CHICAGO | General Developments

[Busy Bee]

Something different

[ardecila]

Pritzker winners Lacaton & Vassal have a few good projects like this:

https://www.lacatonvassal.com/index.php?idp=80

[Busy Bee]

^ Some good examples there.

[Mr Downtown]

Originally Posted by marothisu

In general, one of my biggest pet peeves is when people put purely residential buildings on commercial streets.

The city tried to require ground-level retail on certain streets like Division, but the problem is they sit vacant for a few years and eventually become mortgage broker offices with blank windows. How does that help anything?

The issue is that retailers of our era just no longer want "shoebox" spaces. They want spaces that are nearly as wide as they are deep, and storage rooms in the back (not upstairs or in the basement) with modern truck access. Other issues, from signage to management, are typically easier with a retail-focused REIT than with some random condo association or small-time investor. IF there's a stream of pedestrians that's just too big to ignore, retailers will accept old-fashioned spaces—but that's typically not what they want, what they really really want.

Those ground-level residential entrances are a different design problem. Historically, Anglo-American cities put the entrance and living room of detached and rowhouses a half-level up from the sidewalk, to give privacy from passers-by. But the city now encourages, and in some cases demands, "visitability" for the disabled. So we now have rows of townhouses along Belmont or Ashland with nothing on the ground floor except the garage, a bathroom, and a sitting room entered directly from the front sidewalk.

[west-town-brad]

there needs to be recognition of the future of physical retail in the building code or whatever/whomever guides the creation of ground floor retail spaces.

we should just have ground floor amenity space and/or lobby space for residential buildings and office buildings

for some reason we keep adding new empty retail space all over the city

[Steely Dan]

Damen green line update moved to the transit thread:

https://skyscraperpage.com/forum/sho...d.php?t=101657

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by Mr Downtown

Those ground-level residential entrances are a different design problem. Historically, Anglo-American cities put the entrance and living room of detached and rowhouses a half-level up from the sidewalk, to give privacy from passers-by. But the city now encourages, and in some cases demands, "visitability" for the disabled. So we now have rows of townhouses along Belmont or Ashland with nothing on the ground floor except the garage, a bathroom, and a sitting room entered directly from the front sidewalk.

MOPD may be part of it, especially for developments receiving any kind of city/public support, but the construction economics play a role too. Elevating the ground floor by a 1/2-story usually requires digging a basement, which doesn't work too well in a townhouse if you need to have an attached parking garage at grade level. The section gets really wonky. Same principle applies to larger apartment buildings that have enclosed garages.

If you have more lot depth to work with and you can do detached garages like lots of infill flat buildings, then developers often do build a basement because it adds "free" square footage that doesn't count toward FAR and only adds 1/2 story to the height limit.

I don't like ground-floor residential, but it may be a necessary evil as long as the architects can balance concerns of privacy/security and natural light. Chicagoans have lived in garden apartments for years, so ground-floor is certainly an improvement over that. On certain streets it shouldn't be allowed, like P-streets where there is already a critical mass of businesses and you don't want to interrupt the streetscape. I wish the city would be more proactive about establishing P-streets on the south/west sides to guide development, though. It may be worth dealing with years of retail vacancy in certain areas if it helps create vibrant shopping districts in the long run in parts of the city that don't have vibrant shopping districts. But random sections of Ashland or Western? Build all the ground-floor residential you want.

[Investing In Chicago]

Originally Posted by ardecila

MOPD may be part of it, especially for developments receiving any kind of city/public support, but the construction economics play a role too. Elevating the ground floor by a 1/2-story usually requires digging a basement, which doesn't work too well in a townhouse if you need to have an attached parking garage at grade level. The section gets really wonky. Same principle applies to larger apartment buildings that have enclosed garages.

If you have more lot depth to work with and you can do detached garages like lots of infill flat buildings, then developers often do build a basement because it adds "free" square footage that doesn't count toward FAR and only adds 1/2 story to the height limit.

I don't like ground-floor residential, but it may be a necessary evil as long as the architects can balance concerns of privacy/security and natural light. Chicagoans have lived in garden apartments for years, so ground-floor is certainly an improvement over that. On certain streets it shouldn't be allowed, like P-streets where there is already a critical mass of businesses and you don't want to interrupt the streetscape. I wish the city would be more proactive about establishing P-streets on the south/west sides to guide development, though. It may be worth dealing with years of retail vacancy in certain areas if it helps create vibrant shopping districts in the long run in parts of the city that don't have vibrant shopping districts. But random sections of Ashland or Western? Build all the ground-floor residential you want.

I don't mind commercial streets being broken up with residential - Retail corridors typically hate trees, and with residential peppered in, it allows for clusters of trees. Chicago is way over-retailed in my opinion, and quite a bit of the store fronts end up as banks, mattress stores, realtor offices,etc.

Here is an example of what i'm talking about.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/34...!4d-87.6641624

[Jibba]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

Wow, so nice to see that site developed.

I don't know, nothing wrong with balconies over the sidewalk. Definitely better than a parking podium. "Eyes on the street"

Except for "ears bombarded with booming systems, Harley exhaust, broken and/or coffee-can mufflers" and "lungs clogged with diesel fumes". I love the idea of balconies, but after living on Belmont, I can't imagine being on one anywhere near a major arterial street.

[west-town-brad]

Originally Posted by Investing In Chicago

I don't mind commercial streets being broken up with residential - Retail corridors typically hate trees, and with residential peppered in, it allows for clusters of trees. Chicago is way over-retailed in my opinion, and quite a bit of the store fronts end up as banks, mattress stores, realtor offices,etc.

Here is an example of what i'm talking about.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/34...!4d-87.6641624

exactly, that's a great example. it's active and dense vs. papered over retail windows sitting there forever.

some of the older vintage buildings have their retail space turned into "work/live space" but not sure if all of that is totally legit.

[Mr Downtown]

^I don't think those windows on Southport were ever intended as retail.

[Rizzo]

Originally Posted by west-town-brad

there needs to be recognition of the future of physical retail in the building code or whatever/whomever guides the creation of ground floor retail spaces.

we should just have ground floor amenity space and/or lobby space for residential buildings and office buildings

for some reason we keep adding new empty retail space all over the city

Agree 100% on the ground floor amenity space. My neighbors and I use the basement of my condo building as a workshop. Other neighbors have golf simulator, weight room, and other hobby spaces. Alot of these newer 3-6 unit buildings around town have no other common interior space other than a tiny storage room or parking.

[the urban politician]

One way to do it is through a painstaking but potentially fruitful effort of recognizing which lots MUST have ground level commercial and which ones can have it optionally.

Then, you have a zoning designation for both, so that for the optional zoning an owner can go back and forth between retail and residential depending on market forces without having to go through city approval/variances.

For the mandatory commercial zoning (on high traffic intersections, near transit, etc) the ground level MUST be commercial no matter what.

That could be a way to get rid of all of these vacant commercial spaces in the city while still putting them to productive use

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

One way to do it is through a painstaking but potentially fruitful effort of recognizing which lots MUST have ground level commercial and which ones can have it optionally.

Then, you have a zoning designation for both, so that for the optional zoning an owner can go back and forth between retail and residential depending on market forces without having to go through city approval/variances.

For the mandatory commercial zoning (on high traffic intersections, near transit, etc) the ground level MUST be commercial no matter what.

That could be a way to get rid of all of these vacant commercial spaces in the city while still putting them to productive use

The zoning code is already supposed to work like this. Ground floor residential is a special use (requiring special approval at ZBA) in all B and C districts (commercial zoning) except for B2 where it's allowed as-of-right.

The problem is that there isn't much B2 zoning. Most commercial corridors are either B1 or B3. So if you own a building or a piece of land on a commercial corridor zoned B1 or B3 and you want to build ground floor residential, you can either ask for a zoning change to B2, which requires the alderman's approval and takes a year, or you can get a special use from ZBA, which doesn't require the alderman's approval and takes 3 months. No surprise that most developers go the 2nd route, unless other factors require a zoning change anyway.

Really what's needed is to mass-rezone properties from B1 into B2, but that's really hard to do because it requires planners to go lot-by-lot across the whole city, and then 50 different aldermen will try to influence the decisions. Getting public input at such a fine-grained level across the entire city is also a nightmare. A change to the zoning code (say, allowing ground-floor residential in all B1 zones as of right) is much much simpler to accomplish, but then you may end up with ground-floor residential where you don't want it.

[Investing In Chicago]

Originally Posted by Rizzo

Agree 100% on the ground floor amenity space. My neighbors and I use the basement of my condo building as a workshop. Other neighbors have golf simulator, weight room, and other hobby spaces. Alot of these newer 3-6 unit buildings around town have no other common interior space other than a tiny storage room or parking.

I think buyers of these newer 3-6 unit buildings see little common interior space as a benefit, i know I certainly would.

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by Investing In Chicago

I think buyers of these newer 3-6 unit buildings see little common interior space as a benefit, i know I certainly would.

This describes the place we're under contract on. The common areas are some small storage and the back area of the building leading to the garage and garage rooftop. The building is less than 5 years old and it's a 5 unit building.

This condo is pretty big and it would be cool to have our small building with some common space for a golf simulator or something but it's fine without it.

[west-town-brad]

Originally Posted by Investing In Chicago

I think buyers of these newer 3-6 unit buildings see little common interior space as a benefit, i know I certainly would.

certainly.

from a condo building HOA management/risk/financial perspective, you want as little common area as possible. it wont get cleaned or painted or otherwise maintained in any way shape or form by the "owners" and if it does get maintained, it's because you are paying ever increasing monthly fees to a management company. and even then, it may or may not get done.

however apartment buildings with a single ownership entity that controls all, this is not so much an issue to have the nice common area thing.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by west-town-brad

certainly.

from a condo building HOA management/risk/financial perspective, you want as little common area as possible. it wont get cleaned or painted or otherwise maintained in any way shape or form by the "owners" and if it does get maintained, it's because you are paying ever increasing monthly fees to a management company. and even then, it may or may not get done.

in small condo associations like 3 and 6 flats, those things can also have a way of taking care of themselves if you are lucky enough to have reasonable neighbors who are all willing to chip in from time to time for the maintenance/improvement of their substantial real estate investment (ie. "what's good for the building is also good for my unit's valuation").

in our condo-ized 3-flat, instead of paying others to do work around the property, we just split up the work. the guy on the top floor mows the lawn. the guy on the second floors does leaves and gardening. and i'm responsible for snow shoveling. we all have our jobs and just do them. no way in hell we'd ever hire a management company to do that shit when were all able-bodied men more than capable of pitching in.

but with just one bad/lazy/disrespectful/otherwise-shitty-person owner, things can also easily go south pretty fast on that front. there are plenty of horror stories out there.

[Rizzo]

I pointed this out in the general discussions thread, but HOA insurance is really high right now for small buildings. It’s D&O coverage and building replacement material costs that greatly exceed market value. The amount of common space and liability protection hasn’t seemed to impact smaller buildings.

My case is what Steely Dan described. There’s no building management. Common area maintenance is handled by individual owners. I suppose that could go really well or really wrong for some buildings. Sometimes I’ll wake up early to clear and salt sidewalks only to find it’s already been handled. But if you’re going to run a building this way. Flex space is important for making repairs and storing equipment.

[Investing In Chicago]

Originally Posted by marothisu

This describes the place we're under contract on. The common areas are some small storage and the back area of the building leading to the garage and garage rooftop. The building is less than 5 years old and it's a 5 unit building.

This condo is pretty big and it would be cool to have our small building with some common space for a golf simulator or something but it's fine without it.

Cool. 5 is an unusual number of units in the neighborhoods for a newer building - is it basement unit + 4 above ground units on a single lot or a double lot, with 2 duplex down units, 2 simplex units and 1 penthouse like the below?:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/15...!4d-87.6674455