I see that... I also see the land has a value of $4.5 Million.

Nice giveaway if the story is correct!

so really the city is on the hook for at least 12 million for this. sounds like a sweet deal for the developer. Would be better off selling the property and using the proceeds to build more on a cheaper spot not far away.

Nice. This will be a great little infill project.

Chicago Ave is on its way up. Now we just need to eventually see a proposal for the Asbury Tower garage...

This seems pretty significant

Opportunity for Chicago's poorest neighborhoods: billions of dollars in new investments
A co-founder of developer Sterling Bay and a former senior economic adviser to President Barack Obama have teamed up to raise $1 billion to invest in the poorest areas of Chicago and other cities
https://www.chicagotribune.com/busin...401-story.html

I don't think most of you understand how affordable housing development works. The far and away largest cost for any developer is acquisition. The fact that the city will be selling them the property for $1 rather than $4.5 million literally is what makes this project feasible. This isn't a government handout, but rather the city is selling the property so that they do NOT have to subsidize the housing in the future.

More than likely this project will be financed, as most affordable housing development is, through capital, LIHTC, debt, TIF, and some possible HUD grant programs. LIHTC in particular requires affordability up to a specific percentage of the Area Median Income for 15-30 years depending on the structure. TIF is meant to be used for this sort of thing and NOT to subsize private developments.

Complain about the crappy design if you'd like (it's crappy- I agree), but get off of your socialism-bashing neo-liberalist high-horse and try to see this for what it is: the culmination of the backing-off of true housing policies by the federal government over the last 30 years which results in this haphazard "market based" affordable housing development.

I'm not sure that it's hard to understand. Taxpayer Handouts + Political Campaign Contributions = Developer Profits.

And TIF is meant simply for redevelopment of properties that would not otherwise be redeveloped. This is not that. This property would be developed in a heartbeat if put up for sale.

Sheridan / Broadway
 

March 30

6418 NSheridan
 

March 30

Where does Sheridan come anywhere near Clark? Did you mean Broadway?

Talk about a high horse! True housing policies? Horner Homes? Robert Taylor and Cabrini Green housing policies? Those are failed housing policies.

Giving away a $4.5m piece of land is a terrible idea. This could have been a TOD no? It could have required on site affordable plus market rate and the city would have taken in cash that is much needed.

This is Carlos Rosa's idea of "affordable housing". Or "housing heavily subsidized by the government that will cost more to build than market rate housing and likely be poorly managed permanently blighting the area".

Honestly giving away a $4.5 million parcel for $1 is criminal, not that Carlos knows the difference since he doesn't know the value of a dollar.


Seriously though, this illustrates just how moronic his policy is: Let's take the most prime real estate in the area that we could sell for $4.5 million and build "affordable housing" on it when we could sell that land and pick something up a few blocks away for like $1 million and build a second building somewhere else with the extra $3.5 million. No, dipshit's policy of wasting public resources for political gain will result in less total affordable units just because he wants his chosen patronage clients to have views of the monument. Oh well, he will be pushed out once his policies cause crippling gentrification to ripple through the 2 and 3 flats of his ward displacing literally everyone who voted for him.

These new socialist Aldermen scare the crape out of me for development purposes. They'll hopefully fizzle away eventually...

Yes thank you.

It's like people have forgotten how bad Uptown was when Helen Schiller ran the ward for so long.

Belmont Station - Red/Brown
 

April 01

I want my eyes to un-see it. Now^^

Inasmuch as the need of affordable housing is a failure of markets, it's solution not being market-based makes a certain amount of sense.

I think that the lesson to learn from Cabrini and Robert Taylor doesn't have to be that purely government-created housing will fail. Manhattan has projects that never became as bad as Chicagos worst ones. And there are plenty of market-rate neighborhoods that have terrible conditions (the name "slumlord" exists for a reason). So, in my opinion, it's more a problem of management than anything else. And just plain budget. Homelessness is a national problem, so I think solutions to people being unable to afford housing should be a Federal solution. That would also make it easier to give unemployed people incentives to live to different markets. To low-cost markets if they're permanently unemployed/unemployable. To where jobs they are qualified for exist otherwise. Using non-market solutions to better enable the market functions seems better to me than trying to create pseudo-market solutions. And whatever is done, Statuary regulations to ensure places are safe and in good repair are a must.

A TOD would pay property tax. Is it fair to think a non-profit will receive a tax exemption as well?

^It's buildings like that one on Belmont that makes me think that architectural aesthetics in general are reaching an overall low point. There are some great things being designed in the US, but there is all to much of the sort of talentless design that I see there. And I know the developer is equally at fault for slicing budgets, and in some cases forcing bad design decisions, but a good architect could still come up with something good with a budget.

These random facade patterns and mashups of unrelated ideas and materials have become a substitute for an eye for composition, proportion, and detailing. It's the McMansion of urban building design.

It’s looking like the Fire will abandon Bridgeview and move back to the city? No specifics on a new stadium, just a return to Soldier Field is possible for now... though I would assume they will eventually want to be in their own soccer-specific stadium (granted the Sounders do rather well at Century Link).

https://www.highpresssoccer.com/mist...-chicago-fire/