Woodlawn apartment building will be 70% affordable

A team of developers planning a 58-unit apartment building in Woodlawn near the Obama Presidential Center will market 70 percent of the units as affordable housing.

The Michaels Organization and DL3 Realty said 41 of the units in Park Station Lofts will be set aside for households earning between 30 and 60 percent of the area’s median income, the Chicago Business Journal reported. The remaining 17 will be offered at market rate and all will range from one-bedroom units to three-bedrooms.

The project, which will rise at the southeast corner of East 63rd Street and South Maryland Avenue, will be the first in the area to meet the requirements of the Woodlawn Affordable Housing Preservation Ordinance, which aims to address potential gentrification stemming from the Obama center.

At the Obama center’s groundbreaking in September, a group of activists gathered to call for affordable housing protection in the South Shore neighborhood.

“This is the community that sent [former President Barack Obama] to Springfield,” South Shore resident Dixon Romeo said at the time. “This is the community that sent him to the Senate. This is the community that sent him to the White House, and we should be the community that gets to stay and benefit from the presidential center,”

Park Station Lofts will have 3,500 square feet of ground-floor retail, two live-work spaces and community amenity space. The building will also have a business center where residents can take business-development and wealth-building classes.

Financing for the $35 million development includes a $19.4 million Low Income Housing Tax Credit Equity, $5 million in tax increment financing and $6.5 million from the city of Chicago’s HOME funds.

Park Station Lofts is expected to be completed by November 2023, two years before the presidential center.

— Victoria Pruitt