Chicago wants to fund new housing & retail on LaSalle Street

You may have seen the news that the City of Chicago is interested in revitalizing the LaSalle Street corridor (between Randolph and Van Buren Streets) after so many businesses have moved to newer office buildings. There’s a dormant TIF district there that still has $196 million in its account (at the end of 2021) and Chicago’s planning department is willing to spend some of that to assist developers in converting office buildings to new housing.

The basic condition for assistance is that 30 percent of the dwelling units would be affordable, and priority would go to projects in landmarked, historic, and potentially historic buildings. The Department of Planning & Development (DPD) is also going to prioritize buildings with high retail or office vacancy.

Mayor Lightfoot’s administration is calling this the LaSalle Street Reimagined initiative, and they’ve published an “invitation for proposals” to accomplish the aforementioned upgrades. DPD is planning to choose at least three proposals to fund.

There is a massive opportunity here: many banks and law firms have moved from LaSalle Street to newer spaces a few blocks away to North Wacker Drive and South Canal Street. And many of these older buildings have designs that make them relatively easy to convert to apartments.

Prospecting properties

To help potential development teams, Chicago Cityscape has created a new Place Snapshot for the city’s priority area.

In this Place Snapshot you’ll find everything:

• detailed information for each of the 123 properties
• an instant calculation of the number of dwelling units allowed in each building
• past building permits & violations
• nearby proposed projects
• demographic information
• additional incentives.

Deadline

Proposals are due on December 23, 2022, by 12 PM. Last week there was a pre-submission conference in which DPD staff presented findings from a market analysis of the LaSalle Street corridor, and outlined the initiative’s goals. Watch it on YouTube, or download the slideshow, or interact with our thread on Twitter posted during the conference.

If you’re interested in learning more about how to explore the data in Chicago Cityscape and how that can help you find leads or development opportunities, we can coach you.

Chicago wants to fund new housing & retail on LaSalle Street was originally published in Chicago Cityscape’s Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.