Chicago suit‑maker reborn
The former Oxxford building in Chicago cleared a permit to add a story and convert into 112 residential units, a concrete urban-renovation move that turns old garment-industry real estate into housing stock. If you follow adaptive reuse, it’s exactly the kind of conversion that reshapes neighborhood character over the next few years. (x.com)
A factory that spent decades turning cloth into suits at 1220 West Van Buren Street is now cleared to become 112 apartments, with a new story added on top instead of a wrecking ball taking it down. (chicagoyimby.com) The building sits in West Loop Gate, a part of Chicago where old warehouses once handled making and moving goods and now keep getting pulled into the city’s housing boom. (chicagoyimby.com) The address is tied to Oxxford Clothes, a menswear company founded in Chicago in 1916 that still describes itself as making garments by hand in Chicago more than a century later. (oxxfordclothes.com) Oxxford no longer works out of the Van Buren building, and its current factory and showroom are listed at 5635 South Archer Avenue in Garfield Ridge. (oxxfordclothes.com) The first big reinvention pitch for this property was not housing at all. In December 2018, developer Missner Group planned to turn the seven-story warehouse into loft offices and add two more floors. (therealdeal.com) That office plan stalled, and by April 2021 Missner Group was marketing the building for sale after the pandemic crushed demand for new office space. (therealdeal.com) The version now moving ahead is smaller on the roof and different inside: one added story, 112 homes, and a project name that keeps the old tenant in view as Oxxford Lofts. (chicagoyimby.com) That shift matches a wider Chicago pattern. In April 2025, City Council approved public support for two more LaSalle Street office-to-apartment conversions that together were expected to add 571 apartments in the Loop. (blockclubchicago.org) Chicago’s building department keeps permit status and inspection records online, so a permit clearing is the point where a long paper plan starts turning into a job site with contractors, inspections, and real construction schedules. (chicago.gov) So the old Oxxford building is being asked to do a completely different Chicago job now: it once held cutters, stitchers, and pressing tables, and it is now being rebuilt to hold kitchens, bathrooms, and 112 front doors. (oxxfordclothes.com; chicagoyimby.com)
