How a former dairy factory in Huntley became apartments

Jacob Haug is lactose intolerant, but his apartment building is full of dairy references.

The apartment numbers on the doors feature dairy product names like Gouda cheese and sour cream, and the building gets its name from the dairy factory that once occupied the site.

“I appreciate the irony,” Haug said.

Haug is among the first tenants of the Cornell Apartments at 11117 S. Church St. near downtown Huntley. The apartment complex gets its name from the Cornell Brothers Milk Condensing Factory, which called the building home before packaging company H.D. Catty opened its plant there in the 1940s.

The Cornell Apartments now house 38 dwellings, with sizes running from 625 square feet for some studio units up to 1,240 square feet for some two-bedroom units. Rent ranges from $1,300 for studios to $2,000 for two-bedroom apartments. A furnished one-bedroom unit offered on a short-term lease also goes for $2,000 a month.

Haug, originally from Belvidere, works in Cary. He sought apartments closer to work and found the one in Huntley.

“We really liked the area,” Haug said.

He and his family moved in Sept. 1 and have been enjoying nearby amenities and downtown Huntley.

“We kind of like its downtown,” Haug said. “There's 11 parks within walking distance.”

Haug also appreciates the building has signs of its dairy past, including barn doors in the lobby that prominently feature old cheese labels.

“It's kind of cool it has that hint of what the building used to be,” Haug said. “We definitely like it for an aesthetic purpose.”

Other building features remind visitors and residents the complex used to be a factory. Load-bearing beams and poles are prominent, which developer Nick Ieremciuc of Wauconda-based True North Properties said was a challenge when creating the apartments.

Sprinkler pipes remain visible in the building, but some residents think the beams and pipes add to the building's charm.

“People will prioritize apartments that have sprinkler pipe exposed,” Ieremciuc said.

An industrial track remains visible in one of the one-bedroom apartments, and residents whose apartments occupy the space that was the loading dock have their own entrances.

The Cornell building is about 120 years old, having been built in the late 1800s to early 1900s, Huntley Director of Development Services Charlie Nordman said.

It first was occupied by a Cornell Brothers Milk Condensing factory, operating from 1905 to about the mid-1930s. A brewery followed for a few years and then Fencil gas company in the 1940s, Nordman said.

From the mid-1940s to 2006, H.D. Catty occupied the building. A Naperville-based real estate agent bought the site after H.D. Catty left and then sold the building to the village in 2017, Nordman said.

The village paid $425,000 for the property. The village board approved its sale for $100,000 to True North Properties in April 2022, signing off on the plan to convert it to apartments.

As part of the deal, the village built a parking lot that can be used by residents and the public and the developer promised an investment of about $5 million into the property.

“The village purchased it knowing it would be a tough property to develop,” Nordman said. “It preserved a historical building that wouldn't have been preserved otherwise.”

Over the past year, Ieremciuc said he's fielded interest locally as well as from out-of-state residents considering a move to the Huntley area.

“We have had a lot of people who have had their eye on the building,” Ieremciuc said.

Among them was Avalon Lanz, originally from Kent, Washington, just outside Seattle.

She and her husband used to live in the Algonquin and West Dundee area, and then following a yearlong stint near Baltimore, she said her husband's job brought them back.

Lanz looked at the apartments in the former Faith Lutheran church and school building in Crystal Lake when Ieremciuc told her about the Cornell apartments in Huntley. Both properties were converted and owned by True North Properties.

She moved in a few weeks ago and appreciates the short walk to restaurants and coffee shops downtown. Her apartment overlooks the train tracks that run through downtown Huntley.

“Huntley is so cute,” Lanz said. “It's a wonderful place to live. Everyone in Huntley is so nice.”