Evanston: Private Equity Landlord Quadrel Faces $291,000 in Fines for Skipping Affordable Housing at Hampton Parkway

The bill comes due

Quadrel Realty Group and its parent company, private equity firm North Park Ventures, owe the city of Evanston $291,000 in fines for failing to provide affordable apartments at their Hampton Parkway development. An administrative hearing officer imposed the penalties on June 18 after a multiyear dispute over the city's Inclusionary Housing Ordinance.

The 91-unit building at 2730 Hampton Parkway was originally a condominium complex. Quadrel purchased the property for $17 million in 2020 after more than 75 percent of condo owners approved the sale. The purchase triggered the city's Inclusionary Housing Ordinance, which requires buildings converted from condos to rentals to set aside 10 percent of units for lower-income households.

What the law requires

Under the version of the ordinance in effect when Quadrel bought the building, at least nine units must be leased to households earning at or below 60 percent of the area median income for a minimum of 30 years. The units must be spread throughout the building and match the overall bedroom mix as closely as possible.

Landlords can also pay a $150,000 per-unit fee in lieu of providing some or all of the units on site. Quadrel chose not to pay the fee and did not register any affordable units for five years after taking ownership.

Two rounds of citations

City staff met with Quadrel in May 2020 to review the ordinance requirements, according to Housing and Grants Supervisor Marion Johnson. Email acknowledgments confirmed the company received the information.

Five years later, on October 23, 2025, the city issued nine citations covering each missing affordable unit. Each citation carried a fine of $500 per day for noncompliance.

Quadrel failed to appear at a November 13 hearing on those citations. Hearing officer Jeffrey Greenspan issued default judgments, resulting in a total fine of $94,500 for the 21 days between the citation issuance and the hearing. The fine was locked in on December 18 after Quadrel missed a 35-day window to appeal under state law.

In January 2026, city staff issued another nine citations to continue the penalty clock. City spokesperson Cynthia Vargas wrote that "the second round was needed to continue [issuing fines] until full compliance for each unit is reached."

Whose delay is it?

At the June 18 hearing, Quadrel attorney Tim Herman and North Park Ventures director of asset management Jason Keith argued that the landlord could not immediately lease affordable units without evicting existing tenants early.

"As soon as ones were available, they were submitted [to the city], and then it just took a while to get all nine," Keith said. "Obviously, we weren't going to proactively not renew anybody or evict anybody, we had to let them go through the process."

Herman also noted that affordable tenants must come through the city's waitlist managed by nonprofit partner Community Partners for Affordable Housing (CPAH). Quadrel submitted five units for registration in October and four more in the months that followed.

Johnson pushed back on the delay argument. She said landlords who follow the process from the start avoid these problems because tenants are ready to move as soon as units become available.

"A lot of that delay was due to the fact that the information requested by the third-party partner [CPAH] — we had multiple meetings and follow-up emails, because they weren't able to market the units because they weren't getting the information needed," Johnson said.

The final tally

Greenspan set fines starting on the later of either the unit registration date or January 29, and ending on the lease date or the hearing date for units still unleased. Under this calculation, eight of the nine units were fined for a total of $196,000.

Combined with the original $94,500 default judgment, the total comes to $291,000.

"In terms of an incentive or disincentive, I think that would be sufficient," Greenspan said. "They did purchase this building and convert it in 2020."

Herman objected to the fines on the record, calling them "punitive and duplicative of the prior fines issued." He also disputed the rationale behind the amounts. These arguments suggest Quadrel will likely appeal to the Cook County Circuit Court, though the company did not confirm whether it plans to appeal.

A pattern of disputes

The Hampton Parkway fines are not the first legal trouble Quadrel has faced in Evanston. The city's Law Department previously threatened to sue the landlord over alleged violations of the Residential Landlord Tenant Ordinance during negotiations with unionized tenants in several southeast Evanston buildings. The Quadrel Evanston Tenants Union reached a collectively bargained lease agreement with the company in April 2026.

North Park Ventures managing partner Robert Sekula told Evanston Now earlier this month that the Hampton Parkway complex was in compliance with the ordinance. The city disputed that claim, noting that while affordable units had been identified, several had not yet been leased to income-eligible households.

According to Vargas, the apartments will be considered compliant once all nine approved units are leased to income-eligible tenants and all fines are paid.

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