Thursday, November 30, 2017

Wilson & Magnolia TOD Proposal Revealed

4600 Magnolia proposal (jonathan SPLITT architects)
Well, what do we have here? A proposal was just released on Ald. Cappleman's website for 4600 N. Magnolia, currently the stripmall that was recently home to Starbucks. 

DLG Construction is proposing a 5 story TOD brick and masonry new construction with the all-important 30' Sheridan Park setback. A total of 28 units (20 two bedrooms, 4 one bedroom garden units and 4 studios) is proposed. No parking is proposed due to the proximity of public transit. All of the required affordable units will be on site.
The current stripmall at 4600 N. Magnolia
No retail is planned for the building and Uptown United is on board with that as it conforms to the residential buildings to the west along Wilson. They also mention that retail has struggled at this location and new residents will support existing businesses in the area. See their letter of support here.

Magnolia Malden Neighbors will review the proposal and share their feedback as the building requires a zoning change from B3-3 to B2-3TOD. Stay tuned for more information. Also note that this building would return the corner back to residential. The building that preceded the strip mall came down in the late 1970s, seen below.

The building that preceded the current strip mall

13 comments:

  1. Wow, great old photo. The proposed building has similar porches on Magnolia. Looks great.

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    1. Can somebody tell me who is renting these apartments? There are cranes and building everywhere. All over Lakeview, on Broadway, on Diversey. Where is the population coming from, esp. since Cook County lost 20,000 residents.

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    2. Students who don't want to live in dorms but want to be close to transportation (hello, Purple Line!). People who were forced back into living with their parents during the economic downturn. Empty nesters who moved to the burbs when they had kids and now have large child-free homes in the middle of nowhere. "Build it and they will come." Uptown's close to the lake, close to Wrigley Field, and has one of the best new transportation stations in the city.

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    3. There's actually a huge deficit of MF rental units in Chicago and on the North Side in particular, which can explain the very high rents that new developments command. While Chicago proper's population has remained relatively steady since 2010, further demographic breakdown shows that white/northside population has increased considerably in that period while there's been a major exodus of black residents. As is mirrored in other major US cities, millennial professionals increasingly want to live in urban centers, are having kids later in life, and are resisting moving to surrounding suburbs, especially as their jobs are increasingly located close to downtown. There is enormous demand for rental housing throughout the north side, that has not been close to met due to significant NIMBY influence that tends to forcefully favor developments that are smaller in scale, have high parking ratios, show preference for larger units over studios and favor condos over rentals. As a result, there's a huge dearth of studio and 1-bed apartments in 'the neighborhoods' of the city given the demand.

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    4. There is not a "huge" dearth of studio and 1 bedrooms in Uptown. We have too many of those already. Northside as a whole? Maybe. That kind of crap housing will suffice for a year or two, but eventually even your millenial will want to move on. End result in a decade or two, Uptown has a "huge" surplus of studios and the city continues to dump the poor in our backyard. Right back to where we started.

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  2. These TOD projects build will ruin the neighborhood. All the new proposals are TOD and and include no parking. The argument that people don't need or use cars is totally bogus. I hope the neighbors think about the larger picture. One TOD building here, one TOD there and pretty soon NO parking anyplace. I plan on attending this meeting

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    1. The neighborhood has already been ruined for many years by the rival gangs, addicts, mental health strugglers, and the SROs/subsidized housing complexes they live in.

      These developments are working towards revitalizing Uptown. Schiller set the Ward back even further and Ald Cappleman is helping to alleviate that.

      If you were in the real estate industry, you would know that the current zoning and demographic for housing demand in northeast Chicago strongly favors the young professional rental market which wants to be near mass public transit and social-oriented businesses (restaurants, bars, coffee shops).

      There are still plenty of lots around the Ward which can be leveraged for rented or deeded parking spaces/complexes.

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    2. Well I may attend too and my input will cancel out your input.

      Actually considering how sexy I am and how high my Trump like IQ is it will more than cancel out your input.

      That's a good looking rendering of a building. Unlike that crime against architecture that has been initially proposed for Sunnyside/Broadway.

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    3. That's ridiculous, I lived here for 10 years and haven't owned a car. Get over your waste of space and learn to use other modes of transportation

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  3. This is actually one of the better looking initial proposals I've seen in quite a while. It almost sorta kinda matches the style of the neighborhood and (probably accidentally) references the original residential building.

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  4. Does anyone know when and where the meeting will be held. Thanks

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    1. As far as we know, there is no official Magnolia Malden Neighbors meeting set yet, but there is a Sheridan Park Neighbors Ass'n meeting Tuesday night (12/5) at Emerald City Coffee, 1224 West Wilson, 6pm, at which it will be discussed.

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    2. Does Magnolia Malden Neighbors still exist? Looking to join, I sent an email recently and got no reply.

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