Our development map now extends beyond Cook County

What property will you find in Lake County, Indiana?

For the first time in our 10-year history, Chicago Cityscape has parcel and zoning data for an area outside of Cook County. We selected Lake County, Indiana — home to Dyer, Munster, Gary, Hammond, and Whiting— as our first expansion step.

Starting today, Chicago Cityscape members can look up any address, municipality, or future or existing train station in Lake County, Indiana, and get some of the same information as they can for Cook County properties.

Lake County is the only county in Indiana that borders Chicago, and it’s the first county (aside from Cook) that one will encounter when riding the South Shore Line train from Chicago. Lake County’s adjacency to Chicago and Cook County, connection to the Chicago job and housing market, and the construction of a brand new train extension there led us to decide to make it our first geographic expansion of property and zoning data.

The South Shore Line is an Indiana-owned commuter train operator. Their main line is a historic electric interurban that runs from Chicago to South Bend, Indiana, stopping in Hammond, Gary, Michigan City, and near the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, among other places. Next spring, the whole new branch called Monon Corridor will open, reaching four new stations in three municipalities (Hammond; Munster and Dyer are two communities to be newly served by the train).

• View our map of the new stations

To spur development near these and other South Shore Line stations, the state of Indiana adopted a “transit development district” program that works much like TIF districts.

• View our map of the Munster-Dyer TDD.

The new stations are expected to attract new investment in mixed-used residential and commercial developments and funds generated in the TDDs can help pay for infrastructure improvements needed to accommodate the additional homes and businesses.

Most of the stations are surrounded by vacant and low-density residential and commercial uses. And Chicago Cityscape members rely on our real estate information platform to help them identify new opportunities. Now they will be able to use many of the same tools, like Property Finder, to identify those opportunities just over the state line.

Our development map now extends beyond Cook County was originally published in Chicago Cityscape’s Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.