Northside Community Housing and Rise teaming up to rehab 3 buildings and build new - Should be a nice tie in to the on going work to the south - 43 total units - Rehab of the old Star Laundry building - Which the last time I saw it I thought it was going to be demoed - Good stuff
I remember a big talking point from the Mayoral campaigns from a few candidates was, they were upset there were incentives being handed out in nice neighborhoods but not on the northside. It made it sound as if they weren't available to them but this proves incentives can and are used on the northside.
Well, clearly development incentives go where the development goes. Since the demand is mostly in the Central Corridor, that's where the development goes; hence the incentives go there as well. It's not like there's some conspiracy to deny incentives on the North Side; there's just not as much demand for development.
While thinking about this north vs central tax incentive disparity recently, it occurred to me that the same 10 year tax abatement would have a much higher monetary value for a developer in the central corridor vs the north side. It's a function of prevalent land value and property assessments.
Devalued neighborhoods probably need a different flavor of incentives or maybe a wider variety of options.
While thinking about this north vs central tax incentive disparity recently, it occurred to me that the same 10 year tax abatement would have a much higher monetary value for a developer in the central corridor vs the north side. It's a function of prevalent land value and property assessments.
Devalued neighborhoods probably need a different flavor of incentives or maybe a wider variety of options.
Agreed, thought it was strange it was often framed as, "My ward isn't getting these incentives and we need them."
Construction is moving along now that the weather has improved a little. The rehab buildings are well underway, and the first of the new construction is going up.
This will be a $3.8 Million project to build 18 single family and townhouse homes in the Ville. A tax abatement was approved for this yesterday. The design looks like some homes being built in the Grove under the "Grove South" homes project. I included a rendering of those for comparison. They will be built on mostly vacant property bounded by Cottage Avenue, North Taylor, Maffit Avenue and Cora Avenue.
I like the house designs, but 200K sounds high for most neighborhoods in this town unless those are a heck of a lot bigger than they look. And man, that's a lot of space between them. They could easily put twice or maybe even three times as many structures in that space. What is this? Wildwood? Glad to see something built. Hopefully infill will eventually be possible.
I'm not convinced they can build these for $211,000 each, much less sell 18 houses at a profitable price. Also, that site plan is horrendous. If they can do it, I want to see their numbers and find out who the contractors are. Because the projects that run through my hands would never work at that price. That said, I wish them nothing but the best.
The $211,000 isn't too far off of reality I think. Reading this article actually made my wife and I investigate Rochester Homes in Indiana. We've been wanting to either find a fixer upper here in the Chicago suburbs (Fox Valley region is our primary target) or to find a lot / tear down where we could build our own. Based on the sized and simplicity of the homes depicted, $211k seems about right with what we could find. There's also not a lot to do on the actual building portion as it's primarily just foundation work, putting it all together, and then very limited finishing touches. I don't think a lot of local contractors are needed... Overall it's not necessarily "cheaper" than building from scratch, but you can save a little depending on the site and prep work required.
Edit: disregard. The photos didn't initially load for me and I thought this was the same as the pre-fabricated home project being proposed.
It's a shame to see our historic north side erode away like this, Labadie is still a pretty cohesive street. If only there was a federal pool of funds that cities could draw upon to renovate historic properties like this at scale and bring them back on the market as city owned and managed affordable housing.
