Bespoke S. Barrington

The car-collector real estate play that required materials to match the market.

Bespoke South Barrington is a 115,000-square-foot luxury car condominium development on the grounds of the Arboretum of South Barrington, outside Chicago. Fifty temperature-controlled, individually-owned units designed as private galleries rather than storage. Licensed design cues from major automotive marques. A shared members' clubhouse with rooftop lounge, pool, and private event spaces. A country club for people whose collections include Ferraris, Porsches, and classics they do not trust to any building that calls itself a garage.

The development is led by Tim Manson's TKM Holding Co. and David Daneshforooz's Contour Real Estate, with ARCO/Murray delivering design-build and Velocity Experience handling motorsport hospitality programming. Crystal was operating inside Contour as executive assistant and office manager when Bespoke came onto the deal flow, which meant the same embedded pattern that produced materials for Contour's other projects was there for this one. We produced the capital decks. We designed the investor-facing marketing collateral. We built the materials that moved the project through its early capital milestones.

The work did what it was built to do. Bespoke secured nearly 50 percent of its unit inventory by invitation-only reservation before the first permit was filed, on the strength of the materials we produced. What Bespoke proves about our studio is narrow and specific. We can produce capital materials for luxury enthusiast categories where the buyer is a connoisseur. Car collectors, watch people, yacht people, wine people, whiskey people, any audience where credibility with the category is a prerequisite to attention. Generic real estate marketing does not work for these buyers. Materials that speak to the category do.