Honore Properties pulls $14M permit for Lourdes school addition

The City of Chicago has issued a $14.0 million building permit for the second phase of the redevelopment at 4641 N. Ashland Ave. in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood, the former home of Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic school. Permit No. 101083833, issued Oct. 14, 2026 by the city’s Department of Buildings, covers a new five-story, 78-unit residential addition built onto the north end of the existing four-story masonry school building at the corner of Ashland and Leland avenues, with ground-floor parking.

ON THE RECORD: City of Chicago Department of Buildings, permit No. 101083833, issued Oct. 14, 2026, reported construction cost $14.0 million, 78 dwelling units, 4641 N. Ashland Ave. (PIN 14-17-106-050), Ward 47.

The project, branded The Schoolhouse on Ashland, is being developed by Honore Properties, which bought the shuttered Catholic school building from the Archdiocese of Chicago in 2022 and has already converted the original 1920s structure into 42 apartments. This permit covers the second, ground-up phase: a 78-unit addition on the adjacent lot, which the Chicago City Council approved in late 2025 after the Plan Commission signed off on the zoning. Kennedy Mann Architecture designed the addition. Once both phases are complete, the Lourdes site will hold roughly 120 apartments.

The $14.0 million figure on the permit is the applicant-reported construction cost, not a sale price and not necessarily the full project budget. Local outlets have reported the development team’s own estimate for the second phase at roughly $21 million including land, financing and soft costs, a gap consistent with how Chicago permit valuations typically undercount a project’s total cost.

Why it matters

A shuttered Catholic school turning into market-rate and affordable apartments is part of a broader pattern on Chicago’s North Side, where the Archdiocese has been shedding underused parish buildings as enrollment falls and developers have been pairing adaptive reuse of the old structure with new infill construction next door. The Lourdes site does both at once: 42 units inside the renovated school, 78 more in new construction beside it, on a corner that had sat partly vacant since the school closed in 2004.

The numbers

• $14.0 million: applicant-reported construction cost on permit No. 101083833
• 78: new dwelling units in the five-story addition (5 studios, 61 one-bedrooms, 10 two-bedrooms, 2 three-bedrooms, per city filings reported by local outlets)
• 16: of those 78 units designated affordable
• 42: units already converted in the adjoining former school building, branded The Schoolhouse
• 120: total units across both phases once the addition is complete
• $21 million: outlet-reported developer estimate for the second phase’s full cost, including land and soft costs not captured on the permit

What’s next

With the permit now issued, construction on the 78-unit addition can proceed. The development team had targeted a mid-to-late 2026 groundbreaking when the City Council approved the project, with completion expected in early 2028. The 42-unit school conversion next door is further along and had been leasing up as The Schoolhouse. Watch for a formal groundbreaking announcement and for whether the 16 affordable units get a city or state financing commitment attached before the addition tops out.