New landlord seeking to refill former Crate & Barrel store by Streets of Woodfield

Five months on, marketing efforts to refill the vacant Crate & Barrel store on the west side of Streets of Woodfield in Schaumburg are yielding some prospective interest, according to the property’s new ownership.

The 26,200-square-foot store at the southwest corner of Woodfield and Martingale roads closed at the end of February — just a month after Hutensky Capital Partners of Hartford, Connecticut, bought the entirety of Streets of Woodfield from New York-based private equity firm Blackstone.

The departure of Crate & Barrel already was anticipated at the time of the sale and characterized by Hutensky Capital Partners founder and CEO Brad Hutensky as one of the inherent opportunities of the new acquisition.

“We look forward to working with the village of Schaumburg to create a shopping, entertainment and dining destination worthy of this exceptional location,” he said.

Crate & Barrel moved to the then-new building from a smaller space in neighboring Woodfield Mall during the winter of 2010, just before Whole Foods also opened its Schaumburg store next door.

Hutensky Capital Partners closed on its $69 million purchase of Streets of Woodfield in January. Blackstone had paid $168.5 million for it in 2015.

A Blackstone spokesperson explained the firm was willing to live with such a major discount because its more than $600 billion portfolio was moving more toward such sectors as logistics, rental housing and data centers.

Hutensky praised Blackstone’s nearly 11 years of hard work in keeping many entertainment venues viable at Streets of Woodfield through the pandemic, bringing in Dave & Buster’s and extending the lease with Dick’s House of Sport.

Opening just across the road from Woodfield Mall in 2000, Streets of Woodfield marked a complete overhaul of the site that had been the enclosed shopping center known as One Schaumburg Place in the 1990s.

Other recent investments in the Chicago region by Hutensky Capital Partners include the combined $104 million purchases of Bloomingdale Court in Bloomingdale and Lake View Plaza in Orland Park in November 2024.

epeterson@dailyherald.com