Z _N _N G
There’s a house that was recently put up for sale in East Garfield Park, at 3527 W Carroll Avenue. It’s a single-family house that has 720 square feet of floor space over two stories. Since it’s at the back of the lot you’d probably call it a coach house, but I don’t think it was a garage so I’m going to call it a rear house.
Let’s say you want to buy the property because it’s zoned RT-4, meaning it allows one home per 1,000 square feet of lot area. The lot area is about 3,600 square feet, enough room for three units— that’s more housing in the neighborhood near a Green Line ‘L’ station, and more rental income for you.
However, to have three units by building a 2-flat, you’ll have to demolish the rear house, because the Chicago zoning code stipulates that lots can have only one primary structure on the lot. (These Accessory Dwelling Units, or ADUs, also called granny flats and coach houses, are not allowed in Chicago — these are a great way to increase density and affordable housing without changing block character.)
Three units could exist if there was an addition to the building that had two units. You might not want to do that because it would mar the character of this 137-year-old building and you like the idea of preserving the rear house.
Even if the Chicago zoning code somehow allowed you to keep and renovate the rear house, and build a new 2-flat [1] or an addition, with two units, you still couldn’t, because there isn’t any room for the new off-street car parking spaces that the city requires. [2]
I think it’s unlikely this little rear house — a housing type that was built as a precursor to a rental income property that would eventually be built in the front of the lot — has a future. Sometimes a real estate broker will jump to this conclusion before you by saying “the value is in the land” in the listing.
Why is preservation important?
A report published in 2016 by Preservation Green Lab, a program from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and ULI Chicago, a professional association, said that “Chicago’s older, smaller buildings contribute in key ways to the vitality of the city”:
- areas with older and smaller buildings have a larger proportion of their jobs provided small and new businesses than areas with large, newer buildings
- the study found that residential areas with older, smaller buildings used less energy than areas with larger, newer residential building
- Chicago’s best bars, restaurants, and retailers (as ranked in Chicago Magazine and the Chicago Reader) are more likely to be located “blocks with high proportions of older and historic buildings”, and these blocks are less likely to have chain restaurants, which divert revenue out of the city
ALSO, and this is not in the report, older buildings give neighborhoods their visual identity. 🙌🏽
Another demolition scenario, in Humboldt Park
There’s a 2-flat rear house (a kind of coach house on a lot without a front house) for sale in Humboldt Park/West town which has a similar but inverted situation. The lot is zoned RS-3, which allow the 2-flat to remain “forever” but allows no additions. Nor can anyone demolish it and build a 3-flat, without a zoning change to RT-4. However, let’s say that my ideal scenario, as a potential buyer, is to build a single-family house for my budding family, and keep the 2-flat for rental income, and to preserve the affordable rents it offers to people in the neighborhood. I can’t do that, for the reason described in the beginning: Each lot can only have one primary structure.
When it was built, building a 2-flat apartment building here was legal, of course. Since that time, though, planners, City Council, or the 2004 Zoning Reform Commission downzoned this block, and countless other blocks citywide.
In this scenario, my desire to have a house for my family is more important to me than preserving the building, and its units are too small for my own family to live in. The location is ideal for me, it’s for sale, any my resolution is that I demolish it and build the house I want.
Why don’t more buildings get reused?
I addressed the illegality of coach and rear houses in depth in April. The Preservation Green Lab report, however, has a broader and deeper investigation in how to preserve all kinds of buildings. It also focuses more on the vitality that older buildings bring to neighborhood business districts in order to convince City Council to adopt more preservation and reuse-friendly codes and incentives.
Reusing some residential buildings and preserving coach houses are restricted by the zoning code and by parking requirements. The report targets these as two of the many barriers for reusing residential buildings. It suggests changing policy, including:
- help property owners reuse existing buildings for a non-residential use in some residential areas as well as residential uses in some non-residential areas [3]
- allow 1-2 additional residential units without requiring additional parking [2]
The report also identified barriers to commercial building reuse:
- lack of “coordinated neighborhood planning” (parcels’ zoning classifications may change on whims, not because of a plan)
- “limited financial incentives, especially for small projects”
- “zoning rules that unnecessarily limit uses in certain zone districts”
And the policy change suggestions for commercial building reuse:
- increase awareness of the Federal Rehabilitation Tax Credit for non-historic buildings constructed before 1936 (this is a 10 percent tax credit for the rehabilitation to a non-residential use; if you want help getting this, contact MAP Strategies, where I’m part of the urban planning team)
- allow more uses in existing buildings in B1 zones [4]
- extend the “Pedestrian Street” designation “to more areas with concentrations of older, smaller buildings” [5]
- Relieve buildings rated “orange” in the Chicago Historic Resources Survey from having to comply with parking requirements [6]
The Chicago zoning code was last revised and adopted in 2004. Amendments have been made to certain sections —the Affordable Requirements Ordinance (ARO) to generate more affordable housing, and Transit-Served Location (TOD ordinance) to allow greater density near train stations — but the restrictions on allowable uses have largely remained the same.
As the report details, Chicago’s zoning code is inflexible for preserving older structures, and it’s ripe for reform.