Wednesday, September 5, 2018

Former Man's Country Buildings Back On The Market

The condo building that was planned for the site of the former Man's Country bathhouse is off the table.

WFCW Block Club posted on its Facebook page that the developer has listed the site for sale.

Man's Country closed on New Year's Eve and the estate of Chuck Renslow sold the buildings to Quest Realty on January 22, 2018.

Plans were announced to build a nine-unit condo building named The Renslow, as a tribute to gay pioneer and Man's Country owner Chuck Renslow.

However, the developer and the neighbors could not reach an agreement on the design of the new building, and Quest Realty listed it for sale in August. The buildings, located at 5015-5023 North Clark, are located in the 47th Ward.

Time will tell what the next owner's plans are. Stay tuned!

6 comments:

  1. Why are the neighbors controlling what someone does with the property that they own?

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    1. They wanted an exemption to the building code to change the boundaries of the structure from the 15 feet away from the property line to 0 feet. They were going to build a parking garage 27" from the back porches of my neighbors. I think the also needed a height exemption because they wanted to build it twice as high as the highest buildings around there.

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  2. Zoning laws protect the neighborhood from unsightly buildings.

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  3. Maybe because the neighbors have a vested interest in the neighborhood - you know actually living in the neighborhood unlike the developers, and they will be there dealing with the encroaching property line long after the developer has made their money and left the neighborhood (and the unsuspecting new condo owners) holding the bag on a shoddily built project - which is the way that developers make money. Cut corners everywhere then get out of dodge before the new owners know what it going on. The neighbors are active and involved in their neighborhood - or would you rather a bunch of absentee owners who could care less about their neighbors let alone their neighborhood?

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  4. The neighbors and WFCW Block Club supported this project and worked with the developer Jason Vondrachek, the community, and the Andersonville Development Committee to move this project along. We were all very excited about this project and hoped it would be completed.

    Vote was taken in April to move project to next phase.

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  5. As the Developer, I thought I would chime in. While it's true that the WFCW Block Club supported the second iteration of our Project - and were actually enjoyable to work with - they were not the only stakeholder we had to contend with.

    Unfortunately, we could not align all of the stakeholders in agreement. This site lacks an alley which makes it extremely challenging to 'Park'.

    With parking as the crux of our Project, and maintaining WFCW's request for a 30' Rear Yard Setback, we requested a 50% Parking Reduction and were denied.

    This was a red line for them but it was also a red line for us.

    We subsequently decided to sell the Southern half of the site and let another Developer build 'as-of-right'.

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