Wicker Park Apartments received a permit on Friday for its third TOD residence — less than a block from the Grand Blue Line station, which has 24-hour rapid transit service to the Fulton River District. The 9-story building will be constructed at 710 W Grand Ave, requiring the demolition of an existing, 6-unit residential building.
The new building, dubbed “710 Grand”, will have 104 apartments, retail on the first floor, and space for 80 bicycles and 46 cars. (That probably isn’t enough spaces for bikes.)
Wicker Park Apartments’s previous two TOD buildings are at 1515 W Haddon Ave. which was completed this year, and at 1056 N Ashland Ave., in a former church that will be renovated. The Ashland building hasn’t yet received the complete permits for that work, only this permit to remove and recycle interior fixtures and materials.
The new building was proposed in August 2015 and approved by the Plan Commission in February. The architect is Brininstool & Lynch who also designed “The L”, a TOD building in Logan Square at the California Blue Line station, 1515 W Haddon, and another TOD building under construction at 1920 N Milwaukee Ave.
These 104 new units are added to the 227 units that were added this summer to the two new Kenect buildings across the intersection. Along with the hundreds of existing units within a couple of blocks, it’s time the Chicago Transit Authority consider reopening three of the station stairwells that are still closed.
The only open station entrances are on the west side of Halsted. There should be an east side entrance, and an entrance where commuters board the eastbound 65 Grand bus.
The station closed in 1992 and reopened in 1999 to serve the young professionals who had moved in nearby. Three stairwells were filled in and the corridors were sealed off and are used for storage.
Station ridership is up over nine percent from 2014 to 2015, and 3,000 people board here each weekday — a far greater number than the 850 who did in 1992.