40-Acre Northerly Island Park Now Officially Open to the Public

It’s the long Labor Day weekend and to make things even better, the city has opened the new Northerly Island Park to the public. What was once a private airstrip is now a lush 40-acre park complete with a five acre lagoon, mini foothills and a winding mile-long bicycle/pedestrian loop. While the park will be open to visitors this weekend, it’s not exactly finished just yet. Similar to the 606 and Maggie Daley Park, Northerly Island’s new plantings will take several months to settle in and mature. Designed by SmithGroupJJR and Chicago’s Studio Gang Architects and constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the new park will boast various micro ecosystems for visitors and students to enjoy and explore. In addition to educational programming, the new park will also feature camping retreats. Northerly Island has come a long way since the Meigs Field airstrip was bulldozed under Mayor Richard M. Daley’s orders in 2003. It joins The 606, Maggie Daley Park, the Grant Park Skate Parkand the Chicago Riverwalk extension in becoming one more high profile public park space delivered in the last year. Be sure to send us your photos of the new park.

-Sourced from Curbed Chicago

New Town Homes Planned For the West Loop

It would be easy to frame this story in the simplest possible context, that a pair of Chicago developers are going to be putting up some new townhouses in the Prairie Avenue district of the South Loop, replacing an empty warehouse and a parking lot at the corner of South Prairie Avenue and 18th Street. Yet the shadow of a failed 2000’s boom highrise condo project still looms high over this particular piece of land. After some heated local politics over approval of the 479-unit development, followed by the inopportune collapse of the housing bubble, the X/O Condominiums project never broke ground. Still, the bittersweet memory of X/O (bitter for some, sweet for others) is hardly forgotten.

Back in May it was discovered that the piece of land that would have been X/O had been rezoned for mid-rise residential and now Crain’s reports that the land’s new owners want to use it for 62 townhomes. With almost 400 fewer homes than the previously owner’s plan for land, this new project by developers Golub & Co. and Sandz Development is likely to be much less controversial, if not less memorable. The developers will present the plan publicly for the first time at a neighborhood meeting next week, which Curbed will be covering.

In early 2006, amid a frenzy of condo building, a venture led by Mr. Giles unveiled plans to replace a hulking, mid-century warehouse building on the 1700 block of Prairie Avenue with a pair of shiny towers that would have vaguely resembled a gigantic X on the city’s south skyline. Over the next year and a half, as the condo market sputtered, neighborhood opposition to the project was loud.

Both Ald. Madeline Haithcock and her successor in the 2nd Ward, Ald. Robert Fioretti, tried to halt or downsize the project, and Mr. Giles never got the zoning change he needed to break ground. The property got hit with a $20.2 million foreclosure suit in 2009, and a joint venture of Golub and Sandz took title to the site in 2011.

Ald. Fioretti said at that time that he would support a plan for the site that “blends in with the community” and had “much less density than what was originally proposed.” Mr. Fioretti did not respond to a request for comment.

“Town homes will fit into that neighborhood well,” said Mr. George, the zoning lawyer.

–Sourced from Curbed.com & Chicagobusiness.com

Loft Apartments Coming to Streeterville

The former North Pier Terminal, a 108-year-old former warehouse in Streeterville that never made it as an office-and-retail complex, soon could be reincarnated as a loft apartment building.

A group led by Chicago investor William O’Kane has acquired the 547,200-square-foot brick building along the Ogden Slip with plans to turn it into rental housing, according to people familiar with his plans.

The venture led by Mr. O’Kane, president of Chicago-based property manager Group Fox Inc., bought the building at 401-465 E. Illinois St. from an affiliate of Beal Bank in Texas, which acquired a delinquent loan on the property in 2009.

Mr. O’Kane is joining the herd of developers stampeding into the downtown apartment market, drawn by its strong occupancies and record-high rents. Multifamily housing may be the best option for the property, now known as River East Plaza, an early redevelopment in south Streeterville that failed as an office building. Its last owner, Dan McLean, lost it to a Beal venture through foreclosure last year.

“The location is fantastic, and the opportunity to provide true loft-style apartments is truly absent” in the neighborhood, said Peter Bazeli, senior vice-president of the Weitzman Group Inc., a New York-based real estate consulting firm.

Mr. O’Kane did not return calls, and a Beal Bank spokesman declined to comment.

Built in 1905 as an exhibition center, North Pier was used mainly as a warehouse for decades and converted in the late 1980s to an office-and-retail building, with tenants including Dick’s Last Resort and Baja Beach Club. Current retail tenants include Fox & Obel, the gourmet grocery store.

But the property never lived up to expectations, even after Mr. McLean bought it in 1997 and tried to revive it. He floated a plan to convert the building to condominiums, but the market crashed before he could begin.

Ultimately, Mr. McLean lost the property after defaulting on a $28 million loan and losing a bitter bankruptcy battle with Beal. During the bankruptcy in 2011, Beal valued the property at no more than $21 million. Mr. O’Kane’s group bought it for $48 million, a source said.

It’s unclear how much the Beal venture cleared in the sale because county records do not disclose how much it paid for the loan. But opportunistic investors typically pay a steep discount for distressed loans, so it’s likely it paid well below the full $28 million loan amount.

LATE TO THE PARTY

Mr. O’Kane is arriving late to the downtown development party. Developers will add more than 5,200 units to the downtown apartment market between now and the end of 2014, according to Appraisal Research Counselors, a Chicago-based consulting firm. Three big high-rises are already under way in Streeterville.

Yet the building’s loft status and waterfront access will differentiate it from the competition, said Mr. Bazeli, a former executive at Chicago-based Draper & Kramer Inc. who worked on the firm’s residential conversion of the Palmolive Building on North Michigan Avenue.

“The good news is it’s not going to have to compete against high-rises,” he said.

Redeveloping an old building into a new use is a risky endeavor, but the structure already has been converted into offices and retail, eliminating the likelihood of costly surprises.

“I think a lot of that risk has been taken out,” Mr. Bazeli said.

The question is how to lay out the building’s upper floors, which span 70,000 square feet, in a way that uses the space as efficiently as possible, maximizing the number of apartments. It’s unclear how many units Mr. O’Kane plans to include in the project; Mr. Bazeli estimates the number could range from 300 to 400.

Mr. O’Kane will face other challenges, too. He will need to provide enough parking for the building’s residents. He also must seek new zoning to build residential there. To do that, he needs to sell Streeterville residents on his plan, a key step in winning the blessing of Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd), who represents the neighborhood in the City Council.

-Sourced from ChicagoBusiness.com

Old Town’s Scott Residencies Opening in October!

A new apartment development coming to Old Town is currently wrapping up its final touches in preparation for October move-ins. Known as The Scott Residences, the brick and glass building at 211 W Scott Street will deliver 71 apartment units and 10,000 square feet of retail to Old Town. The building’s 72 car garage will also double as a green roof and amenity space for residents. Developed by Harlem Irving Companies and JDL Development and managed by RMK Management (who wrapped up 73 E Lake earlier this year), the new apartment building is located smack-dab in the middle of Old Town, and will no doubt feature luxury amenities and fetch luxury rental prices. Convertible apartments start at just under $2,000 per month and a three bedroom unit will set one back over $5,500 per month. Confirmed retail tenants include Starbucks and Massage Envy. Peep the floor plans here.

-Sourced from Curbed.com

A Little Bit About: Hyde Park

In 1893 Hyde Park hosted the Chicago’s World Fair (known as the Columbian Exposition) which, among other things, introduced the United States to electricity and the Ferris wheel. The event was so grand that it required more than 600 acres of space, the construction of 200 buildings and welcomed close to 30 million people. More than 120 years later, the area is still a profound hinge point of historical and social importance in Chicago.

Bookended by two of the city’s most significant cultural institutions, The University of Chicago to the west and The Museum of Science and Industry to the east, Hyde Park is an incredibly popular South Side neighborhood for locals and visitors. The Museum of Science and Industry is the largest science museum in the Western Hemisphere and boasts more than 2,000 exhibits. The University of Chicago is a Victorian Gothic-clad, Nobel Prize factory with one of the country’s most scenic campuses to boot. Not far from the fabled school, you will find the home of President Barack Obama. The neighborhood’s cultural contributions don’t end there, either.

Robie House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, is widely considered one of the most iconic masterpieces in American design. The DuSable Museum of African American History is the largest institution of its kind in the United States. And the Hyde Park Art Center has been a powerful force in the city’s art scene for more than seven decades.

 

-Sourced from ChooseChicago.com

Potential Bidders For The Future Obama Library

The Obama Presidential Library and Museum is a future gem supporters say will drive economic growth and help communities in need. The question is where will the 14th federal presidential library be located? 

The Chicago-based Barack Obama Foundation is expected to have a short list of bidders by mid-September. A location is expected to be announced by the foundation in early 2015.

Here’s a look at seven of the major bidders hoping to land an Obama museum, with most of them being universities. 

Former U.S. Steel South Works site
On the Southeast Side off the shore of Lake Michigan with a view of the Chicago skyline, developer and bidder Dan McCaffery said this would be the most beautiful site in the city for the library. Obama once worked as a community organizer near this location.

University of Chicago
Located in Hyde Park on the South Side, potential sites include parcels near 55^th and King Drive and the South Shore Cultural Center, at 7059 S. South Shore Drive. Obama taught at the university’s law school for more than a decade and their daughters also attended U of C’s Laboratory Schools.

University of Illinois at Chicago
This university proposed three sites: Harrison Field in Little Italy, an area in the Illinois Medical District and the North Lawndale neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side. Supporters say North Lawndale is part of Obama’s history as a community organizer.

Chicago State University
On the far South Side, Chicago State University is another educational institution hoping to score the presidential library. Chicago State staff members say the library would be a great addition to the expansion they are already planning for the university. The site also has close ties to the Obamas. “95th Street corridor marks the place where Barack Obama began his neighborhood organizing, which strongly influenced the tenor of his presidency,” the bid says. It’s also close to the South Shore neighborhood home of Michelle Obama.

Former Michael Reese Hospital site
Demolished in 2009, the former location of the Michael Reese Hospital is located in the historic neighborhood of Bronzeville. Chicago Architecture firm HOK has pitched this site, which would sit on land that was previously purchased to house an Olympic Village for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. 

New York City’s Columbia University
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio fully supports having the library at Columbia University, where Obama earned his undergraduate degree in 1983. The library would be put in Harlem, which has other presidential ties besides Obama. Former President Ulysses S. Grant is buried there, and Alexander Hamiltion once owned a home in Harlem.

University of Hawaii
Located in Honolulu, the university says presidential libraries and museums are usually located in a president’s home state. The university is leading a state and local government consortium in an effort to create the Obama Presidential Center.

 

*Sourced from: Chicago Sun Times

The Promontory Has Finally Opened in Hyde Park

Empty Bottle’s Bruce Finkelman (also of Logan Square’s Longman & Eagle) and Craig Golden, of Space in Evanston,are the minds behind this restaurant and music venue, named after Hyde Park’s nearby Promontory Point lakefront area, which in 1933-1934 housed Chicago’s second World’s Fair. Longman & Eagle chef Jared Wentworth presents a menu of cold, fast, embers, snacks and pastry, including dishes like cornbread panzanella charred romaine, red onion, shaved fennel, cucumber, hearth roasted tomato, french feta, red wine vinaigrette, and spaghetti and veal meatballs. Classic coq au vin and a grilled lamb burger are also available. Not able to stay for a meal? The Promontory serves up a variety of drafts including St. Bernardus “8”, Gaffel and Moody Tongue, among others, as well as bottled beers like Three Floyd’s Pride & Joy, and Wells Bambardier English Bitter. Craft cocktails also don the menu, including the cinnamon basil smash with El Dorado White and ginger beer, and a specialty cocktail called Thursdays on 53rd with gin, bitters, lemon and meritage. The kitchen is open until 11 p.m. during the week and 1 a.m. on the weekend.

-Sourced from Metromix.com

 

For more photos of the beautiful new space visit Chicago Eater. 

One Dollar Lots in Chicago’s Southside

Chicago is practically giving away land: vacant lots for just $1 each. The catch? To buy one, you must already own a home on the same block.

Like many U.S. cities, Chicago has struggled with what to do with a growing number of empty lots in the wake of the foreclosure crisis. Efforts to develop affordable housing or urban farms have had some mixed results.

So Chicago officials and community development advocates hope the vacant lot program can help spark a renewal in some of the city’s most blighted areas.

The City of Chicago owns close to 5,000 vacant lots in the greater Englewood area alone, and is supposed to clean up, mow and maintain them. But residents such as Asiaha Butler say the city doesn’t always stay on top of the job.

“So like right now, the kids over there are just playing in the lot, they’re just running,” she says. “I would hope that it would be somewhere where they feel a little more safe, a little more secure, that’s a little more beautified than what we see currently.”

Butler says some of the lots get so overgrown that toddlers can get lost in them. They often become mini garbage dumps, or are sometimes taken over by drug dealers or gang members.

“I just want to make my block nicer,” Butler says.

And she plans to, alongside Sonya Harper, 32, an outreach manager for a nearby urban farm. Harper has lived on a block of South Wood Street in Englewood, on Chicago’s South Side, her entire life. Her house was once her grandmother’s home. Her aunt used to live next door, where her cousins now live, and her parents met on the same street.

The neighborhood has changed over the years, she says. Older neighbors have moved or passed away; most of the decent jobs left the area, too. And as poverty and unemployment increased, many people lost their homes to foreclosure.

Left behind were abandoned homes, many of which the city has now torn down. That’s left vacant lots here and all across Englewood, including several on Butler’s block a mile or so away.

The women want to buy vacant lots on their blocks and repurpose them. And under the new program, they can. Under the Large Lot Program, homeowners can buy lots on their block for $1, as long as they do not owe back taxes, parking tickets or other debts to the city.

Butler’s idea is to put public art, such as murals, on her lot — and maybe concrete chess tables, a barbecue pit and even an area for dogs.

Harper has already started a small community garden and wants to expand it into adjacent vacant lots.

And both see their lots as serving an even greater purpose.

“We want to be a block club. It turns from, ‘We care about gardening and food and nature and open space, and yet this is all brand new to us,’ to, ‘Hmm, what’s going on down the street?’ ‘Oh, look at that vacant lot over there, should we do something about that?’ ‘Oh, Ms. Thompson needs help cutting her grass, let’s go see if she needs help,’ ” Harper says.

Phil Ashton, professor of urban affairs at the University of Illinois, Chicago, says the program selling vacant lots for a buck taps an underutilized resource.

“Existing homeowners are sometimes some of the best assets that these neighborhoods have,” Ashton says. “They have a lot of energy. I mean, these are people fully invested in their neighborhoods.”

But Ashton says some of these kinds of efforts have waned after a couple of years in other cities — so the big question is what else can be done to sustain urban revitalization.

“There’s got to be something more, really,” he says. “Otherwise we’re sort of facing this very pragmatic tool being just a drop in the bucket.”

City officials, including Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and corporate leaders joined neighborhood activists in breaking ground Tuesday for one potential new cornerstone in the community: a Whole Foods Market. It not only will bring needed jobs to the area, but after years of residents seeing one grocery store after another closing up shop and moving out, many believe Whole Foods could be an oasis in one of Chicago’s largest food deserts.

Officials say the initial response to the $1 lot program has been strong — it received more than 400 applications to purchase more than 500 vacant lots in Englewood, where the effort began as a pilot program.

The response has been so positive that on Tuesday, Chicago began accepting applications for more than 400 vacant lots in East Garfield Park on the city’s West Side; homeowners can apply through July 30.

 

*Sourced from: NPR

Chicago’s Best Swimming Pools

Sometimes a trip to the beach just isn’t in the cards, but when it’s scorching hot outside you still need to find a way to cool off. Thankfully, Chicago is full of public pools where you can take a dip without heading for the shore. Whether you’re trying to locate a lane to swim laps in or just trying to show off your summer tan, there’s a swimming hole in the city for you. Throw on your bathing suit, grab a towel and find a place to perfect your “cannonball!” with our list of the best Chicago swimming pools:

Altgeld Park

Head to this West Side pool to splash around as you observe vehicles driving in and out of the city on the scenic Dwight D. Eisenhower Expressway. Amenities: ADA Lift, Zero Depth Entry/Ramp, Showers, Locker Rooms

California Park

The 50-yard, six-lane pool at California Park holds lap swim seven days a week. The park’s staff even haul out kickboards, pull buoys and a pace clock. Amenities: ADA Lift, Showers, Locker Rooms

Dvorak Park

Pilsen residents flock to this park to celebrate Mexican Independence Day and Fiesta Del Sol. You’ll want to get to the pool to celebrate the beginning, middle and end of summer. Amenities: ADA Lift, Zero Depth Entry/Ramp, Showers, Locker Rooms

Garfield Park

It’s entirely possible to spend a day in Garfield Park without noticing that there’s a pool nearby. Once you’re done walking through the conservatory, head for the gold-domed field house, where you’ll find one of the city’s most tucked-away swimming spots. Amenities: Showers, Locker Rooms

Humboldt Park

You might be tempted to take a dip in one of Humboldt Park’s lagoons, but you’ll miss out on the water slide—the most popular feature of this park’s pool.  Amenities: Water Slide, ADA Lift, Showers, Locker Rooms

 

For a full list visit the Time Out Chicago article here!

Chicago Green Neighborhood Challenge

An app developed last month in a technology competition ranks city neighborhoods according to environmental criteria and has the potential to spur improvement on green and sustainability issues, one of its inventors said.

Tom Greenhaw, founder of Windy City Sustainability, came up with the app with a half-dozen colleagues in June at the Center for Neighborhood Technology Urban Sustainability Apps competition. Judges gave it the top prize against a dozen competing teams.

Using data readily available online, the app, Chicago Green Score, ranks city neighborhoods according to whether they have abundant green roofs, community gardens, farmers markets, parks and public transit and bike facilities, while lowering scores for environmental complaints.

The Loop ranked first with a score of 84, no surprise given its concentration of public transportation, Divvy stations, farmers markets and increasing number of green roofs, including at City Hall. At the other end, a handful of neighborhoods produced scores of zero, including South Deering, Hegewisch, Garfield Ridge, Gage Park and O’Hare.

“They’ve got a lot of issues around there that were causing environmental complaints,” Greenhaw said of the low-ranking neighborhoods, citing abandoned factories and the like.

As for O’Hare International Airport, he added, “They just didn’t have a lot of data points there. So the buildings themselves might be really great, they might have water-saving fixtures or natural ventilation and all the great green-building bells and whistles, but that’s not in our data right now.”

That was a product of the circumstances, Greenhaw added.

“It was just kind of a weekend hackathon,” he said. “We went into the weekend with pretty much just an idea for the team and built it over the course of three days.

“There’s a lot more we wanted to add. We just sort of ran out of time over the weekend,” he added. “We’ll do that in version 2.0. We’ve got a pretty long list of things we want to do and continue working on.”

Yet the Chicago Green Score map they’ve produced is a useful tool right now, Greenhaw said.

“The big-picture goal of this is not just to say, ‘Here’s your score,'” he added. “You can actually use it as motivation to do something to make your neighborhood more livable. Hopefully, people take it in that light.

“We wanted to use it as a tool for community leaders to kind of see where they’re at, see how they can make improvements.”

Greenhaw and his colleagues were concerned about the data simply serving to beat up on low-income areas lacking the resources to make green improvements that other neighborhoods take for granted. Yet they found surprises, with strong showings by Oakland, North Lawndale and Woodlawn, which averaged a 60 score.

“If you look at North Lawndale, they have a lot of community gardens, so that was a big positive effect for their score,” Greenhaw said. “And they’ve got a lot of parks as well.

“Oakland’s pretty small, as far as the community area goes, but they have a big cluster of green roofs,” he added. “And they’ve got a lot of parks as well, and have a Divvy station or two.”

On the other hand, Greenhaw was surprised by the lackluster showing of Logan Square and other North Side neighborhoods around Ravenswood. North Center and Lincoln Square both posted scores of 9.

“I thought they would do very well, and the data show they didn’t do too well,” Greenhaw said. “That was a surprise.”

Not necessarily to Ald. Ameya Pawar (47th), however.

“We have a tremendous amount of access to mass transit,” Pawar said. “On transit, this ward is very, very green. However, a significant plank in my re-election program is going to be on flooding and green and sustainability issues here in the ward.”

Pawar said the increase in huge single-family homes that take up entire city lots has limited green space and exacerbated flooding problems already worsened by climate change, in which 100-year events are happening every two or three years, such as the flooding that hit his ward during Monday night’s storms.

“This flooding related to climate change is real, and as a city we have to take aggressive action on it,” Pawar said. “I think green issues are a major problem here and in a lot of neighborhoods on the North Side.”

Pawar said he’d like to see city programs to provide incentives for green-roof garages and rain barrels, as well as green alleys, which can cost four times what a normal alley replacement costs. He welcomed the Chicago Green Score map as a tool to point out problems and gain leverage in seeking solutions.

Greenhaw said Windy City Sustainability has not yet had any contact with city leaders on Chicago Green Score, but one of the prizes from their victory in the competition was a chance to pitch staffers for Gov. Pat Quinn on it. Greenhaw said they’d push for the same sort of data to be compiled statewide so that communities can construct the same sort of green score maps and focus more attention on the issue.

The city, however, said the app could help make Chicagoans adopt a greener lifestyle.

“The city welcomes the use of data in increasing awareness about ways residents can make Chicago a more sustainable city,” mayoral spokeswoman Libby Langsdorf said. She said city officials would be taking a look at Green Score and compared it to the city’s own interactive energy map found at http://www.cityofchicago.org/energymap.

*Sourced from: DNAinfo Chicago