JDL Development

JDL was founded in 1993 by Jim Letchinger, and has since gained recognition as one of Chicago’s premier developers.

Over the past 20 years, JDL has focused on developing luxury high-rise apartments and condominiums, urban retail and mixed-use, single-family homes, townhomes, and student housing.

After successfully completing Elm Tower in 2003, Maple Tower and Printers Square in 2007, and Columbia Place in 2010, the company turned its focus toward luxury high-rise development.

JDL’s flagship 1225 Old Town project, developed in a joint venture with Hines Interests and Northwestern Mutual Life, won Development of the Year at Chicago’s 2013 Commercial Real Estate Awards, and represented the first apartment project built in the Old Town neighborhood in more than 30 years.

In 2014, JDL teamed with The Harlem Irving Companies to deliver Halsted Flats and The Scott Residences, each setting records for both rental rate and speed to stabilization in their respective submarkets. In 2016 JDL opened 1000 South Clark in Chicago’s Near South neighborhood. It is the company’s largest project to date at 469 units, and reached stabilization in under a year.

Currently JDL is under construction on four new projects. 640 North Wells, a 250-unit luxury rental high-rise in River North, will open in June 2017. No. 9 Walton, a collection of 70 ultra-luxury condominium residences in the Gold Coast, will deliver first units in late 2017. Two West Delaware, also in the Gold Coast, is a gut condominium rehab totaling roughly 130 luxury units currently for sale. Finally, the 381-unit Eight Eleven Uptown — another co-development with The Harlem Irving Companies — is the first rental high-rise in the Uptown submarket since the 1980s. It is scheduled for delivery in mid-2018.

As JDL’s project size and scope have grown, so too has its experience creating successful partnerships with leading institutional capital providers both in the U.S. and abroad. Today, JDL is currently developing more than 1,300 units throughout downtown Chicago.