Plans for redeveloping Cabrini-Green always have left many to wonder how well its poorer residents can live alongside owners of the $350,000 town homes springing up in the neighborhood.
This week’s settlement of a lawsuit that had blocked demolition of Cabrini buildings raises a new question: Can public-housing leaders and the pin-striped developers who control land in the area work together?
One of the key elements of the consent decree approved this week would give the Cabrini-Green tenant council a 51 percent interest in the general partnership that will oversee redevelopment of the area.
The Local Advisory Council would get an undetermined share of developers’ fees and profits and a say in who builds and manages the new units to be constructed where six high-rises are coming down.
While that appears to be a boon for residents, it gave pause to private developers who had planned to offer proposals for rebuilding the area into a mix of market-rate and low-income housing.
Developer Dan McLean, who is building a major project adjacent to Cabrini-Green and who was part of a team that submitted a previous plan for its renovation, said that the involvement of the tenant council in a development role could cause complications.
“I’m happy they came to an agreement, but I would be cautious in people’s ability to go forward under these kinds of regulations,” he said.
McLean said his team’s plan for redevelopment, which at one point was the front-runner for approval, was officially rejected by the Chicago Housing Authority a couple of months ago when the agency decided that the previous submissions were invalid under new conditions.
He said he expects to get an invitation to resubmit a plan but is unsure whether he will do so.
Another potential bidder, Peter Holsten of Holsten Real Estate Development Corp., was more open to the parameters set out in the decree, which is expected to be approved by two federal judges and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
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“We would love to be the developer on their future projects,” Holsten said.
Resident leaders and their attorney were ecstatic that they had roughly tripled the number of housing units for very poor residents–from between 300 and 350 units to about 900. Combined with units available to the working poor, Cabrini residents could end up occupying nearly half of the 2,310 new units to be built.
But other residents were more resigned in their assessment of the deal. “Whether it’s a good or bad idea, I don’t think there’s much we can do about it. Money is power, and this real estate is money,” said Brent Smith, 37, who grew up in Cabrini and is a maintenance worker at Northwestern University’s Evanston campus.
“Cabrini is as good as gone. Once they start closing those buildings, it’s like a snowball–no ifs, ands or protests,” Smith said from a lawn chair outside one of the targeted high-rises.
Even so, he added, “Long as you pay your rent, eventually they’re going to build low-income housing, and if you’re one of the lucky ones, you’ll get one of these nice new houses.”
While new public-housing units have yet to be built, private development has continued in the Cabrini area. Dozens of private homes have gone up, and a Dominick’s grocery store is scheduled to open just north of the demolition sites at the end of September.
The six high-rises set for demolition will be razed in two phases. Buildings at 1150-60 N. Sedgwick St. and 1158 N. Cleveland Ave. could come down by late summer or early fall, “possibly by implosion,” said David Tkac, Mayor Richard M. Daley’s point man on the Cabrini redevelopment. A more recently vacated building at 500-502 W. Oak St. could follow soon after.
Under the decree, the second phase of demolition won’t begin until 300 public-housing units are under construction in the neighborhood, among other criteria.