CHICAGO — Development firm Optima Inc. has begun pre-leasing Optima Lakeview, a 198-unit luxury apartment community in Chicago’s Lakeview neighborhood. Located at 3478 N. Broadway St., the project includes 14,000 square feet of street-level retail space. First move-ins are scheduled for April. David Hovey Sr., Optima’s CEO and founder, designed the project, while Optima’s in-house construction team served as general contractor. Units average 1,053 square feet, and monthly rents start at $2,400.

Optima Lakeview features 40,000 square feet of amenities, including a rooftop sky deck, heated pool, grilling stations, basketball court, sports lounge, golf simulator, fitness center, yoga room, sauna, dog park, children’s play area, game room and chef’s kitchen. Work-from-home amenities include two conference spaces, a business center and several indoor and outdoor seating areas. Each residence comes with smart home technology, including keyless unit entry and smart thermostats.

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Urbanize has toured Optima Lakeview, Optima’s newest luxury rental apartment building in Lakeview. Located at 3478 N. Broadway, the project’s site was originally home to a shuttered Treasure Island Foods grocery store.

Designed in-house by Optima’s team, the building stands as a luxury apartment community, from its modern exterior – made with a palette of transparent bronze glass and dark brick to complement the architecture of the surrounding neighborhood – to its unique interior, which includes a seven-story atrium that runs through the core of the building and features vertical landscaping to flood the space with natural light and foliage.

The tour began in the lobby which sits within the large atrium in the center of the building. Light flooded in from above, illuminating the walkways on each floor for the residential access. Off to the side on the ground floor, the building’s sports lounge offers a basketball court and golf simulator.

Taking the elevator to the top floor, the 8th floor hosts a party room with full kitchen space. On the outdoor deck, residents have access to a heated pool deck and spa as well as grilling stations. With Optima Lakeview being one of the taller buildings in the area, views are uninterrupted looking in every direction, including towards the lake and to Wrigley Field.

Working our way down, we visited the business center on the sixth floor which offers furniture intended for residents to be able to work in the space. On the fourth floor, the resident lounge offers gathering space as well as another full kitchen and game room. Enclosed conference rooms are also included. On the third floor, a sauna room overlooks the second-floor fitness center with locker rooms also accessible to tenants. The final amenity space inside the center atrium was the fitness center on the second floor. The space has been outfitted with all the equipment residents would need to truly quit their gym.

In between seeing the amenity spaces, Urbanize toured select model units within the building. Located in the rear wing of the building, the first model unit was a three-bedroom, 1,940 square foot unit. Overlooking the dog park from the third floor, the unit features a large open plan living space. A theme throughout the units, the floor plans have been designed to maximize storage opportunities.

The second unit toured was a two-bedroom, 1,396 square foot floor plan. The floor plan features a split bedroom layout with a large living room and storage space at the entrance of the unit. Accessed from the living room, an inset balcony overlooks activity on the street. The final model unit was a one-bedroom configuration looking south out of the building. Planned with a borrowed light bedroom, the bedroom sits inboard of the living space, using a partial height wall between the kitchen and bedroom to allow light to reach the bedroom space.

Currently 46% leased, Optima Lakeview offers one-, two- and three-bedroom floor plans. Remaining units include floor plans renting at $2,600 – $4,700 for one bedrooms, $4,900 – $6,400 for two bedrooms, and $7,100 – $9,800 for three bedroom configurations. The first move-ins for tenants began back in April 2022.

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A 198-unit apartment building that replaced a grocery store on Chicago’s North Side is for sale, adding to an already lengthy shopping list for multifamily investors in the city.

JLL brokers have been hired by developer Optima to seek a buyer for the Optima Lakeview building at 3478 N. Broadway, according to a marketing brochure.

The offering adds to a slew of large apartment buildings already on the market downtown and on the North Side. A dearth of new construction in the city has fueled strong rent growth relative to other markets, leading to some high-dollar sales and prompting other property owners to test the market.

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Optima, a Glencoe, Illinois-based real estate development and design firm, completed the glassy, eight-story building on the former Treasure Island grocery store site in 2022.

That project came after the local grocery chain abruptly went out of business in 2018.

It’s unclear how much Optima is expecting in a sale. The firm did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CoStar News on Tuesday.

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Major sales in the city have included the $170 million sale of the 375-unit Fulbrix tower in Fulton Market in April, which was the highest-priced multifamily sale in the city since 2023.

Overall Chicago-area sales have totaled $2.3 billion so far in 2025, compared with $3.9 billion for full-year 2024 and $4 billion in 2023, according to CoStar data.

Properties that have gone on the market for sale in recent months include The Mason, a 363-unit tower in Fulton Market; the 451-unit Left Bank tower at 300 N. Canal St., just east of Fulton Market; and the 275-unit Milieu tower along the edge of the Greektown and Fulton Market neighborhoods.

Optima bought the vacant grocery store for $12.85 million in July 2019, according to Cook County property records.

The firm knocked down the grocery store and secured a nearly $63.3 million construction loan from Village Bank & Trust to kick off the project. Optima refinanced the property in March, taking out $56 million in permanent debt from PNC Bank and paying off the construction loan, property records show.

JLL is marketing the property as the opportunity to buy a new building in a high-density neighborhood where large apartment developments are relatively rare.

Optima Lakeview includes large outdoor areas such as private balconies and a large rooftop deck with a pool, spa, party room, fire pits and grilling stations. There also is a fitness center, indoor basketball and pickleball courts and sports lounge with putting green.

The property is more than 91% leased, with asking rents of $4,372 per unit and $4.13 per square foot, according to CoStar data.

Large sales on the North Side this year have included the nearly $114 million sale of the 191-unit Elevate Lincoln Park and the nearly $87 million sale of the 292-unit Cobbler Square complex in Old Town.

Amid high borrowing and construction costs, some developers are teeing up smaller projects to meet high demand in Lakeview.

That includes an ongoing project to replace buildings across the street from Wrigley Field with a 29-unit building, plans to repurpose and add on to the 124-year-old Briar Street Theater building to create a 66-unit multifamily property, and a proposal to replace Torstenson Glass’ longtime home in the 3200 block of Sheffield Avenue with a 92-unit apartment building.

Read more on CoStar

Visit Optima Lakeview for more details

Optima, Inc. has launched pre-leasing for its 198-unit Optima Lakeview luxury rental apartment building, which includes 14,000 square feet of street-level retail at 3478 N. Broadway in the North Side’s Lakeview neighborhood. First move-ins are scheduled for April.

Designed by Optima CEO and founder David Hovey Sr., and built by Optima’s in-house construction team, Optima Lakeview offers one-, two- and three-bedroom floor plans with high-end finishes and smart home technology. Rents start at $2,400 per month.

“Optima Lakeview is a true original for the area in that it offers the best of both worlds – the same Class A management service, innovative design and deep amenity package of our Optima Signature high-rise in downtown Chicago, but in a more intimately sized building within one of the city’s most beloved neighborhoods and just blocks away from historic Wrigley Field,” said David Hovey Jr., president, COO and principal architect of Optima.

Visit Optima Lakeview for more details

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Visit Optima Lakeview for more details

The COVID-19 pandemic has altered many renters’ lifestyles, and multifamily developers and owners have responded through their amenity offerings—from connectivity and additional co-working space for the work-from-home crowd to enhanced fitness spaces for health and wellness.

Multifamily Executive caught up with several multifamily developers and owners—including Lissette Calderon, CEO of Neology Life Development Group; David Hovey Jr., AIA, president of Optima, Inc.; and Stuart Zook, principal and chief Investment officer at Monument Capital Management, an A-Rod Corp company—to see what’s new in their communities and how they are pivoting their amenities to meet renters’ needs and wants.

MFE: Are you planning to introduce any new indoor amenities at your properties in 2022?

Hovey: Our communities celebrate the fundamental connection between design and nature, and Optima Lakeview’s design will reflect that with a striking atrium that runs through the core of the seven-story building. The building’s two-story fitness center will feel especially spacious given that it will be flooded with natural light from the atrium. This design also allows us to spread out equipment and encourages good air flow, which will add to the wellness aspect for our residents.

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Visit Optima Lakeview for more details