We are now taking names for our August 2013 (January 2013 for Apartment 207) waiting list.

If you would like to be placed on the waiting list, please send your name, best telephone number, e mail address, mailing address and the property(ies) you are interested in to mbm@advancenet.net or telephone 217-352-3498.


Modern Luxury, Green Living
in Downtown Champaign

Downtown at your doorstep, the emerging Hickory Street Neighborhood now has forty people living in the 500 block alone. The Hickory offers eleven two-bedroom, upscale, green, energy efficient apartments on our second floor and three on the first floor as well as two one bedroom apartments. Also on the first floor is B. Lime a Green Store and 4,100 sq ft of for lease additional retail space.

With shops and night life outside your door, you can now live and work in the vibrant energy of the revitalized downtown. The Hickory’s modern, luxury accommodations are built with greener materials, making life better inside and outside.

We manage the homes and apartments owned by Michael Markstahler known together as Markstahler Properties as well as the leased condos at Uptown On Columbia and the apartments at The Hickory. All are either in or adjacent to downtown Champaign. To view the various properties:
• Markstahler Properties
• Uptown On Columbia


A Green Development

Today every developer and builder faces a personal moral choice to build green or not to build green. With global warming and rising energy costs, we had no choice other than to embrace green construction and to go as high energy efficient as we could with the products now so readily available. We have committed to the Architecture 2030 standards for existing buildings of meeting a fossil fuel, greenhouse gas (GHG) emitting, energy consumption performance standard of 50% of the regional average for the building type.

The Hickory in Dowtown Champaign Illinois

It’s the Small Things That Matter

The Hickory is a large, 28,000 sq ft mixed use building. It is the home to our residents as well as the place of business to our first floor tenants. Providing new finishes, utilities and new appliances is not enough for us. We take seriously our responsibility to offer a quality, quiet, energy efficient building.

Using state of the art materials we have incorporated in every aspect of our planning and designs attention to minimizing sound transfers from one space to the other.

  • On the bottom of the floor joist between the first and second floors is a continuous layer of 5/8” soundproof drywall hung on special sound isolation channel to further reduce the transmission of sound.
  • Installed upon the original second floor decking is Homosote 440 sound barrier. All of the second floor is built upon this additional sound barrier. Additionally, under the finish flooring is a layer of sound deadening cork.
  • The roof is insulated with an R value of 40.
  • All window glazing is new. The apartment windows are custom made Energy Star rated and the first floor storefronts are all low E insulated glazing.
  • Walls facing the street are 12” thick masonry with an interior 6 1/2” of wood framing filled with blown in cellulose insulation for an effective R-value of 28.
  • Walls between the apartments are actually two separate 2 x 4 walls with a gap between them. Both walls are filled with blown-in cellulose insulation and there is a continuous layer of Homosote 440 sound barrier between the two walls. These walls extend all the way to the under side of the roof.
  • Walls between the apartment and the common hallway are 2 x 4 walls filled with blown-in cellulose insulation.
  • When we built B. Lime a Green Store on the first floor, we used sound isolation blocks between the soundproof drywall and the wall plating of B. Lime’s walls.
  • For additional sound control B. Lime’s ceiling is an additional layer of special sound isolation channel and 5/8” drywall applied to the soundproof drywall.