Aldermen want more community input on 23rd and Prairie plan 

By Patrick Butler 

Andrius Agunias’s 37-story mixed-use development at 23rd Street and Prairie Avenue is not going anywhere without more community input, Aldermen Bob Fioretti (2nd) and Pat Dowell (3rd) assured more than 100 concerned citizens recently.

While not everyone at the Greater South Loop Association’s May 19 meeting at Weather Mark Tavern, 1503 S. Michigan Ave., was against Agunias’s Ruklas International’s plans for 325 condo units, seven townhouses, 365 parking spaces, and 3,000 square feet of commercial space, several residents said they would at least like to know what is happening before being awakened some morning by a construction crew tearing down the building next door.

Despite a law requiring that anyone living within 200 feet of a planned project be told ahead of time, one man living at 13th Street and Indiana Avenue said, “I’ve lived here four years and never received one notification, yet I have six highrises near me. I depend on my Alderman to make me aware of those plans. That’s why Madeline isn’t around anymore,” he said, referring to recently defeated former 2nd Ward Alderman Madeline Haithcock.

Scott Reniewicz, an architect at Fitzgerald and Associates, said the project was designed “with residents’ concerns taken into account. We got a lot of comments and this is where we are today.”

Reniewicz said the building will have retail and commercial space and loft condos topped by a 21st floor “amenities level” with a fitness center, sauna, and pool—“all the things you expect to find in a contemporary building,” he said.

On top of that, he added, would be still more residential units in a tower set back to make the building look shorter. The building will provide two entrances from the alley where all vehicular traffic will move, Reniewicz said, adding that the townhouses facing Prairie Avenue will have “what is essentially a private drive.”

Greater South Loop Association President Dennis Beninato said, “The community likes the development. We do, too. We’re not overly concerned about the height.”

Several neighbors wondered, however, if Agunias’s project is not too much of a good thing in a neighborhood that has become inundated with new construction in just the past few years.

Reniewicz said he and Ruklas International are “trying to work with the community to protect the Prairie District.”

 

Fioretti and Dowell on the job

Fioretti and Dowell said they are working to protect the area as well. Dowell said she has been doing her “due diligence” to learn everything that is happening—or could happen—south of the Loop.

“My commitment is to really open the process to other than just the usual suspects,” said Dowell, who plans to meet with as many condo associations and local business and civic groups as possible in the months ahead.

One topic Dowell will examine is a proposed 180-unit condo building with 1,000 square feet of retail space on the 1800 block of south Wabash Avenue. She plans to meet with Columbia College as well to discuss its South Loop expansion plans.

Also, “some commercial interests are looking at the area around 16th and Clark Street,” she said, noting she also has not seen any plans for the proposed Imperial Court Hotel three blocks south. “They’ll also have to go through a public forum,” she said.

Fioretti said he has been meeting with residents and business in the weeks since he and Dowell took office.

Both Fioretti and Dowell agreed much of their job will be to balance the needs of their wards’ various interest groups at a time of major demographic change.

Dowell said she needs to figure out the future “character of the Loop, what it wants to be. It’s not going to be Lincoln Park. It shouldn’t be Lincoln Park,” she said. Still to be determined, however, is what the area should become, Dowell said.

For Fioretti, that means getting a handle on zoning, traffic, and parking and helping fledgling businesses survive in an economic climate in which “for every ten businesses incorporated today, nine will be gone a year from now,” he noted.

Of course, it does not help business in general to have too many vacant storefronts in new condo buildings, he said, laying at least part of the blame on developers who routinely charge $30 to $40 a square foot for retail space.

            Fioretti also expressed concern about “planned developments approved five or ten years ago that have no relationship with today’s reality,” he said. “Times have changed.  You’ll have to come back to the community before you start building.”

 

McCormick West to open

Local business should get a shot in the arm from the new McCormick Place West building scheduled to be dedicated July 26 and hold its first show—a candy convention—just after Labor Day, said Jack Johnson, the facility’s manager.

The new facility already has booked 67 events, generating an estimated economic impact of $1.1 billion, Johnson added, noting the expansion was putting money in South Loop pockets even before the project was finished. He said 79% of the companies working on the job are based in Illinois, with 87% of their workforce from Chicago and seven percent from the immediate neighborhood.

Billed as the largest new construction project in the country, the expansion will add 150,000 square feet of meeting space, bringing the complex’s total to 600,000 square feet, with 61 meeting rooms and a 103,000 square foot ballroom.

The Rooftop Gardens, which will be available for rental, will seat 150 and accommodate up to 600 for cocktail parties.

“If we get the Olympics, the broadcast center for all the games will be based at McCormick Place,” Johnson said. “And the Olympic Village will be located south of McCormick Place around 31st Street and the Dan Ryan Expressway.

       “The expansion means going from 2.2 million to 2.7 million square feet,” Johnson went on. “To put it another way, picture dropping the playing field at Soldier Field into McCormick Place.”