Pre-leasing opened this month on 41 below-market apartments at 79 W. Monroe in the Loop — the first residential output of the city's LaSalle Street Reimagined corridor program. Studios are asking roughly $1,000 a month in a market where they run more than $2,000.

THE LOOP — Pre-leasing opened this month on 41 below-market apartments inside the Rector Building at 79 W. Monroe, the 1905 Loop office tower being converted to housing by Chicago developer R2 Companies and its Luxembourg equity partner, Lagfin S.C.A. The project — now marketed as The Bellwether Residences — is the first concrete residential output of the city's LaSalle Street Reimagined corridor program, and its affordable studios are asking roughly $1,000 a month in a Loop rental market where studios run more than $2,000.

The 41 units are 35 percent of the building's 117 total apartments, which will occupy floors 7 through 13. They carry a 30-year deed restriction monitored by the Chicago Department of Housing, with approximately 27 units priced at or below 60 percent of area median income and the remaining 14 in the 61-to-80-percent band. The unit mix skews small across all tiers: 56 studios, 54 one-bedrooms, and 7 two-bedrooms. No parking is included.

That 35 percent affordable share exceeds the 20 percent threshold the LaSalle Reimagined program required. The $64.2 million project drew $28 million from the LaSalle Corridor Tax Increment Financing district — approved by City Council on October 14, 2024 — plus $7.8 million in historic tax credits and approximately $28.4 million in private equity. The TIF vote moved through City Council with backing from 34th Ward Ald. Bill Conway, who holds the Loop under the 2023 ward remap that moved the 34th Ward from the far South Side into the downtown core. Conway called the conversion "very important for revitalizing downtown Chicago following pandemic-related office vacancy increases" and attended the project's groundbreaking alongside Mayor Brandon Johnson in spring 2025. The tax credits, administered through the Illinois Historic Preservation Office, came with a condition: restore the 1951 Bell Federal Savings weather bell at the building's northwest corner, which had been dark since 1997. (That restoration, and its state mandate, was reported separately by The Dissent's Neighborhoods desk.)

Lagfin, the Luxembourg holding company connected to Italy-based Campari Group, holds the equity stake after purchasing the building in 2022. R2 Companies, which manages more than six million square feet of commercial real estate across five cities, is operating the conversion. Ware Malcomb is the architect of record; Leopardo Companies and GMA Construction Group are the contractors.

The building will not be entirely residential. Intrinsic Charter High School holds floors 2 through 6 under a lease running through 2045 and is not displaced. The ground-floor Walgreens — whose presence gives the building its informal street name — continues as a tenant.

The LaSalle Reimagined initiative was the city's answer to a corridor where office vacancy climbed sharply after 2020. At 79 W. Monroe, that initiative now has a rent roll: 117 units above a high school and a pharmacy, with a third of the doors priced for households the Loop hasn't typically housed.