Quote:
Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright
The developments you listed constitute about 3-4 years of current absorption downtown. The developers of those projects cannot and will not deliver their product that quickly. So yes, there's already plenty of entitled parcels, but just the demand for luxury housing downtown has already shown how quickly such sites can be mopped up in as little as 5-10 years.
I'm talking neighborhoods though, not downtown. The supply spigot on the NW has been completely turned off. It already shows, just look at Western Ave, site after entitled site is being developed. Anywhere you can build a building without dealing with a zoning change is being built. Again, that's great and all, but it comes nowhere close to mopping up demand the way building 2000+ TOD units along MKE ave did over the past 5 years.
I'm not saying there will ever be a day in our lifetimes where Chicago truly lacks the ability to find new sites for housing. That's absurd, we have far too much land. What I AM saying is that the ARO bump and a bunch of commies have basically taken zoning changes off the table for the time being. This means our market just shifted a lot closer to SF than the free market "build as much as you can sell as long as you donate to the alderman" that it has been since the days of trading posts along the Chicago river.
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I get your point, I'm simply asking if it is necessarily a bad thing. The "old school" policy was great for property owners on the northside, but it also heavily contributed to some of our city's biggest problems (lack of investment in certain areas, significant segregation, high and persistent violence).
Does Milwaukee Avenue "need" more TOD units? I am all for density, so in a vacuum I would argue "yes". But in our current environment, I think there could be benefit of spreading out some of those units into places like near west side and near south side. Increased density in those areas will benefit the city more in the long run than increased density in Logan Square or Wicker Park.
I don't think our Alderpeople are actually thinking about it that way, but it could be a positive consequence of their silly policies.