By LORRAINE SWANSON
Editor
The Chicago City Council’s Committee on Finance deferred a proposed ordinance to amend the Wilson Yard TIF District to Wednesday, Feb. 10.
The proposed ordinance requesting a second amendment to the Wilson Yard TIF Redevelopment Plan and Project was held in a committee at the request of Ald. Helen Shiller (46th) at the finance committee’s Monday meeting.
The ordinance amends the Wilson Yard TIF District boundaries to create a new TIF district encompassing the former Columbus-Maryville property at 810 W. Montrose and a portion of Clarendon Park.
Sedgwick Properties Development Corporation wants to build a private, $350 million mixed-use, planned development tentatively named “Lakeview Station.” Plans call for two residential towers up to 30 and 39 stories of market-rate condominiums and rental units, a bank of five-story townhomes along Agatite, and a 10-story affordable senior housing building facing Clarendon. The development will also include a high-end supermarket and health floor on the ground floor of the residential towers, and a boutique hotel across the street.
Sale of the property is contingent upon getting a new TIF district and other zoning changes. Sedgwick is looking to close the sale with the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus by spring. The developer, which will gain between $40 million and $50 million in tax increment financing, has promised the community an immediate infusion of $6 million to the Chicago Park District for restoration of Clarendon Park, including improvements on its aging field house.
Jay Feeley, director of business development for Sedgwick, said he did not know why the proposed amendment was deferred on Monday. The recommendation to execute authority to redraw the Wilson Yard TIF District boundaries is expected to clear the finance committee on Wednesday, before the regular City Council monthly meeting.
“I’m not sure why it happened, but everything is moving forward as planned,” Feeley said. “Everything is still on track.”
The developer has been meeting with neighborhood condominium associations and block clubs over the past several months to discuss its plans for the project and get community feedback,.
Sedgwick President Marty Paris said the company hopes to start demolishing the existing buildings by May or June, with plans to begin construction by the end of the year. Before that can happen, the project is subject to approvals by the Chicago Plan Commission and the Community Development Commission.
A draft of a TIF eligibility study needed to gain approval by the CDC as new TIF district has already been completed.
Paris has said that without TIF financing, proceeding with the retail and residential development will be difficult.
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This is absolutely insane. I can’t think of a worse use for public money then to divert another $50M or so of our tax revenues to build more redundant luxury OR “affordable” housing.
In other words, sale of the property and progress of this monster development depends upon tens of millions of dollars in gifts from the taxpayers.
Do we have enough failed TIF districts in this city? Are not enough poor and lower-middle income homeowners being blown out of their homes by the latest round of confiscatory property tax hikes, to offset the loss to city coffers from the quilt of TIF districts and other corporate “gimmes”?
The pain and suffering of tens of thousands of very vulnerable citizens- poor, near-poor, and elderly homeowners, AND the tenants of large apartment buildings that have had their taxes doubled twice in the past ten years- is very real, and directly proportionate to the amount of tax revenues diverted from necessary services to the back pockets of TIF district developers.
How many poor homeowners received crushing property tax bills for every “affordable” apartment that cost $400K or so per unit to build? Will the Garfield Park and Englewood homeowners who received tax bills as high as $5000 for shanties that they worked low-wage jobs for years to buy, and that might fetch all of $40,000, be able to score one of the “affordable” apartments at Wilson Yards or some other extravagant “affordable” development that their taxes paid to build?
In any case, it is INSANE to build two highrise condo towers over 35 stories tall, and luxury townhouses as well, in a housing market glutted with unsold housing, FHA loans whose combined delinquency and default rate is approaching 24%, and dozens of highrise condo mega-developments in the South Loop languish, laden with defaults and liens and foreclosures.
It will take 20 years to clean up the mess created by government-sponsored and financed housing development and policy-driven EZ lending as it is. Are our local leaders still so crazy and deluded as to think that they will ever realize any return on this massive mis-investment of public money but another half-empty development laden with debt?
If you are alert, you will notice that the more government-financed housing we build, and the more FHA loans are written to help half-qualified buyers purchased this overpriced crap, and the more “affordable” housing we subsidize and build- the more people have to pay for housing as a percentage of their incomes, and the more homeless people we have.
Let’s not make any more poor and near-poor homeowners homeless, and lets not bankrupt more private landlords who are providing reasonable, decent housing at reasonable prices without the help of the taxpayers.
Laura,
Your well written letter needs to be sent to City Council and anyone else involved in this boondoogle proposed project. THANK YOU for writing this!
I own a condo right across the street for 20 years and I am really against more projects from goverment financed money. I have seen what they do and what they have turned our Uptown area into. Gangs, Crime and everything else these buildings bring with them. Its starting to look like the old Stateway Garden projects. The streets in the summer are already packed from traffic to the lake. We do not need more. I might even sell and get the hell our of this area and what this Dam Helen Shiller has turned it into………We are all against it….
Laura,
I appreciate your letter. You are very well spoken and hit some very key issues on this matter, without sounding like a raving lunatic, like most of the excessively angry and belligerent folks who are also unhappy with what is going on.
I live in that neighborhood and am part of the Wilson Yard TIF, and while I do support some sort of development on that site, this proposed project is just too overwhelming for the area. I can’t possibly imagine the congestion another 850 apartments will create at Montrose and in the neighborhoods immediately surrounding it. Does no one care that that area cannot possibly sustain such a major increase in density? Not to mention that the size of that building, will tower over every other building on the north lake front and block the sun from the entire neighborhood behind it. You may not realize that in that neighborhood bordered by Montrose/Clarendon/Sheridan/Wilson none of those buildings are over 4 stories? All of the high rise buildings along Montrose and the lake in the area, if I”m correct, are in the neighborhood of 25 or so stories. Not to mention, that right across the street there is already a grocery story. a Jewel/Osco, and a gym,a World Gym. Both of those businesses have been there for years. It would really be nice if someone was truly responsible for some proper urban planning in this city. It appears that all you have to do to get your way is throw a few bucks at an alderman or two and you can do whatever you like with no thought of the repercussions for the neighborhoods.
I completely agree with what you have to say, my tax bill just went up, and it is so frustrating. Nearly two-thirds of my property taxes go into that TIF, NOT into the schools or parks where it should. I too agree with P Sullivan and your letter should be read to the City Council. Although, I fear that it won’t do much good, since they seem to just rubber stamp everything at a whim. My only hope is that although the proposed building is 40 stories, that in actuality it will wind up being more in line with what is already in the area and wind up at 20-25 stories.
BAK,
I absolutely concur with you on every point you made in your fine post.
I am extremely familiar with all the lakefront neighborhoods, and can say I’ve walked through almost every large building in them, and know your area very well. I absolutely agree that the buildings planned will be ludicrously out of scale with the existing development and will vastly increase congestion, as well as add more redundant retail. And of course they will further flood the market with nearly a thousand condos, in a context where newly built high rise developments such as the Clarovista (Granville & Broadway) and Catalpa Gardens (Ardmore just east of Broadway) are mostly unsold, burdened with dozens of foreclosures and liens, and already deteriorating because of the debt burdens on them. Add the disaster area that is the South Loop with its dozens of new and massive high rises with their hundreds of unsold apartments, and the current economic condition and credit debacle of the U.S. as a whole, and you can see that economic considerations do not weigh with the developer, who clearly will be taking no risk in this deal. The risk will be born by the taxpayers and they will lose, while the developer is paid handsomely and shielded from all risk.
We will most likely not begin to recover from the housing and credit rampage of the 2000s until 2015 earliest. Incomes are dropping, TAX REVENUES are dropping, and municipalities are more challenged every day in meeting their basic needs and paying for essential civil services. Illinois is one of the five states in the most critical financial condition. Both the city of Chicago and the State of Illinois are being forced to cut essential services to the bone, and municipalities across the state are jacking property taxes to confiscatory levels, as well as raising other taxes and fees, to meet steep shortfalls. Never mind that pushing homeowners to the point where they simply cannot pay any more and will be forced to sell at steep losses or simply walk away, will not enhance revenues but will likely result in even lower tax revenues.
And in this context, our leaders hatch yet another taxpayer-funded TIF boondogle. TIF districts almost always fail of their stated purpose. Far from building the tax base while eradicating blight, as they were intended to do, they are accomplishing exactly the opposite. They are bankrupting cities, and the smaller and poorer the city is, the more it suffers financially from the diversion of taxes from essential services to TIF developers. Additionally, a TIF almost always fosters inappropriate development that does more to blight an area than improve it. Look at the Berwyn-Broadway TIF, which gave us the Strip Mall Slum at the corner of Broadway and Berwyn; three corners blighted with ugly strip malls or suburban style supermarkets utterly inappropriate for an urban environment. Same thing with the Ashland/Diversey TIF, and in spades for the sadly botched development at Howard and Clark via the Howard/Paulina TIF.
This TIF will only deface your neighborhood with inappropriate and obselete buildings- for 40 story high rises are slated for obsolescence in an energy-constrained future- and they will never generate taxes equal to those that were diverted from our essential services to build them.
Worse, they will only increase the poverty and distress in this city and beyond. I personally know of three people who are being forced to sell their homes because their taxes have doubled TWICE in 6 years. These people are responsible middle income homeowners who are prudent and careful to buy well within their means. They could not be expected to anticipate such a drastic increase in their housing expense- that’s why they bought homes, to have a place to live they could keep expenses under control in and eventually OWN. Well, that won’t happen for these people and thousands of other homeowners. They will be forced to sell at a most inopportune time, simply because they did not foresee their taxes increasing from $1800 to $8500 (this is really true!)in six years, or that they would be hit with bills of $5000 for little shanties that are barely fit for human habitation…. to build “affordable” apartments for very privileged tenants.