Veteran Chicago real estate investor Quintin Primo III is in discussions to join the development team behind the long-delayed redevelopment of the former Michael Reese Hospital site on the city’s South Side, according to a report from Crain’s Chicago Business.
Primo, the co-founder and executive chairman of Capri Investment Group, is one of the most prominent Black real estate executives in the country and has spent decades investing in and advising on commercial property across the United States. His potential involvement would add a well-capitalized and politically connected name to a project that has struggled to move dirt since it was first unveiled.
A site with a long and complicated history
The Michael Reese property in Bronzeville has been one of Chicago’s most tantalizing â and most frustrating â development opportunities for the better part of two decades. The hospital, once a cornerstone of medical care on the South Side, closed in 2009. The city acquired the land as part of its failed bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics, envisioning an athletes’ village on the lakefront-adjacent parcel. When the Games went to Rio de Janeiro instead, Chicago was left holding a large, largely cleared tract of land and the debt that came with it.
Years of false starts followed. City officials eventually selected a development group to transform the site into a mixed-use district with housing, offices, research and lab space, retail and public open space â a plan marketed as a generational investment in Bronzeville and the surrounding neighborhoods. Early renderings promised a dense, transit-oriented neighborhood knitted into the lakefront, with an emphasis on minority participation and community benefits.
But the plan has advanced slowly. Rising interest rates, soft demand for office and lab space, and the sheer cost of infrastructure work â roads, utilities and site preparation on a property that has sat fallow for years â have complicated efforts to line up financing for the first phases. Like many megaprojects announced before the pandemic, the Michael Reese redevelopment has had to be rethought for a very different capital markets environment.
What Primo could bring
Primo’s Capri Investment Group has managed institutional real estate capital for pension funds and other large investors, giving him relationships that could prove valuable in a project that will require substantial private investment alongside public support. Adding an established investor with deep Chicago roots could signal to lenders and equity partners that the project remains viable, and could help reposition the development for a market that now favors residential and mixed-use projects over speculative office construction.
Discussions are reportedly still in progress, and no formal agreement has been announced. The precise structure of any role â whether as an investor, a partner in the existing development entity or an adviser â remains unclear.
Stakes for the South Side
For Bronzeville residents and city officials, the stakes are considerable. The site sits near the lakefront, McCormick Place and multiple transit lines, and community leaders have long argued that its redevelopment could reverse decades of disinvestment on the mid-South Side. Each year of delay, however, deepens skepticism among neighbors who have watched grand plans come and go.
Whether Primo’s involvement can restart momentum will depend on financing, city cooperation and a real estate market that has been unkind to large, phased projects. For now, his potential arrival is the clearest sign in months that the effort has not been abandoned. Read More
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