Quote:
Originally Posted by moorhosj1
There were big plans made for this site, that’s why we had a TIF. Unfortunately, sometimes big plans blow up, in this case the developer ran into financial problems. Big plans can leave big holes in ground, just look at the Spire site that was a big plan for an iconic skyscraper. Now it will be a good skyscraper.
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Yes of course plans change, but again, this is a generational project and can’t be compared to something like 400 N Lakeshore, a 2-phase project that will be likely be completed in ~10 years from design to occupancy of the second building. Whereas the extensive land holdings of Sterling Bay here is going to be a more than 30 year build out. Lincoln Yards alone was 53 acres, nearly double the size of Lakeshore East. At their peak, Sterling Bay owned 70 acres here. This isn’t a single project, it a whole new neighborhood that will take at least three to four economic cycles to complete and we probably can’t even contemplate what new dynamics the city will have driving new development a generation out from now. 20 years ago, I certainly didn’t expect Fulton Market to erupt like it did, but that is exactly what happened when we took the arbitrary height and land use lids off and let that demand channel into new large projects by developers being allowed to go big.
There is no reason to dramatically scale back a master plan of this caliber, other to appease an anti-density alderman who fought to get this entire swath of property into his ward because he despised Lincoln Yards from the start. The entitlements granted were so extensive that there is a lot of room for “scaling it down” while still leaving room for some of those infrastructure improvements. But this is our one shot, because given the wall of opposition LY had, no one is going to re-litigate this entire thing once a new approval is in place and we forever lose the ability to go grander with better public amenities. I really hope the subsidy allotment can be reconsidered to do better, but we won’t have buy in from Waugespack.
What’s also interesting is the large public green space which Lincoln Parkers wanted and fought for is completely absent from this new draft plan. Genuinely curious as to how that is going to go.
I’m just disappointed that we are on the cusp of locking ourselves into mundane development pattern for the next 30+ years on a riverfront assemblage of property that we will likely never see again of this size on the North Side and I’m a little tired of just seeing excuses for not doing better and throwing up our hands and saying ‘well it won’t work’ rather than planning for it to actually work. 6 years ago, this was a viable plan, even if it may have been a bit overly ambitious. Much of the rest of the world is figuring out a way to make grand plans happen, here it’s much more of just a legacy.
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