Updates across the board: Incentives Checker, transit projects, zoning, brownfields, and Indiana

Despite a break from making improvements to the platform in May, we still managed to make an impressive set of updates and new features to Chicago Cityscape in the second quarter of 2023.

Let us show you: join our next Lunch Break Update, scheduled on Wednesday, July 26, at 12 PM, where we’ll demonstrate a few of these changes and have a live Q&A.

Register on Zoom to get the calendar invitation and link. Email us, info@chicagocityscape.com, to suggest what in this update you’d like to see demonstrated live.

Incentives Checker

Incentives Checker (IC) remains one of our strongest and most-appreciated exclusive features. In every Property Report you look up in Illinois it checks the geographic eligibility for up to 34 incentives.

In the last quarter, Chicago Cityscape…

• updated IC to provide more clarity on certain incentives and provide more links to external resources. Neighborhood Opportunity Fund expanded to include the corridors as well as the zones.
• updated IC to add the new-ish South Suburban property tax abatement program (passed as part of the Southland Reactivation Act, taking effect in 2022).
• shows the number of incentives in the Property Report’s table of contents, augmenting the amount of “quick view” data in the table of contents (other data shown in the table of contents is the current zoning district and the ward and alderperson’s name).

Brand new transit data

The Regional Transportation Authority is an oversight agency for the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), Metra, and Pace. Among its responsibilities is reviewing and approving budgets, and coordinating grants and capital (new construction and maintennace) projects on behalf of the three “service boards”.

RTA now publishes a database of the capital projects that CTA, Metra, and Pace are engaged in. Some of them are of the exciting variety that have land use and urban planning implications — say, the Red Line Extension — while many are routine “state of good repair” updates to bus garages.

Chicago Cityscape has added the entire database of current projects to Transportation Snapshot for every Property Report lookup in the six-county region, for both reasons: to show the future land use changes as well as show the methodical maintenance of our region’s transit system.

Here’s how to find the transit projects

1. Look up a Property Report (by searching for an address or PIN).
2. In the Table of Contents, look for “Additional Snapshots” and select “Transportation Snapshot”.
3. Once Transportation Snapshot opens, scroll down to see the map and data table under the heading “Transit Projects”.

Every project has a “learn more” link that goes to the RTA’s projects dashboard where there’s a project description. Use the filters to show projects being executed by only a specific transit agency. As always, the data is available for download by our members.

New requirements for new construction

Location status for Chicago’s Transportation Demand Management guidelines is shown in Property Report. Find it both in the extended Zoning Assessment and TOD Status sections.

Not familiar with the new TDM guidelines? Read more about Chicago’s new required TDM guidelines for new construction projects near rail stations.

Other data updates

• Zoning map in Chicago updated for June 2023 (this appears automatically in Property Report lookups). We also have a new Knowledge Base article that describes potential errors that can be present in the Chicago zoning map.
• Council districts were added for Hammond and Michigan City, Indiana, which is in addition to the Transit Development Districts and South Shore Line extension, double tracking, and new stations under construction that we added earlier this year. Does this mean that we’re slowly moving into Northwest Indiana? Maybe.

• We’ve finished integrating the 300 Cook County-identified brownfield sites in the South and West Suburbs, some of which are municipally owned and some of which are eligible for redevelopment tax abatement incentives through the incentive program described above. To show these sites, use the Cook County-minus-Chicago map and turn on the “Brownfield site” filter in Property Finder.
• Energy benchmarking data for 2021 was incorporated. Owners of buildings with 50,000 s.f. or more of floor area must annually submit energy and water use data to the City of Chicago. Every time you look up a Property Report it will check whether there is energy benchmarking data reported nearby. One way to use this data is as part of a due diligence process when buying or selling a property to understand its lifecycle costs and any cost-saving opportunities.

Updates across the board: Incentives Checker, transit projects, zoning, brownfields, and Indiana was originally published in Chicago Cityscape’s Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.