Some Chicago developers are feeling boxed in — as will their newest project’s residents — while they work to deliver an unconventional housing plan.
Darryl Burton and Anthony Casboni are taking the final steps to build new homes out of 40-foot-long shipping containers in a South Side neighborhood, yet encountered a lag in receiving city approvals due to a flood of applications for other developments, Block Club Chicago reported.
They plan to break ground in early 2023 on Vincennes Village, a 12-unit complex being marketed as luxury container homes at 7231 South Vincennes Avenue. The development team initially wanted to welcome the first residents by Christmas this year, but snags with the city building department pushed back their completion date.
Blueprints for the project haven’t been given the final blessing for Chicago’s building department because it’s received an influx of requests from other builders, Burton said.
The homes will each be made from five 40-foot-long shipping containers, have three or four bedrooms and total about 1,800 square feet. Each will sit on a standard Chicago lot and is expected to be marketed for $300,000.
They will be “colorful, with industrial materials and a lot of light,” Burton said. Preliminary designs show houses with a mix of different exterior walls, rooftop decks, breezeways and attached garages.
Casboni’s family previously owned the Vincennes Discount Center that served the area’s retail market for six decades on the property before it was demolished by the family in 2001, and the family currently owns the land to the north and south of the property.
Casboni and his late brothers built eight homes on the land after tearing down the store in 2001, but had to pause their plans when the real estate market crashed in 2008. Burton helped the family resume development plans.
Casboni and Burton, the owner of Global Financial Services, haven’t built container homes before, but the pair has been scouting out similar developments across the country for inspiration. New container homes will use excess train containers that are “permeating our planet,” Casboni said, as well as creating housing on the South Side.
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— Victoria Pruitt