Monday, June 22, 2009

WILL AN OLYMPIC MIRACLE PULL CHICAGO’S HOUSING OUT OF RECESSION?

Windy City pitchmen only had 45 minutes to extol the infinite virtues of Chicago to the nearly 100 International Olympic Committee members attending the recent schmooze-a-thon in Lausanne, Switzerland, but the outcome likely will have an epic effect on the city’s future assuming we win the bid for the Games in October.

If Chicago captures the $4.8-billion Olympic Games, it means much more than creating a new neighborhood planned to house some 16,000 athletes and officials by 2016 on the current site of Michael Reese Hospital on the Near South Side.

With Chicago’s real estate market in a throttle-down recession, every politician, condominium developer and construction lender in town has their collective fingers and toes crossed, while they pray for a President Obama-inspired Olympic miracle that will somehow launch the city’s cash-strapped economy to global nirvana.

Initial plans for the Olympic Village call for the city to raze the shuttered hospital complex and pump millions of dollars of infrastructure improvements into the 37-acre site near 31st Street and Cottage Grove Avenue. A Tax Increment Financing District already is in place for the village.

Plans call for developers to build the $1.1-billion Olympic Village in stages over a six-year period between 2010 and 2016. Some 2,000 to 3,500 housing units are planned across the giant 128-acre Olympic Village neighborhood just south of McCormick Place. The village would become a mixed-income residential community after the Games.

More than a dozen private developers already have responded to the city’s requests for qualifications (RFQ) from prospective bidders, and it is likely that each will select their own architects for the high-rises, so there is optimism for great design creativity.

As the economy improves, it is likely that a good percentage of the housing units in this brand new neighborhood could be sold to investors, rented during and after the games, and later converted to condominium ownership, experts say.

The Olympic buzz likely would attract thousands of permanent residents to the village and the surrounding Near South Side.

However, preservationists say the city could be squandering an important opportunity for environmental and social sustainability by not preserving some of the noteworthy buildings and courtyards on the hospital campus.

And, architectural critics note that Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius had a hand in designing the best contemporary buildings at Michael Reese, and they should be preserved.

Restoration specialist William Lavicka of Historic Boulevard Services says that rehabbing and reusing existing buildings will greatly reduced the need for costly new construction materials, lessen landfill waste and preserve important structures.

“An interwoven mix of restored vintage hospital buildings and new high-rises would create a much more interesting and affordable weave in the urban tapestry at the Olympic Village,” Lavicka said.

“It will take 100 years for Chicago to fill the void created by the razing thousands of vintage apartments over the past two decades on the South Side,” Lavicka said. “Why not save a few of these solid old brick and stone hospital buildings, rehab them at half the cost of new construction and provide hundreds of affordable housing units for use decades after the Games?”