The plan comes as the developer nears completion of its first apartment tower in the neighborhood, a 29-story building at 160 N. Morgan St., which is expected to see its first tenants move in next month. Sterling Bay is also on track to complete a 28-story Fulton Market apartment building at 225 N. Elizabeth St. early next year, and recently won City Council approval for a mixed-use residential building rising 40 stories along the corridor’s western edge at 1300 W. Carroll Ave.

The four projects amount to a big bet on the future of apartments in Fulton Market, which has transformed from its gritty industrial past into a domain of corporate offices and upscale hotels and restaurants. An apartment tower boom started in the neighborhood in 2020, when city officials lifted a ban on new residential development north of Lake Street to try to stimulate new development amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hundreds of new units have been delivered since then, and almost 1,400 more were under construction as of the end of June and slated to be finished by the end of next year, according to data from appraisal and research firm Integra Realty Resources.

On Carpenter Street, Sterling Bay wants to build an apartment building along the northern edge of the Metra tracks running through the neighborhood, just one block north of Google’s Midwest headquarters. The project would include 156 parking spaces and 6,670 square feet of ground floor retail space, according to the zoning application.

The building would include 78 affordable units to comply with Chicago’s ordinance governing affordable housing in new apartment projects, the application said. Under the rules, the average income of tenants in the affordable units must be 60% of the Chicago area’s median income.

Sterling Bay paid $4 million for the 370 N. Carpenter St. property in 2013, just months after it announced it would redevelop the Fulton Market Cold Storage building at 1000 W. Fulton St. into a massive office for Google. The developer has primarily used the building as offices to house growing companies before eventually trying to move them to larger Sterling Bay properties nearby.

Sterling Bay hired a broker to sell the property in 2021, testing what hungry investors might pay for a prime development site after the city began allowing residential development there. Similar development sites in Fulton Market were trading for more than $500 per square foot, which would translate to a purchase price upwards of $17 million for the Carpenter site. But Sterling Bay never sold it.

A Sterling Bay spokeswoman declined to comment on the new apartment proposal.

The property is flanked by other big residential projects that are in the works. To the west, developer Trammell Crow recently kicked off a 33-story apartment building at 1112 W. Carroll Ave. after landing a $125 million construction loan — a rare feat amid high interest rates and dramatic slowdown in apartment construction starts downtown. To the east, New York-based Vista Property Group last month won City Council approval for three apartment buildings totaling 1,450 units at 370 N. Morgan St., 400 N. Morgan St. and 401 N. Morgan St.

Sterling Bay is one of many developers betting on Chicago’s downtown apartment market, where rents are sitting at an all-time high and expected to climb again over the next couple years in part due to a slowdown in new supply. Aside from its Fulton Market projects, Sterling Bay has proposed apartment buildings totaling nearly 1,100 units near Lincoln Yards, a 53-acre megaproject it is trying to jumpstart along the North Branch of the Chicago River between Lincoln Park and Bucktown.