While being an adaptive reuse of the 85-year-old cold storage building, Levin's plan also will add affordable housing, as prices for market-rate units will start at $169,000, says broker Joseph Betancourt. Levin's project includes 30 units reduced to $155,000, which would qualify as affordable under a city initiative. The property is located in a low-income census tract where the median family income is less than $31,000 a year.

While a seventh floor will be added to the cold storage building, a one-story warehouse will be razed to make way for the new buildings, arranged around landscaped courtyards, according to Levin's plans. The redeveloped loft building will include 19,000 sf of retail space along Pershing Road, across the street from McKinley Park.

The property, which also is about a half-mile from a Chicago Transit Authority Orange Line station, is zoned M2-4 and was in the Stockyards Industrial Corridor until 2003. The plan commission is recommending the city council rezone the property RM5.5.

"It's exciting to see this building being reused, particularly in a way that's being suggested," says department of planning and development deputy commissioner Jack Swenson. "It became clear that there was limited [industrial] reuse capability of those buildings."

"They've taken a cold storage building and used a little imagination," says 50th Ward Alderman Bernard Stone, also a broker. "It's something we can be proud of."