Bucket O' Blood Books and Records will vacate 3182 N. Elston Ave. when its lease expires Nov. 30. Owners Grant and Jennifer McKee cite chronic water intrusion from upstairs residential units going back to their 2015 move-in. Chicago's open building records show no code violations and no recent permit at that address — most likely because no formal complaint was ever filed.

AVONDALE — Bucket O' Blood Books and Records will vacate its ground-floor storefront at 3182 N. Elston Ave. when its lease expires Nov. 30, owners Grant and Jennifer McKee announced last week. They will not renew.

Bucket O' Blood has been in business for 16 years — the McKees have owned it since 2013 — and has operated at the Elston address since August 2015. The couple traced their decision not to renew to recurring water damage that began in their first year at that address and came back, in their words, "multiple times per year, every single year since" — overflowing bathtubs and washing machines draining from the residential units above, a burst hot water heater, leaking windows. "The building honestly hasn't been maintained in a manner suitable for running a business, especially one prone to damage from water," they wrote in a public statement reported by Block Club Chicago.

The most direct explanation for the absence of any city record: a 311 building complaint, which is what triggers a Chicago Department of Buildings inspection, does not appear to have been filed for the Elston address. No complaint means no inspection; no inspection means no violation, regardless of what conditions were present inside.

Chicago's open data, queried July 18, 2026, at the address string "3182 N Elston," shows no open building-code violations in the violations dataset (22u3-xenr) and no recent permit in the permits dataset (ydr8-5enu). The 311 service-request dataset (v6vf-nfxy) returns seven entries for that address; the system does not separate request types, so whether any of those seven involved the building conditions the McKees describe is not determinable from the public record.

The McKees told Block Club Chicago they want to own their next space rather than lease — a direct response to what eleven years in a rented mixed-use storefront taught them. They are focusing their search on staying close to their Avondale customer base. The bookstore continues programming through the fall; a final sales date has not been set.