Fulton Market’s “Flora” Tower Blends Luxury Living with High‑End Dining

The completion of the Flora tower in Chicago’s Fulton Market neighborhood marks a key example of how residential-led commercial real-estate developments are integrating hospitality amenities and restaurant concepts as embedded value drivers. According to developer Trammell Crow’s press release, Flora is a 34-story, 368-unit luxury residential building located within the Fulton Park campus, which also features multiple R&D/lab and office buildings as well as ~35,000 sq ft of retail.  

The significant point here: the lease of a new concept by Day Off Group (led by Top Chef winner Joe Flamm) on the ground floor of the tower gives the building an amenity beyond typical retail. For property management and hospitality-oriented CRE firms, this model offers several take-aways:

• Embedding high-profile restaurant/hospitality tenants in residential towers boosts resident retention, building prestige, and foot-traffic capture from adjacent commercial uses.
• For hospitality operators, aligning with residential developments offers built-in demand and captive audience; from a CRE perspective, this can de-risk the restaurant tenant by leveraging the building’s residential occupancy and amenity budget.

From an acquisition or investment viewpoint, the presence of an elevated hospitality tenant contributes to the “placemaking” component of a mixed-use asset — which in turn influences capitalization rates, NOI stability, and future exit valuations.

In the expanded Fulton Market area — which is undergoing a large-scale transformation (see other major mixed-use projects) — the blend of residential, R&D/office, retail and hospitality reflects the future of mixed-use CRE in Chicago. According to a mid-2025 review of Chicago’s market outlook, mixed-use and retail demand are improving while office remains challenged.  

For your hospitality/property-management operations, projects like Flora offer a strong blueprint: acquire or partner on mixed-use properties where hospitality is a built-in amenity rather than a tenant afterthought. That elevates the asset from “just another building” to “destination building.”

Bottom line: Flora in Fulton Market is a model where high-end hospitality and restaurant uses are integral to the CRE development’s value proposition — and property managers should account for that in asset strategy, tenant mix planning, and operational oversight.

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