New on Chicago Cityscape
- Planned Development maps — Planned Developments are required for certain kinds of developments (these are most often multi-unit residential buildings with a minimum height and number of units, but also include campuses and hospitals). We have maps of the 1,240 PDs.
- Status of properties in the Lakefront Protection District — look up any Chicago address or PIN (within several blocks of the lakefront) and we’ll tell you if it’s in the “public” or “private” section of the LPD. Developments here must undergo an additional review.
- Redesigned Address Snapshot reports now include data from the Cook County Assessor, including the number of apartments, the building square footage (this includes all floors), its age, and its exterior construction.
What we’re reading this week
- 15-year-old nature sanctuary in the South Shore Cultural Center would be demolished for a replacement golf course in Jackson Park and the SSCC designed by Tiger Woods’s company (Chicago Patterns)
- With assistance from two food manufacturers and TIF dollars, The Hatchery will break ground on a $30 million facility in a vacant lot next to the Kedzie Green Line station in East Garfield Park (Sun-Times)
- PMG’s plan for eight acres of vacant land is meeting resistance to its plan to buy and subsidize existing apartments offsite to satisfy its affordable housing obligation (South Side Weekly)
- Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle will soon select and announce that a third-party company will be hired to review Assessor Berrios’s assessment practices, which the Chicago Tribune showed to overvalue low-value houses, and undervalue high-value houses (ProPublica)
- Affordable housing developments funded in part by federal Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC) have led to increased property values and less crime when used in low-income, high-minority areas, and increase diversity/integration (Washington Post, Daniel Hemel)
- 1,676 apartments have opened in downtown in the first half of 2017, and there are 2,749 more units coming online, according to Luxury Living
- Decreasing service on any part of the Metra Electric District rail transit line is a disservice to residents, its history, and its potential to serve them (South Side Weekly)