Gladstone Park Bakery site up for sale

by BRIAN NADIG

The site of a former landmark business on the Far Northwest Side recently went up for sale.

In its heyday, the Gladstone Park Bakery at 5744 N. Milwaukee Ave. sold 400 decorated cakes each weekend, and the number increased to 600 in May and June due to weddings and graduations, according to a 1976 article in the Chicago Tribune. Customers often had long waits before they reached the counter to talk to a clerk.

The bakery closed in the late 2000s, but the building still contains display cases and its original baking equipment. “It’s like you walk in, and it’s the 1960s and 1970s, and it’s a beautiful space,” said Century 21 SGR real estate broker Jesse Trevino, who listed the property last month.

At one time the bakery expanded to a neighboring building at 5740 N. Milwaukee Ave. due to its high volume of sales. A Midwest Kitchen, a shared kitchen concept that includes doughnut and cookie producers, now operates in that building.

The fact that the infrastructure of the bakery remains intact led the producers of the former television show “Mob Doctor,” which aired in 2012 and 2013, to film several episodes there.

Gladstone Park Neighborhood Association president Joe DiCiaula said that many residents the eventual buyers of the property will open a bakery café or other type of restaurant there. “What we always discussed is to reboot it as some sort of coffee shop,” he said. “It’s sort of already set up for it.”

The building, which was constructed in 1920, measures 4,200 square feet on the first floor and has two apartments on the second floor, Trevino said. The building was originally constructed as two storefronts, but a wall was later demolished to accommodate the bakery, he said.

Dean and Lina Hedeker operated the bakery for decades and left the building to their children, according to Trevino. The last several years the bakery was open it was leased to an outside operator.

The asking for the former bakery property is $698,000.