DL3 Realty is a Chicago real estate development firm led by Leon Walker, known for retail, mixed-use and community development in neighbourhoods that conventional capital has historically skipped, particularly on the city’s South Side. The firm specialises in structuring deals that combine private equity with public incentives, tax credits and New Markets financing, and it has repeatedly delivered grocery-anchored and health-care-anchored retail in areas classified as food deserts. Its work includes Englewood Square, the first new retail development in that neighbourhood in decades, and Woodlawn Station, a transit-oriented mixed-use project at the CTA Green Line. DL3 is one of the development partners, with Riverside Investment and Development and AmTrust RE, converting the 1934 Field Building at 135 South LaSalle Street into 386 apartments.
Alongside the development pipeline, DL3 runs a separate advisory practice serving municipalities, anchor institutions and regional employers. On a transaction basis that means market research, site and building tours, drafting and issuing requests for proposal, preparing comparisons of the financial terms of competing proposals, reviewing building systems, negotiating letters of intent and drafting leases, plus ongoing administration afterwards. The same group sources equity and mezzanine financing in Opportunity Zones and coordinates economic development grants.
A second line of business is the long-term strategic alliance. Some clients outsource all or a significant part of their real estate portfolio to DL3 rather than staffing it internally. In grocery retail the firm builds long-range siting and asset management strategies aimed at communities with poor access to healthy food. For education and health care clients it organises facility data, assesses how space is actually being used, manages acquisitions and dispositions, monitors leases, coordinates tenant build-outs and capital expenditure, and reviews operating expenses, depreciation schedules and real estate tax escalations.
Before it commits to a location, DL3 screens it against five criteria: past evidence of development potential, anchor institution investment, deliberate local leadership, available land, and activity that is already changing the community’s brand. Two of the resulting projects converted abandoned big box stores into corporate employment centres. One is a 1,000-seat customer care centre for Discover in Chatham, which the firm says leads all Discover centres on employee satisfaction and retention. The other is the 129,000 square foot Morgan Park Solutions Center, which also houses one of Health Care Service Corporation’s three Chicago neighbourhood centres running wellness classes and partner programmes.
Completed health and grocery work includes Friend Health’s 38,000 square foot Woodlawn medical campus, supported by a federal New Markets Tax Credit allocation and credited with generating over 200 jobs, and a 48,000 square foot Jewel-Osco in Woodlawn developed with Terraco Real Estate, the neighbourhood’s first grocery store in more than forty years. Housing sits alongside the commercial work: Park Station is a 58-unit mixed-income building in Woodlawn built under the Woodlawn Housing Preservation Ordinance, and THRIVE Exchange in South Shore renovates the historic Ringer Building with 76 workforce rental units, 24 for-sale condominiums and ground-floor retail. The firm has won three LISC/Chicago Most Outstanding Community Development awards, in 2008, 2016 and 2018, and marked its 25th anniversary by seeding the DL3 Cares Future Leaders Career Academy.
