McCaffrey Interests and The Community Builders are proposing at least 770 apartments and 107 townhomes for the former site of the Harold L. Ickes public housing complex on the Near South Side.
Chicago-based McCaffrey and Boston-based Community Builders will bring their “Southbridge” development proposal before the Chicago Plan Commission next week, according to the Chicago Tribune.
If approved, the $90 million first phase of the 11-acre development could get underway next year. It would include two six-story apartment buildings with 200 combined units, including 68 apartments administered by the Chicago Housing Authority and 18 others offered at affordable rates.
The plan also calls for about 60,000 square feet of retail space on the site, which is bound by Cermak Road, the Stevenson Expressway, State and Federal streets.
The two developers were chosen in 2015 to redevelop the site as one of the last major pieces of former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s Plan for Transformation, which spurred the demolition of the 11 Ickes Homes buildings between 2009 and 2011.
McCaffrey lists 42 properties in its portfolio, including 16 in Chicago. The company owns the Southgate Market and Roosevelt Collection in the South Loop, and its nearly 600-unit Lincoln Common mixed-use development is under construction in Lincoln Park.
McCaffrey also was behind the ambitious initial plan to create a new neighborhood on the site of the former U.S. Steel South Works on the Southeast Side. The developer eventually backed out, though, and a subsequent proposal for the 440-acre lakefront parcel fell through this year.
About a half-mile north of the Ickes site, Related Midwest is drawing up plans for The 78, which would create millions of square feet of new residential and office space on a barren 62-acre slice of the South Loop. [Chicago Tribune] — Alex Nitkin