Tribune reports on Antheus in Hyde Park

posted by chicago pop

A decent little piece in the Tribune's business section today more or less covers the range of local opinions (including ours) on the Antheus-financed MAC-vasion of Hyde Park Kenwood. George Rumsey gets in a tart little zing, someone complains that Hyde Park risks losing its 'small town' feel, and someone else worries about the neighborhood no longer being a bastion of low-income housing. I had a number of more positive things to say in addition to the comment quoted, but they didn't make it into this short piece. Which is a sort of too bad, because - probably unintentionally - the piece comes off as Antheus/MAC vs. Everybody. 

A choice excerpt: 

This month, a small group of residents gathered at the Hyde Park Art Center to see Gang's designs.

While several praised the scale and beauty of Gang's work, some residents said they were worried that the project might alter Hyde Park's quirky, small-town feel. And others were concerned about Antheus' plans to ask the city for $10 million in financial assistance — money the company initially said it wouldn't seek. Funding would come from the 53rd Street tax increment financing (TIF) district.

"You are using TIF money for huge projects that are forcing independent business owners who have been in Hyde Park for generations in some cases to close," said resident S. Beth Thomas. "You want to make Hyde Park look like a world-class neighborhood, but my concern is the people who are being displaced," she said.

And Rumsey's little splash of NIMBY hot sauce on Eli Ungar's business lunch:

"MAC has a history of making really dumb decisions when they acquire new properties and having to back down when it's a public relations disaster," said George Rumsey, an affordable housing advocate and former president of the Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference.
Ungar, 44, often plays "good cop" and flies in to rescue MAC, using his affable personality to calm residents' ire. "He knows how to feel your pain," Rumsey said. "He'll say, 'Let me look at it' and calls and takes people to lunch."

Meanwhile, the Del Prado and East Park building look better and better every day, the Shoreland is kept from demolition, and the sidewalks down each side of Hyde Park Boulevard are shoveled within hours of every snow storm - not something a good number of local property managers were managing to accomplish prior to Antheus's MAC-vasion.

The New NIMBY Tower of Power: 5490 South Shore Drive

posted by chicago pop

Move over, Vista Homes: self interest has a new address

Developing the 53rd St. TIF: It's Hard and We're Not Quite Sure How to Do It

Results of the Third and Final 53rd St. Visioning Workshop

posted by chicago pop

Rendering of a break-even development concept at McMobil Site,

53rd and Kenwood

Over the last year or so, a variety of municipal agencies, community groups, and the office of 4th Ward Alderman Toni Preckwinkle have sponsored a series of three neighborhood workshops dealing with development within the 53rd Street TIF district.

The first two were designed to educate neighborhood attendees about the basic concepts and parameters affecting real estate development in the corridor, and to help illustrate positive correlations between such factors as density of households and the viability of urban retail districts.

Overall, the workshops were well received, drew input from a wider demographic spectrum of Hyde Parkers than the typical and impressionistic "community meeting", and demonstrated a broad consensus on the demand for improvements in the neighborhood's retail offerings liveliness.

The workshops also gave grounds for a cautious optimism regarding public acceptance of the need for higher residential density as a prerequisite for the commercial revitalization of Hyde Park.

People aren't necessarily opposed to getting dense, if it's done right and the economic necessity of doing so is made clear by running the numbers on possible projects. This is exactly what the third and final visioning workshop set out to do: illustrate the limits within which any urban development project is economically feasible by highlighting the economies of scale that come with density.

Reviewing the various development concepts from the November 15th workshop, it's clear that the facilitators tapped a rich well of creativity in the participants. Most of the concept proposals -- for the McMobil lot, the Dorchester Commons strip mall, and Harper Court -- are interesting, and some are attractive.

Aerial Map of Possible Development Sites Within Hyde Park's 53rd Street TIF District

Unfortunately, none of them is economically feasible. It seems that while Hyde Parkers may be growing accustomed to the idea of density, none of the workshop proposals was dense enough to offer the kind of return that would attract a real-world developer.

Even with up to $6.2 million in subsidies from the 53rd Street TIF fund.

Workshop participants used blocks and a map to mock up a development proposal which they then gave to some real estate people who crunched the numbers then and there.

The chart below lists the development concepts that were graded as feasible, i.e., not money-losing. Of the 8 concepts that made this cut, only 4 of them would have generated any profit for a developer, and none of those came close to the threshold of 15% return on investment that was used as the no-go line beneath which few developers would risk their money.

Economic Profiles of Workshop Site Proposals

Model and Rendering of Site Concept for Harper Court

Three factors seem to pose the biggest hurdles to these projects: 1) 4th Ward Alderman Toni Preckwinkle's firm and praiseworthy commitment to a minimum of 15% affordable housing in any residential project; 2) an opaque and mysterious local market in real estate that may inflate the cost of land acquisition; and 3) a public hesitation to go even denser.

The affordable housing requirement for TIF districts is a Chicago ordinance, and Alderman Preckwinkle is firmly committed to it. It's laudable, but in order to make it attractive for the kinds of projects Hyde Park needs, we need bigger subsidies from somewhere, or a tolerance for still greater density to offset revenue from the sale of below-market rate units.

The market value of land in Hyde Park is a vaguely mysterious subject, as there is so little of it, traded so infrequently, with so much owned by the University of Chicago, that it is hard to know if the going rate is really $75/sq. ft as the workshop proforma assumed.

A perusal of values for a standard-size, 3,100 sq. ft. vacant lot in the areas immediately west and south of Hyde Park puts them around or below $35/ft.sq. The few lots in Oakland/North Kenwood are in the $55-60/sq.ft. range.

Dorchester Commons Concept

But in order to find comparable $75/sq. ft. prices, I had to venture north to Bucktown and Edgewater, where this number represents the lower end of the range. Is this really what the McMobile lot or Dorchester Commons are worth?

One relationship that's not too clear from the document is the relationship between retail and residential space in any of the projects, and how tipping this balance either way works for or against it. For example, the most ambitious concept for Harper Court (pictured above) actually has more retail than housing units (115 to 114); this concept also resulted in the highest (7.8%) rate of return.

Likewise, two of three concepts for the McMobile site had roughly equal retail to housing numbers, and neither of them did more than break even. The question I have for our real estate folks is why McMobile #1, with 44 residential units and 10 retail, did no better or worse than McMobile #3, with 16 residential units and 17 retail.

What are we to take away from these numbers? Do we need more retail at these sites, or more density? If a 1:1 ratio works OK at Harper Court, why not at McMobile, and which way should it go at that site, or at Dorchester Commons?

And how in the world could Hyde Park support 115 new shops as proposed in Harper Court #2?

Whatever the answers to these questions, it's clear that the 53rd St. Visioning Workshops have elevated the discussion of development in the TIF District, and in Hyde Park overall.

No longer will it suffice for a few people to sign a petition and make vague protestations about what they consider acceptable or not at this or that place, based on this or that arbitrary standard.

Now we have a much better set of tools for figuring out what will realistically work at some of these sites, as challenging as it may be. We just need to figure out how make that happen.

MAC & the Hyde Park Rental Revolution

posted by chicago pop

Lobby of The Blackwood Apartments

5200 S. Blackstone

One of the biggest positive transformations in Hyde Park has been happening mostly under the radar for about 6 years now.

It hasn't involved the construction of new buildings. It hasn't involved Federal grants, City tax breaks, bailouts from the University of Chicago, or neighborhood activists laying down the law.

Most of the improvements we're talking about have been behind locked doors, in the form of new kitchens, modernized wiring, newly lit stairwells, central air, and restored historical and architectural details.

Detail of Grillwork, Blackwood Lobby

Since acquiring its first rental property in Hyde Park, MAC Property Management has sunk a whopping $200,000,000 in construction costs to renovate, restore, and add to the inventory of rental units to the neighborhood. This is all apart from the two projects slated by Antheus Capital, the private equity firm and parent company of MAC, at the Solstice location and at Village Center.

New Kitchen (with IKEA cabinets and granite counters) at MAC property 54th & Maryland

In Hyde Park, the result has been a net addition of 400 rental units since 2002, ranging from one bedrooms at $900/month to 2 bedrooms at $1,400/month, depending on the size and location. On average, this represents a rent increase of $300-500/month at a range of properties, many of which had deteriorated for decades under the former ownership of K&G Building Management.

Sidewalk Lighting on MAC building at 54th and Maryland

MAC Director of Community Development Peter Cassel, who took us on a walking tour of MAC's walk-up and high-rise properties, emphasized that when MAC acquired rental properties along Cottage Grove, Drexel, or the historical art deco Blackwood tower on East 52nd Street, many of the units were uninhabitable.

In the long-forlorn northwest corner of Hyde Park, where MAC's current activity is conspicuous, a few examples stand out. At the Drexel Grand (5220 S. Drexel) only 30 of the 64 units were occupied when MAC acquired the property. The gas had been disconnected to the entire building, and the previous owner had distributed microwaves to all the tenants as a substitute for gas stoves.

New Com-Ed Poles, Power Boxes, and Wiring at MAC buildings on 54th and Cottage Grove

Shortly after MAC acquired The Blackwood (5220 S. Blackstone) the 15 story deco tower completed in 1930, the company was contacted by the FBI and informed that 59 of the building's residents were suspected of involvement in the drug trade.

Primarily for this reason, according to Cassel, the building was half-empty. Similar dynamics are playing out on Ingleside, Drexel, and Maryland, where MAC is renovating historic buildings in an area that for decades had been viewed as a lost cause by both the University and the Chicago Police.

Failed Condo Conversion in West Hyde Park
(Not a MAC Property)

On Cottage Grove, MAC is is building on the favorable geography of West Hyde Park. A cluster of 3-story walk-ups face Washington Park, offer secure parking, and direct access to CTA Cottage Grove and Garfield Lines for workers commuting to the South Loop or downtown. For medical technicians and others employed at the U of C Medical Center -- a major target for the new rental units -- work is just steps away.

West Hyde Park's Front Lawn: Washington Park (Renovated MAC buildings on either side of 54th Street and Cottage Grove)

Since the Second World War and the subsequent 60 year boom in suburban development, the market in residential real estate has operated on short time horizons. Malls, residential subdevelopments, and the familiar landscapes of suburbia were investments expected to generate returns within a 5 to 10 year period. For this reason, they were built quickly and cheaply. Decades later, it shows.

It wasn't always this way. Many of the greatest achievements of American urban building date to the pre-WWII period, when real estate was a long-term asset class, something expected to garner value over a period of several decades.

In many ways, MAC -- a private equity firm that is also investing heavily in other historic, inner city neighborhoods (such as another Hyde Park, in Kansas City, Missouri) -- represents a return to this older model of real estate investing.

One of the up sides of this model is that, relieved of the pressure to report quarterly earnings growth to anxious Wall Street investors, a company like MAC can take its time to realize a return.

View from 13th Floor of the Algonquin rental property

In MAC's case, that horizon is about 15 or 20 years down the road. Until then, MAC's financial bets are tied in part to the success of its rental portfolio, the market for which has already responded favorably throughout the neighborhood. MAC won't be flipping these properties anytime soon.

The down side is that this activity may add to the pressure for low-rent, off campus student accommodation as much as the boom for condo conversion did. K&G answered that need for many years, and it's not clear that it was good for the neighborhood as a whole.

The University and Divisions may need to take the higher rents into account when they formulate admissions and funding packages for graduate students, the biggest segment of student renters. And MAC, which has clearly gotten very big, very fast, needs to stay on top of its work orders and customer service, both of which have generated many complaints from student renters.

For the University, spending more for housing allowances to float fewer students through graduate school may ultimately be a better deal than paying for a police force to protect them in the slum conditions that have historically housed them.

Until then, MAC is rounding out the housing market for working professionals, and we're starting to see the results.

A Bull of Khorsabad Guards the Blackwood Lobby

Developing Harper Court: What Evanston Can Teach Hyde Park

posted by chicago pop

Optima Towers, 1580 Sherman Avenue, and Borders Location
13-story, 105 Units, Mixed-Use. Completed 2002.

This blog began with a bit of overheard conversation, so it seems appropriate to continue the tradition.

Back in the day, nearly a decade ago, I was living in a flat in Hyde Park's doppelganger neighborhood -- Rogers Park -- and working up in Evanston. Across the hall was a colleague who was doing the same. We both confronted Evanston just moments before it began its transformation. "It's a nice town, but it's just kind of boring," said my neighbor, shortly before moving to Wicker Park.

No more.

As most people know, Evanston has reinvented itself. The interesting thing is that what happened in Evanston could happen in Hyde Park.

Now that the Harper Court parcel is finally up for redevelopment, there is potential to develop these assets in a way that helps reverse decades of relative decline in Hyde Park's struggling commercial district. Just like what happened in Evanston.

As of 2005, the benefits of Evanston's approach were measurable. Downtown Evanston has increased the total number of retailers in its central district by 27% since 1997, boosted total retail sales by 11.2% between 2000 and 2003, has added to the housing stock while keeping its parking requirements lower than surrounding suburbs.

As a result of increased business activity, Evanston has been able to lower its taxes to levels not seen since 1971. Though similar values would not accrue directly to Hyde Park, they are indicative of the improved health of the local economy, some portion of which would be captured by the 53rd Street TIF, and, when this expires, by the local school districts.

Sherman Plaza
25 stories, 253 Units, 1,600 Car Parking Garage, Mixed Use, Completed 2006

Evanston as Example of Smart Growth

The Evanston build-out is considered by progressive urban planners, such as those who prepared the EPA report from which much of the data below is taken,* to be a model of successful smart-growth, transit-oriented development (TOD). It is now a case-study used to demonstrate a few things about how to redevelop urban centers around a commercial district well-served by transit -- exactly the situation that describes Hyde Park's Harper Court and east 53rd Street.

1. It is possible to add density to a district without significantly increasing traffic congestion. This is possible when:
   
2. Full advantage is taken of existing transit infrastructure by placing density within walking distance of transit stations, or using innovative transportation solutions to link to transit from further away.
3. Entertainment and a 24/7 district are the anchors of "downtown" redevelopment.
4. A successful project will be market-driven and demonstrate close cooperation between multiple actors -- municipal authorities, citizen's groups, master developers, Federal and State funding and regulatory agencies, and merchants. And perhaps most importantly:
5. There is a market for walkable, high-density urban environments. The long-term trends are shifting towards this type of real estate, despite the current market downturn.**

By 2005, many of the goals of Evanston's nearly two-decades old planning process had been achieved. They included the addition of 2,500 new housing units, 2.5 million square feet of new office space, the addition of a 175 room Hilton Hotel, construction of Evanston's first high rise in 20 years, the building of a new 1,400 space parking garage, and -- at the center of it all -- a new multimodal transportation center at Davis Street, which facilitates 1,477 weekday transfers between CTA, Metra, and Pace riders, and is used by over 1,000,000 transit riders annually.

Davis Street Station
Federally Funded and Completed in 1994
Source: http://www.chicago-l.org/stations/davis.html

Evanston, a fairly affluent inner-ring suburb, nonetheless had to deal with a dying commercial core and rising taxes well into the 1990s. It was able to revive its downtown and improve its financial standing by leveraging its urban assets -- multi-modal transit access, a safe and vibrant 24 hour district supported by high residential density -- to effectively compete with low-density, low-tax suburban municipalities.


Evanston as A Model for Hyde Park: Parallels and Limits

There are a few very large differences between Hyde Park and Evanston that should be noted at the outset. Hyde Park is not a municipality with the power to collect taxes, issue bonds, and fund major public goods like the new Evanston Public Library. And unlike Evanston, Hyde Park is not a gateway to a string of wealthy northern suburbs, but is surrounded by considerably poorer neighborhoods.

But there are real parallels that make it worthwhile to look closely at how Evanston was able to turn itself around, and ask if the same strategies could be replicated in Hyde Park. The parallels can be grouped into the categories of disadvantages and advantages.

Like Evanston, Hyde Park proper has relatively few large lots open for development. This offers a strong incentive to develop for density, to build up where it is difficult to build out. Like Evanston, Hyde Park is moderately isolated from major expressways and airports (unlike certain suburban localities), has suffered from population loss and stagnation, and has experienced severe erosion of its commercial center.

On the positive side, both communities are attractively situated on the shore of Lake Michigan, which has historically been a zone of higher-density development. Both lie at comparable distances from downtown Chicago (Hyde Park is 2 miles closer). Both communities are known for their diversity, though Hyde Park is considerably smaller (Evanston has 74,000 residents to Hyde Park's roughly 50,000). Both communities are well served by north-south heavy rail lines. Although Hyde Park has no CTA rail link within its borders, it does have several heavily used bus routes, and more convenient access to Lake Shore Drive.

Evanston and Hyde Park, of course, both host major private universities, both of which play large supporting roles in the local economies, and both neighborhoods are known for their charming architecture, walkable layout, and notable historic districts.

Finally, although Hyde Park is a city neighborhood and not a revenue-gathering municipality, it is conceivable that the revenue-gathering 53rd Street TIF District, at the direction of a focused and determined 4th Ward alderman, and with the active support and foresight of Chicago planning agencies, could help spark, finance, and manage the multiple partnerships that any significant development centered on Harper Court will require.

Century Theater Complex, 1715 Maple Avenue, with Adjacent Parking Garage

Making Room for the Market, Nudging Smart Growth

Planning for Evanston's downtown renaissance spanned two decades. It drew upon multiple funding sources, and required consistent leadership and community commitment over time. It required accommodation to some conventional market realities, such as the construction of a large and subsidized parking garage for out-of-town visitors, and the use of subsidies to encourage emerging market trends, such as the preference for walkable living environments with easy access to public transportation.

All of this could stand as a model for the redevelopment of Hyde Park's Harper Court.

Further, the example of Evanston should immediately put to rest an either-or vision of development in Hyde Park that argues for either absolute community or absolute market control of what goes on. As for the market, it must certainly "lead" as it did in Evanston and the evolution of the eventual retail and service mix.

But markets are most effective when the goods, services, and instruments of exchange have all been standardized, and investors know exactly what they are getting. The real estate market, for example, knows very well how to finance and build suburban shopping malls and suburban subdivisions. It has much less familiarity with inner-city, mixed-used, transit-oriented projects, and therefore needs encouragement.

On the other side of the either-or, the fear that the University will control development for its own purposes should also be put to rest. The days of Urban Renewal and large Federal block grants administered by the University are gone. The University itself does not have the expertise to pull off urban mixed-use development that is transit oriented, although it is an essential player. Likewise, the "community" alone, however represented, will need to compromise and work together with market-driven actors who need to make a profit.

In urban redevelopment, partnerships are the name of the game. No one actor can go it alone. That means making yourself attractive to at least some developers. We'll see if, given the conspiratorial world-view of many more vocal old timers, this is something that can happen in Hyde Park.

*See Cali Gorewitz and Gloria Ohland, Communicating the Benefits of TOD: The City of Evanston's Transit Oriented Redevelopment and the Hudson-Bergen Light-Rail Transit System [pdf]
**See survey of relevant market research in Christopher B. Leinberger, The Option of Urbanism: Investing in a New American Dream, Chapter 5.

Preserving Indian Village Parking Lots: Behind the Powhattan, Narragansett, and Barclay

posted by chicago pop

The HPP intelligence network recently picked up a bit of electronic NIMBY chatter. Just a few whispers detected and processed at our global listening station, alerting us to the possibility that someone might decide to build a building near the Powhattan -- a tall one, maybe a little taller than the ones already there -- on some of the parking lots pictured below.

Prime Use of Lakefront Property

Whether the chatter is true or not, what is true is that the current use of this land for surface parking only is economically inefficient, and even wasteful, from the perspective of the local economy. Land given over exclusively to surface parking lowers the residential density of a neighborhood, which reduces the local trading area and makes it harder to do shopping close to home.

And it just looks like hell.

What do you think about the fact that in one of the sections of Hyde Park-Kenwood closest to the Lake, home to some of the most impressive interwar and post-war residential high-rise architecture in Chicago, and with some of the neighborhood's best access to public transportation, significant chunks of city blocks look like this:

Barclay/East End Parking Lot from Intersection of Cornell and East End Avenues, and 49th Street

The only reason these blocks are public eyesores paved for private parking is because this little area has been a real-estate black hole for nearly half a century. But, as an urban planner friend of mine put it when he saw these lots, "those aren't going to remain parking lots forever."

Local folks might want to get used to the prospect. At some point, someone is going to buy them out and allow them to pay to park in someone else's building.

On land this close to the lake, with such abundant transportation infrastructure, and already designed to accommodate high urban densities, it's practically inevitable. And it's probably a good thing.

A Little Piece of Manhattan (+ Surface Parking)
1640 E. 50th Street -- The Narragansett and Powhattan Buildings

Surface Parking Lot for 4940 S. East End and 5000 S. East End Avenue -- the Barclay and East End Buildings

Replace these parking lots with density of housing, and auto congestion will flatten or even decrease. Because whatever new building shows up on any of these lots, it will have its own parking, which will probably hold most people's cars stationary, going nowhere, for most of the week. It would also likely house things like convenience stores, or more amenities like Istria cafe.

It's all basic stuff. Which you'll know if you scan hipster-liberal zines like Salon.com:

As parking lots proliferate, they decrease density and increase sprawl. In 1961, when the city of Oakland, Calif., started requiring apartments to have one parking space per apartment, housing costs per apartment increased by 18 percent, and urban density declined by 30 percent. It's a pattern that's spread across the country.

In cities, the parking lots themselves are black holes in the urban fabric, making city streets less walkable. One landscape architect compares them to "cavities" in the cityscape. Downtown Albuquerque, N.M., now devotes more land to parking than all other land uses combined. Half of downtown Buffalo, N.Y., is devoted to parking. And one study of Olympia, Wash., found that parking and driveways occupied twice as much land as the buildings that they served. (Katharine Mieszkowski, Salon.com, October 1, 2007).

So if and when the day comes that someone wants to build something reasonable on any of these parcels -- say something comparable to the Powhattan or the Newport in size or shape -- don't be fooled by cries of "Congestion!" or "What about parking!"

These are the neuroses that keep Hyde Park's biggest NIMBYs tossing in bed at night, but like most neuroses, they have little to do with reality.

The cry that you probably should take seriously is this one: "Not another high-rise to block my view of the Lake!" In the 4th Ward, we've seen the lengths to which people will go to protect the "views" over which they have no proprietary rights.

Trees illegally felled near 44th Place and Lake Shore Drive, allegedly to open a view of the Lake from nearby 4th Ward condos.

If anyone already living in a high-rise between 51st and 49th Streets cries out about another high-rise going up next door, we'll be able to expand the NIMBY taxonomy beyond the owners of quaint Victorian frame houses on Harper Avenue.

The new species, if it is ever discovered, may well include inhabitants of vintage Deco towers, and perhaps a few Modernist ones. Specialists at that point will have to recognize this species as a local variant of the world-wide "last one in the door" genus (from the Greco-Latin nimbyotopus rex) or:

"I've got mine, now you stay out."

Report From 53rd & Cornell Community Meeting

posted by Richard Gill

The developer, L3, is seeking a zoning change, which requires approval of a Planned Development (PD). The April 23 public meeting was among the requirements for the PD process, which is expected to take about 12 months.

John Roberson represented L3; he is a former Chicago Buildings Commissioner. Joe Antunovich represented Antunovich Associates, the project architect. The new Catholic Theological Union building, on Cornell at 54th, is one of their recent projects.

The 53rd & Cornell project proposal has changed somewhat since the original proposal. It is now a rental building, instead of condominium--a change driven by the current market. The "affordable-housing" units (15% of the total 206 apartments) are in the building, instead of off-site. The building is 20 stories tall (to incorporate the affordable units), instead of 17. Off-street parking will be provided for the ground-level retail establishments. (There was some light-hearted banter about bringing back the Tiki Lounge.) The parking entrance is on Cornell, and there are 1.19 parking spaces per apartment. A small section of property is to be transferred to the adjacent town homes. The PD now includes the Akiba Schecter parking lot across Cornell (which will remain a parking lot) instead of the commercial building across 53rd Street.

The proposed L3 building is adjacent to the Metra 53rd Street station, and is considered a Transit Oriented Development.

L3 says it anticipates debt-equity financing for the whole project--no government money.

Some other details: Pets allowed, laundry machines in units, roof garden above garage. Affordable-Housing units to be scattered throughout the building; same size as market-rate units, but maybe with different finishes.

About 80 to 100 people attended this meeting, which was civilized on an absolute basis (not just civilized by comparison with Hyde Park meetings).

The next step will be a meeting of the 53rd Street TIF Advisory Council, Monday May 12, 7PM at the Hyde Park Neighborhood Club. That meeting, too, will be open to the public.

Village Center: Poised for Development?

posted by Peter Rossi

At the corner of 51st and Lake Park Avenue, Village Center stands as one of Hyde Park's numerous monuments to poor design.

Village Center

Home to a rag-tag collection of buildings and dominated by a dirty parking lot, Village Center's only redeeming feature is the Original Pancake House. OPH exists almost to spite the other anemic tenants.

It obvious that this location is perfect for a mixed-use development. For example, a development that extends over the entire property (including the parking lot) with lower floors of retail, upper floors of apartments, and interior parking would make a great deal of sense.

The Village Center properties have been owned by Antheus Capital for more than two years. It is no secret that Antheus Capital would like develop this plot. Exact details on what might be proposed are difficult to come by (the Herald, in one of its brief moments as a real newspaper, printed a design prototype last year).

MAC Properties Sign

The wheels of development grind exceedingly slowly here in Hyde Park. Other developments such as the McMobil and Cornell and 53rd sites are dead in the water. The developer for these properties is clearly not up to the task.

This means that Village Center is the only real option for development in Hyde Park (note that Harper Court is many years in the making and probably will be hampered by law suits and community interference).

The economy in general, and the commercial real estate sector in particular, shows signs of slowing down if not a true recession. I worry that all of the fumbling of the ball on Village Center will mean that, by the time something is ready to be built, no funding will be available.

In the meantime, Village Center remains a depressing sight and an embarrassment as one of the "gateways" to Hyde Park-Kenwood.

Eye Candy at Village Center

53rd St. Visioning Results

posted by chicago pop

Now that the polling results from last December's 53rd Street Visioning Meeting have been passed around, I wanted to post some reflections on the event, originally posted as a comment on the blog shortly after the meeting, but now worth posting up front.

So here is my take on the meeting, with some of the more important numbers -- above all, the tallies showing support for mid-rise development on 53rd, and lack of support for building height restrictions anywhere in the corridor.

Co-blogger Peter Rossi and I both want to stress the positive significance of this result for possible development on 53rd and at McMobil. It means that if NIMBYs start making noise about opposing mid-rises, representing "the community," and standing in front of a vast troop of neighbors who oppose building for greater residential density on the 53rd Street corridor, a big red caca flag should pop up in your head.

There have been, as yet, no good reasons advanced as to why buildings 4 stories and taller should not be put up anywhere from Woodlawn to the Lake on 53rd St.

Here's the report:

A few things were remarkable about the crowd: about 25% of those in attendance were African-American. About the same amount were under 40. There were also a few families with small children.

For some contrast, take a look at the picture of the Co-Op Board meeting in the December 12, 2007 Herald for just the opposite demographic. The workshop representation was almost the exact inverse of what usually passes -- with much smaller numbers -- for "the community."

Demographic Diversity of Co-Op Board (from the Hyde Park Herald, December 12, 2007)

The NIMBYs were vastly outnumbered at the 53rd Street meeting. The most controversial vote, and this only moderately so, was the final one (which one heckler felt was "railroaded") asking if people would approve of a mid-rise "somewhere" on 53rd, not specifying where.

The results were favorable, with 63% answering Yes and 26% No. That's almost the same split as we saw with the vote to close the Co-Op, and suggests that good sense has not decamped from the neighborhood along with good retail.

A different measure of the same sentiment was taken by a separate vote, and makes it just as clear that most folks there did not oppose a mid-rise on 53rd, or at McMobil in particular.

The category "height limitations," meaning a cap on how high a building can go, which is the linchpin of opposition to a mid-rise at McMobil, pulled in only 8.3% in the first round and 13.2% in the second. Height limitations are not a majority concern. A well designed mid-rise building at McMobil, I believe, could win most people over.

Asked what buildings should look like on 53rd, the top 3 responses were "Mixture of historical and well designed modern buildings" (44%); "mixed use" (40.6%); and "underground and off-street parking" (21.7%).

I decided to drive the issue home in a post immediately following the meeting because there is an increased awareness of the site, and because not everyone now reading the blog may have read the earlier posts dealing with what may happen at McMobil.

It was also clear at the time that the Spicer Dream Machine was revving up a PR drive to limit the height of whatever gets built at McMobil, all while beginning to display the trappings of a pro-density self-transformation. The latter is bogus.

Despite not having been able to advance a single substantiated or objective reason to oppose anything taller than 3-4 stories at the McMobil site, which sits within clear view of buildings just as tall or taller, Jack Spicer has signed a petition and written 2 letters to the Herald on behalf of folks who resist adding population to Hyde Park. Spicer's most recent letter on the subject is a case in point: his a priori claim for wanting height limitations is that mid-rise buildings are "oversized, monolithic projects that dwarf their neighbors and bring congestion and boredom." (Herald, December 12, 2007)

The terms in the quotation above are all subjective, lack specific referents, and have no bearing to any existing plan for the site. They embody numerous tacit assumptions, and have more to do with phobias about density inside the NIMBY mind, than what can be built outside of it.

For change to happen in Hyde Park, we need more households and more people. That means making the buildings for them. The results of the 53rd Street Visioning Workshop demonstrated that Hyde Parkers understand this and are willing to see it happen.

Word on 53rd: Put a Mid-Rise at McMobil

posted by chicago pop

In the aftermath of what, by all accounts, including my own, was a smashingly successful community meeting on the future of the 53rd Street TIF District, it seems like a good time to revisit our favorite little stretch of 53rd.

Side Face of a 6-Story Building Behind McMobil Lot
(5220 S. Kenwood)

If you've been reading this blog for awhile, it will come as no surprise to you what we think should happen at the McMobil site on 53rd and Kenwood. We want to see a mixed-use, mid-rise building put right there. Like the buildings of similar height just yards away. Not surprisingly, a group of folks want a building here which allows for more cars, fewer and therefore more expensive units, with none of these preferences based on substantiated arguments as to why a bigger building would be worse.

Mid-Rise, 8-Story Versailles a Block Away from McMobil Site
(5254 S. Dorchester)

In previous posts, we've gone over the reasons why we think a mixed-use mid-rise is a good idea, and in fact fits with the character of the neighborhood. The alpha and omega of this issue -- something which goes against the very core of the NIMBY soul -- is that Hyde Park needs more people. We've gone over the demographics here, and made it clear that the decline in neighborhood retail is linked to the decline in neighborhood population, and not just here but throughout the South Side.

We've also pointed out the research demonstrating that, as household density goes up, auto ownership goes down. That means fewer people actually chose to own cars. That's good for congestion. And the environment. And when retailers decide to locate nearby concentrations of shoppers, that means fewer trips by car are necessary. If NIMBYs don't want a building here, congestion is not going to be a convincing bogeyman.

Hyde Park is in fact full of such buildings, sprinkled liberally among low-rise structures. This is the case on 53rd as well, and a building here would in no way depart from the historic texture or precedent of the street or the neighborhood.

Here are a few examples of other mid-rise buildings amid low-rise housing. Does anyone have any complaints about these towers near the intersection of 56th and Kenwood? Can anyone argue that they contribute to congestion on 56th Street?

Residential Mid- and High-Rise Buildings at Intersection of 56th & Kenwood

After the 53rd Street community visioning meeting this past Saturday, I sense that people are starting to realize this, that the Old-Timer resistance to change may be ebbing. Hyde Park needs more people. It needs new people. And it needs new, modern housing to hold them in sufficient numbers to make streets busier and safer.

When you get a chance to build new housing on a major artery of the neighborhood, if you don't try to match what the neighborhood historically supported, you're perpetuating the suburbanization of the inner city that was the vision of Urban Renewal. It's something a lot of NIMBYs still cling to.

A lot of holes have been ripped into the neighborhood in the last 50 years, and the NIMBY crowd has grown accustomed to them. They like their vacant lots, dead space in public parks, empty streets with anemic urban densities, and marginal retail amenities. And they especially like their free street parking.

But none of those things are fundamentally good for the neighborhood. And there is as yet no good reason that has been offered as to why an 8-10 story building shouldn't go on this spot.

When we get a chance to fill one of those holes, and turn some of these things around, we should make the most of it, and in a big way.

Development Beat

Stony Island Tower: Local Establishment types will probably have a tizzy once they get wind of this proposed tower for 64th and Stony Island:

Word-on-the-street has it that a few developers are assessing the viability of high-rise developments on the Lakefront from Bronzeville going south, a market that hasn't been active since before World War II. We're not holding our breath for this one, and recognize that most such deals fail to get farther than a nice computer rendering.

But the fact that such a project has even occurred to someone is a sign of changing times.


Vista Homes, or "The Brick Zebra": This property, of course, is not undergoing any renovation or addition. Seeing as how it is next-door to the proposed Marriott Hotel on the site of the current Doctor's Hospital, and also home to a good number of folks who have strenuously objected to the proposed hotel's utter aesthetic worthlessness, we thought it might be fun to see just how well Vista Homes holds up under aesthetic scrutiny. (Curiously enough, given the insistence of some that the area is not meant for a hotel, it is worth noting that Vista Homes was originally intended to be just that.) Let's look at the Vista Homes in profile:


Like a lot of residential towers built in the 20s and early 30s (Vista Homes was built in 1926), its developers obviously expected it to be sandwiched, Park Avenue style, by neighbors of equal height on both its south and north faces. Developers being a speculative lot and not always the best fortune tellers, this never happened. One result is that Vista Homes presents only one architecturally finished face to the world, that facing east over Jackson Park.

The remaining 3 faces of this building are unfinished and utilitarian, and indeed present the spectacle of something resembling a giant TIC-TAC-TOE board looming above the Midway, akin to the external appearance of the old CHA blocks at Cabrini Green. Several towers of the same vintage in Indian Village were left in a similar, though not quite so comprehensive, state of incompleteness.


How anyone who lives in or near THIS could complain about the proposed Marriott tower next door being architecturally déclasée is beyond me. S/he who lives in a building that looks 3/4 like a housing project should not throw stones at a moderately pleasant proposed commercial building that, at the very least, is finished on all four sides.

Of course, in keeping with the champagne-taste-and-beer-budget of local NIMBYs, neighbors at the 5th Ward community meeting on July 23, 2007 conceded that if the likes of Helmut Jahn, or Rafael Viñoly (of the GSB Building) were doing the proposed Hotel, then it might be OK. Otherwise, they would prefer not to have an off-the-shelf retro-modern building next to their quirky brick zebra. They are ENTITLED to world-class architecture in their back-yard, you see, even though they have had nothing to do with attracting the world-class architecture in the first place.