The problem of vacant and unproductive land is vast. The County County Assessor classified (at least) 60,450 parcels in Cook County as “vacant” for the 2016 tax year.
Of those vacant properties in the county, (at least) 31,064 are in Chicago.
While those are the facts about vacant land classification in the Cook County Assessor’s database, not every “vacant” property classified as “1–00” is the typical symbol of demolition, disinvestment, or depopulation.
Sometimes vacant land is the commonly-owned land between or around townhouse developments.
The largest contiguous area of vacant land is the former U.S. Steel South Works site, where development has been proposed and failed. And the property has been resold to a new group of property developers and investors, including a Spanish company that intends to build modular housing there.
The Large Lots program in Chicago is so far the most expedient program to dispose of city-owned vacant land. But even it is slow moving: last year it sold 935 vacant, residentially-zoned parcels to property owners on the same block for $1. Since 2014 the program has disposed of fewer than 2,000 lots.
All of those owners, who closed in November and December, will owe more than the symbolic cost. They’ll pay property taxes in March 2019, which range from $600 to $1,200, approximately. They’re also going to have to spend a few thousand dollars building a metal fence around the property unless it’s adjacent to an existing building they own.
But some owners have been maintaining these lots for years prior to acquiring them, so it’s a gift despite the long-term costs.