sears Tower, tall buildings not even on the drawing board when he made his first trips to Chicago on the now defunct Illinois Central`s Land of Corn that used to run in from Rockford.
”I`ve always been fascinated by Chicago, even as a little kid,” McLean said.
”When I got out of college, that`s all I wanted to do was go to Chicago. When I first got here, I`d just walk around the Loop, the downtown, just looking at the buildings and the people,” he said.
Now the people are looking at his buildings. For the next three weeks, a residence built by MCL Development Corp., McLean`s home-building firm, will be one of nine on display in the first Parade of Homes to be held in Chicago.
The event, which began Saturday and will run through Sept. 27 in the Gap neighborhood on the city`s South Side, is billed as the first urban Parade of Homes in the country, and McLean is receiving no small amount of the credit for bringing the project to fruition.
”I`d looked at sites in Beverly, Uptown and South Shore and finally decided that the Gap site was the most representative of a city
neighborhood,” McLean said.
When he graduated from the University of Iowa in 1970 with a degree in finance and accounting, McLean wouldn`t have been very well-versed on what constituted a representative Chicago neighborhood. But he learned fast.
His first job in the Chicago area was with the First State Bank of Harvey as a collection officer, meaning McLean repossessed a lot of cars.
”I just figured you had to be a tough kid if you wanted to make it in Chicago,” he said.
Two years later, McLean was in charge of all lending for the bank. At that time, he got the chance to transfer to the new North Community Bank as the vice president of lending, and he took it.
From this new post at Broadway and Addison Street, McLean began to learn real estate, first through lending to area rehabbers and then through making the rehab investments on his own.
”I started by buying a six-flat near Wrigley Field, which in those days was not the (gentrified) area it is now. My main job was banging on doors, collecting the rents,” he said.
”But I had to pitch in, fix the boiler, things like that. About the only problem was (heating) oil, which went from 15 cents a gallon to a dollar the first year I had the building.”
Despite the unexpected rise in expenses, McLean managed to turn a profit with the rental project when he sold it a few years later. From there came more renovations, including a three-flat he bought in 1974 to rehab into his own home.
”I`d buy the drywall and do some of the demolition, but hire guys to hang the wall and to tape it,” he said. ”I could knock the brick out of walls or tear up floorboards, but I was never very handy at the construction side.”
By 1974, the real estate work pushed aside the bank career. First working with two partners, and then basically inheriting the company solo, McLean continued to renovate in Lake View and other areas of the North Side, specializing in distressed properties.
By 1980, McLean had built up a portfolio of about 500 rental units. But times had soured in the rehab business as the recession took hold and McLean found himself taking up apartment building work in Charleston, S.C., and Savannah, Ga.
When the economy turned rosier back home, McLean returned. This time, a new tax credit-one for the restoration of historic properties-provided the impetus for his projects, including the renovation of The Victorian at Cleveland Street and Fullerton Avenue.
”There were 32 condos that we sold to investors so they could use the tax credits, while we managed and ran the building,” McLean said.
”And I had this feeling at the time, as we were renting the units, that there was a pentup demand out there. We interviewed all these young people who had been living in high-rises but wanted to move out, either into something quaint and charming or low-rise and affordable,” he said.
It was then that McLean, ever on the lookout for a distressed property, learned of the foreclosure on the land on which the infamous Lincoln Towing Co. had been located.
”It was on Lakewood (south of Fullerton), as far west as anybody had gone, in West De Paul. There were nothing but factories around it and a rail line running through it,” McLean said.
The industrial nature of the site didn`t faze McLean, who admits to being a bit of a factory junky anyway. He used to tour industrial plants whenever he got the chance, including the Chrysler plant when it was built in Belvidere, Ill., in the early 1960s.
”I bought the land and designed 30 townhouses, figuring I could sell just two or four or whatever before going on,” he said.
But when the news of the project appeared in the Tribune in the spring of 1985, McLean learned that the pentup demand he had sensed was real. The first weekend of sales, he took deposits on 45 units at Lakewood Commons, priced from $146,000 with two bedrooms and a bay window.
”We had all the owners all lined up at the ground-breaking ceremony. Nobody had ever seen that with a residential project in the city before. We ended up building 108 townhouses on those three blocks.”
Six projects have followed, including McLean`s first suburban venture, Heron Harbor in Lake County. Burnham Place at Central Station marks his latest, and what may eventually turn out to be his largest, community.
”I look primarily for large industrial sites now, old Rust Belt land that`s not being used for anything,” McLean said. ”If you go after the bigger parcels, you can offer a wider range of housing product. There`s only so many buyers in any one category.
”And when you get enough mass of people, you can create a community within three or four years.”
That is exactly the reason the developers of Central Station went after McLean to kick off the residential portion of their project. Having seen the way his homes in Dearborn Park II sold, they were convinced he could bring energy to Central Station.
”This isn`t just about offices or houses or other uses. This is about creating an entirely new urban environment,” said Albert Ratner, chairman of Forest City Enterprises, the co-developer of Central Station along with Fogelson Development Corp.
McLean is getting used to the invitations. Recently, Des Moines officials asked if he wouldn`t consider coming there to develop 24 acres near the city`s downtown.
And his mother continually hounds him to do something in his hometown of Rockford.
”I`d still like to do more innovative, in-city projects, and that could be in Chicago, Waukegan or Des Moines,” McLean said.
”It`s satisfying to develop a new neighborhood and see it get built. Not everything turns to gold or makes a lot of money. But if nothing else, you can say you built a lot of neighborhoods and a lot of people live in them.”
