Chicago-owned land buying opportunities in spring 2025

The City of Chicago, CTA, and Chicago Public Schools are offering vacant lots for sale. Watch for the multiple deadlines happening this spring and summer. Chicago Cityscape has integrated these properties to make it easy to for members to identify the lots that fit their development parameters.

Former CPS sites

Chicago Public School is offering 21 former schools (most with a building) through an RFP process, with most bids starting at $100,000. These are schools that were closed by the Emanuel administration in 2011.

Important dates for the CPS sites

• questions are due by Friday, May 16th 2025, 2:00 PM
• submissions are due by Friday, May 30th 2025, 4:00 PM

We made a special map that opens Property Finder and is pre-filtered to show only the 74 unique parcels that make up the 21 sites. The data table also pre-calculates the number of homes allowed at each parcel; however, because each school site comprises multiple parcels it may be necessary to combine them into a Super Parcel to get the most accurate calculation.

Download the RFP on CPS’s procurement website (registration is required).

Two ChiBlockBuilder large properties

The Chicago Department of Planning & Development (DPD) has two large sites available through an RFP process that’s due June 30. Both had webinars in the third week of April.

466 W Cermak Rd in Armour Square and East Pilsen

• read the RFP
• watch the webinar
• open our Property Report

1924 W 46th St in New City and Back of the Yards

• read the RFP
• watch the webinar
• open our Property Report

Additionally, DPD and the Department of Housing are working with the Chicago Transit Authority to dispose of a construction staging site next to the Belmont Red-Purple-Brown station. This is a narrow property between Wilton Avenue and the train viaduct. (This looks like an idea location for a connected point access block buildings, each with a single stair.)

• Learn more about the Wilton RFP
• Submit proposals for the CTA site through ChiBlockBuilder or through the DOH Qualified Allocation Plan (QAP, i.e. LIHTC) process

ChiBlockBuilder small properties

The remaining ChiBlockBuilders are small lots, most being around the standard Chicago lot size of 3,125 s.f. The majority are available through the...