Remembering Daniel Levin, Leading Multifamily Developer
Notable projects of the cofounder and chairman of The Habitat Co. include Presidential Towers, South Commons and the East Bank Club.

Daniel Levin, cofounder and chairman of multifamily development and property management company The Habitat Co., has died at 94. Over the course of his career, Levin developed nearly 25,000 units of rental and for-sale housing for residents across the income spectrum.
Levin received a B.A. and J.D. from the University of Chicago, but residential real estate became his life’s work. His career in real estate began in the 1950s when he worked as a lawyer representing a firm that developed Mies van der Rohe-designed apartment buildings in Chicago.
Levin’s properties ultimately included, among many others, Presidential Tower—a project that pioneered the westward expansion of residential properties west of the Chicago Loop—South Commons, Columbus Plaza and ONE333, all in Chicago. He also founded the East Bank Club, a noted fitness, sports and dining facility on the site of a former railroad yard on the Chicago River, a 1980 venture that came with considerable business risk.
Levin was a long-serving trustee of WTTW/WFMT, one of the longest-serving at more than 47 years, as well as a member of the Leadership Council of the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy, and vice chairman of the board of the Environmental Law and Policy Center. He was a board member of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.
He is survived by his wife, Fay Hartog-Levin, former U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands; his son, Joshua (Debra) of Washington, D.C.; his daughters, Judith Deheeger (Jean Pierre) of Winnetka, Ill., and Elizabeth Bernardaud (Michel), of Paris; and 11 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
The evolution of Habitat
In 1971, Mr. Levin founded Habitat to manage a series of housing projects across several states, including a 28-acre urban renewal project, South Commons, on Chicago’s South Side.
In 1987, Levin and The Habitat Co. became the receiver of the Chicago Housing Authority Scattered Site housing development program. As such, Habitat oversaw the revitalization of nearly 2,800 public housing units.
In the late 1990s, Habitat acquired a large-scale condominium division in Detroit, expanding its footprint, and in 2010 Habitat’s Community Development Group managed more than $10 million in capital projects for the Atlanta Housing Authority.
The company has remained quite busy in more recent years, including the creation of Generations Housing Initiatives, a nonprofit dedicated to providing social services for affordable housing communities. It also headed up the development of Ogden Commons, a mixed-use, mixed-income property that is part of Chicago’s Invest South/West Initiative.
In 2023, the company oversaw the grand opening of 43 Green East (Phase I) and the achievement of PUD approval for Marine Drive Apartments in Buffalo, NY. Last year the company opened Cassidy on Canal, 43 Green West (Phase II), and OC Living Phase I, as well as the undertaking groundbreaking of OC Living Phase II.