Bronzeville and the surrounding area are undergoing a residential rebirth, and that growth might not help the city's bid for the 2016 Games. But retail outlets are still sorely lacking.
By Kathy Bergen
Tribune staff reporter
The clanking and grinding of earth-moving machinery was unmistakable, even from the roof of the 33-story Hyatt Regency McCormick Place, which offers a sweeping view of the sites where the city hopes to host the 2016 Olympic Games.
The distant clatter, from the first large-scale residential project to leapfrog the Stevenson Expressway in recent memory, the $150 million Eastgate Village just east of Mercy Hospital, is part of the area's emergence from a long period of stagnation.
The area comprises four neighborhoods--Douglas, North Kenwood, Oakland and Grand Boulevard, portions of which make up a broader swath known as Bronzeville. Handsome mixed-income housing developments are replacing deteriorated public housing, and developers and entrepreneurs are rehabbing the area's historic structures and putting up new ones.
Next year when McCormick Place's West Building is completed, its main entrance will open onto South Indiana Avenue--a move observers hope will spur further restaurant and retail development.
Such progress, however, does not necessarily weigh in Chicago's favor in landing the Olympics. London won the 2012 Games, at least in part, on the promise that the Olympic Park would revive the East End, that city's poorest neighborhood.
"Chicago will need a strong framework plan, because Bronzeville is going along nicely on its own. It's becoming a very sought-after place to live," said city planner Kim Goluska, who has worked on myriad urban projects from the South Loop's Dearborn Park to McCormick Place expansions to Lake Park Crescent, one of the mixed-income complexes replacing Lakefront Properties public housing.
"I'd argue the only benefit of a mega-project, with all its pain and glory, is to get something you wouldn't get otherwise," said Goluska, president of the Chicago Consultants Studio Inc.
Community planners do have such a wish list: Long-sought additional pedestrian links to parks along the South Side lakefront, enhancements of those parks to bring them more in line with Lincoln Park, and construction of affordable housing in order to retain economic diversity in a gentrifying area, to name a few.
Chicago is competing against Los Angeles and San Francisco to be the U.S. bidder for the 2016 Games. The U.S. Olympic Committee will decide whether to put forward any U.S. candidate by year-end, and if it proceeds, will select the city by the end of March.
To prepare each city for possible entry into the international competition, to be decided in 2009, the USOC last week advised each on how their plans need to be reworked to be viable candidates.
Mayor Richard Daley and his Olympics planners have promised no local tax burden, and residual economic benefits in the form of new affordable housing and improvements to the transit systems serving the two airports. But citing competitive reasons, Chicago officials declined to specify the USOC's suggested revisions and kept details of the lakefront-oriented proposal under wraps.
"We need to leave a sports legacy and an urban legacy that will last for generations to come," insurance executive Patrick Ryan, the mayor's private-sector point man on the effort, said at a press briefing after the USOC meeting Wednesday.
Sources familiar with the city's preliminary plans have said they call for a $200 million temporary Olympic stadium to be built directly south of Soldier Field, and for private developers to build a $1.5 billion Olympic Village south of McCormick Place, in the convention center's truck yards just west of Lake Shore Drive. After the games, the village would be converted to residential and commercial space.
By 2016, observers expect this complex will join a substantially built-out zone, as residential development extends southward from the South Loop and northward from Hyde Park.
"That mid-South area is already undergoing quite an amazing revitalization, so this would not be the case of an economic catalyst in an area that's either deteriorating or stagnant," said Mark Joseph, a research associate at the University of Chicago and an assistant professor of community development at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
Land just west of McCormick Place is being offered for sale at $200 per square foot, and selling at around $150, compared with maybe $50 a square foot a year and a half ago, said Mike Nardini, a vice president in the urban advisory group of CB Richard Ellis, a commercial real estate firm.
"It's amazing," he said. "And now developers are looking south of Mercy Hospital."
The transformation of the South Loop, the fastest-growing downtown neighborhood, gives a glimpse of the potential further south. There are 13,600 private residences in the South Loop this year, and that will rise to 18,500 by 2009, a huge leap from 5,600 in 1996, noted Gail Lissner, vice president of Appraisal Research Counselors.
The average closing price is $364,000, up from $225,000 in 2000, and the average listing price is $510,000, which is on par with the Lincoln Park/Lakeview neighborhood, she said. The hikes reflect both a growing supply of luxury dwellings and price appreciation, she added.
Looking southward, an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 new or rehabbed housing units are expected to open in the private market within the next seven to 10 years in the area between McCormick Place and Hyde Park, from the lake almost to the Dan Ryan, said Chinwe Onyeagoro, a consultant to the Quad Communities Development Corp., which is charged with promoting economic development in part of that area.
The Chicago Housing Authority expects nearly 7,500 units to be built in the mixed-income developments replacing four public housing projects: the Robert Taylor Homes, Stateway Gardens, Madden/Wells/Darrow and the Lakefront Properties.
At Lake Park Crescent, where rental and ownership properties are replacing the Lakefront Properties on Lake Park Avenue between 40th and 42nd, demand appears to be strong.
In the homeownership program, "we're in the pre-sale phase and doing a brisk business ... checks are being written," said McKim Barnes, vice president of research and analysis for Draper and Kramer Inc., the developer of the first phase of Lake Park Crescent.
Also in the mix in the area, which still has plenty of vacant lots and dilapidated buildings, are entrepreneurs building or restoring small properties. The neighborhoods are dotted with work sites, from red-and-white cement mixers pouring concrete into new walkways to sweat-drenched bricklayers, their heads wrapped in protective white T-shirts, standing on scaffolding and spreading mortar between layers of bricks on fast-rising homes.
At the northern end of the region, construction is starting on 800 townhouses, condos and affordable senior housing units to be built at Eastgate Village by Chicago-based Fogelson Properties and Cleveland-based Forest City Enterprises, the same partnership behind the massive Central Station Development in the South Loop.
"We're hoping, for the benefit of the city, that Eastgate has the same kind of catalytic effect on that area south that Central Station has had on its locale," said Gerald W. Fogelson, chairman of both developments. "And we're always looking for more business--we're definitely in the market for more property in that area."
Speculation also is swirling over the fate of the 37-acre campus of Michael Reese Hospital, a prime parcel near the lakefront, McCormick Place and downtown. The hospital has said it needs only about 10 of those acres to operate, and of the 20 buildings on its property, about one-fourth are used for hospital operations.
The landowner, Medline Industries Inc., reportedly has been in talks with various developers and with the city as it searches for an Olympic Village site. The city has said the site was not among those under consideration, and a Medline spokeswoman declined to comment on the property.
Some observers also say Draper and Kramer, owner of the nearby Prairie Shores and Lake Meadows apartment complexes, and the Lake Meadows Shopping Center, may be poised for additional developments or upgrades. Once considered the places for middle-class African-Americans, these older towers are feeling competitive heat from the South Loop.
The company declined to discuss future plans other than to say: "Our assets are under constant review."
Other projects are percolating as well. The city's Department of Planning and Development cites plans for residential/retail developments in the historic Motor Row district west of McCormick Place, and the planned rehab of a city-owned building at 4650 S. King Drive into retail and office space, among others.
While housing is on a roll, the area is still severely lacking in retail development. Of $675 million in annual buying power in the area, $450 million is being spent outside the neighborhood, noted consultant Onyeagoro, who is managing partner of O-H Community Partners.
"Retailers are very conservative," said David Baker, a spokesman for the Illinois Institute of Technology, which is developing a technology park on 15 acres of its South Side campus. "They are in a very competitive business, and they can't afford to make mistakes."
IIT is working with a number of non-profit organizations to lead retailers on tours of the area, to acquaint them with the dramatic changes afoot.
And a 2016 Olympics could go a long way toward generating excitement in the area, Baker said.
"The years of preparations would continually bring people to the community to see the changes that have occurred," he said. "We feel a lot of the development going on is being ignored, and we want to see that it is not ignored."
As well, an Olympic Village that's converted to permanent housing and a new aquatics center, which is proposed for a location near the IIT campus, would help create the population density and traffic flow that appeal to retailers, he said.
"Inevitably, a big event can help retailers to take more risk," Baker said.
