Giant empty grassland on near south side (real estate, apartment)

[ekulio]

This has been bugging me for a while...does anyone know who owns the huge empty space bounded by Roosevelt, Clark, 18th and the river? Are there any plans for that?

There's another open lot further north bounded by Harrison, Wells, Polk and the river which is smaller but on much more valuable land.

Does anyone know anything about this? I just find it so strange to have such huge empty lots on such valuable land.

[chet everett]

I know both of those sites and as I recall the one near Harrsion was owned by a guy who was 100% sure that he could sell it to the post office when they realized how undersized their site to the west was. He turned down offers from the developer of the apartment / condo buildings to the north and east back when they were making deals for over $10M for buildable land in that vicinity. Big mistake....

I think the larger parcel to the south is owned by one of those development firms that grew out of the old railroad holding companies (I think they sahared ownership with the regional Pepsi bottlers or something too..) and like many conglomerates their internal desire to be the primary developer/ funding source / marketer/ tenant for industrial space run into the reality that architects like to be paid for doing design and planning work, comptroller and CFO did not buy the hype that mixed use real estate was worth jumping into, selling town homes / condos is a lot differnt than selling sugar water or freight trains, warehouses in the boonies are a lot cheaper than space downtown.

If they would have found the rig sucker to pay them an inflated price at market peak (or maybe got Daley to write some iron clad purchase for the doomed Olympic bid...) they would have made out like bandits.

Now they will probably hire Madigan to get their property tax knocked down to the "change in the sofa cushions" level and just wait for the next boom in 2453 or whenever the doomsayers predict real estate will bottom...

[emathias]

Originally Posted by ekulio

This has been bugging me for a while...does anyone know who owns the huge empty space bounded by Roosevelt, Clark, 18th and the river? Are there any plans for that?

There's another open lot further north bounded by Harrison, Wells, Polk and the river which is smaller but on much more valuable land.

Does anyone know anything about this? I just find it so strange to have such huge empty lots on such valuable land.

They used to be rail yards. There have been various proposals for them, but the timing has never been quite right. One of the parcels, I forget which, was part of the Rezko scandal.

The city would mostly like to see them developed very densly, given their proximity to downtown, although I think part of the reason they haven't been developed is that the City keeps proposing transit plans that impact the sites, but then nothing comes of them. The sites, and how they can be developed, would be quite different if there was a subway running through them, as then they could include office highrises. Without a subway (or "L"), it gets harder to build large amounts of commercial space.

I also think there is sort of a "chicken and egg" problem for them. There used to be almost nothing down there, so who would want to live there. And there needs to be a lot of infrastructure added, which the city doesn't want to add until they know there will be better tax revenues from the site. So the city looks to one big developer to do a master plan, which I think is not a good long-term strategy.

Personally, I think the city should decide on a real transit plan for that area, buy the land, lay out ROW for their transit plan, lay out standard blocks, build a couple of bridges, pull in utilities, and then auction off plots to many different developers and get started on the transit plan. If there was a subway there, and they put a transit line on the east-west tracks at 16th Street (not currently proposed by anyone), that site could become an extension of the Central Business District, or a dense area like the SE part of River North, with really excellent property tax revenues. That would also bolster the value of the South Loop/Museum Park/Dearborn Park areas although east-west rail would face a lot of objections from some current residents.

Downtown, especially the South Loop, had some overbuilding during the boom (although I don't think they overbuilt as much as people think they did). If/when jobs make a good sustained comeback in the Loop, demand for housing will drive the need for more housing. Most of that demand will be for rental, at least initially, which is probably better for the area in the long run anyway. There will eventually be need for more office space, too. Currently there's plenty of room in the West Loop for more office towers, and that will get most of them due to the proximity to so many rail stations, and south Streeterville could get some more, too.

Even with all that, I think there's a decent chance that the area gets developed one way or another within 20 years. A small chance within 10. Pretty much no chance within 5.