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There’s just a single duplex left at 2038 W. Iowa St., a six-home development in the heart of Ukrainian Village. Igor Dolgikh, of Jameson Realty Group, confirmed the list price at $499,000 for the 2,400-square-foot home.
I lived in Ukrainian Village for most of the last three years, and my intersection at Chicago Avenue and Leavitt Street seemed to be the epicenter of residential development in the neighborhood.
It was a real treat, then, to cruise the neighborhood today and check in on developments (like the one picture above) that, when I lived in the ‘hood, had been little more than fenced lots decorated with brick piles.
Less than a block down from 2038 W. Iowa, I found an interesting delivery from Ralko Development at 2020 W. Iowa St. The project consists of six duplexes starting in the $470s (for a two-bedroom unit) up to almost $600,000 for a three-bedroom, 2,300-square-foot model.
Only one is spoken for; Ralko’s marketing agent tells us that rest of the units are about 45 days from occupancy.
There’s a lot of development going on in Ukrainian Village, both new construction and gut rehabs. Prices like the ones described above are at the high end of the spectrum, but buyers who might have been scratching their heads at the area’s neighborhood appeal should consider this: Last year, Dominick’s opened a new grocery store (with an in-store Starbucks) at Chicago Avenue and Damen Avenue. Say what you will about the deal, but the retailer’s entry is a barometer on the neighborhood that shouldn’t be overlooked.
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{ 32 comments }
I still remember when the ballfield across from Cabrini was suddenly converted to a shopping center, replete with a full – size Dominick’s. You didn’t have to be a real estate expert to speculate that there was definitely some kind of arrangement between city hall and the developers on that one – not long after, the units in Cabrini were silently and slowly emptied of their former residents.
My recollection is a bit hazy, but I remember the ball field being a block east of where the shopping center is on Division.
The transformation of Cabrini wasn’t a stealth project. It was the result of a very public process. That’s not to say that there weren’t some insider deals, of course.
You may be correct, but I also remember the townhouse units going up a few blocks north on Clyborn, and this was before the shopping center had broken ground. I don’t know, the timing was a little too perfect to my eyes – but perhaps it was just extremely fortuitous timing on the developer’s part (cough).
$470K for 2BR? Wow, that is a bit much, especially considering this market.
Jeff said:
$470K for 2BR? Wow, that is a bit much, especially considering this market.
–
yep, you will need a jumbo loan to get a 2 bedroom apartm….sorry condo!
The world comes over to YO. Zekas celebrates.
Zekas laments the accelerating advent of the post-literate world.
The only non joking use of the word “YO” that is appropriate is in old Westerns. Particularly the John Ford Cavalry Trilogy.
Of course to do it correctly one needs to be Harry Carey Jr(the actor) sitting with a piece of hay hanging out of his mouth. “YO”.
There is great potential for this unit to appreciate in the next few years. $470k is a great deal for this unit; it would surely be priced higher if the market were better – and it would sell too. You won’t need a jumbo loan either if you put 20% down. Expect a rich foreigner to purchase this unit as an investment in the near future.
I remember a very different Ukranian Village from just ten years ago… Automobile arson would occur almost every weekend on the street. Division Street and Chicago Ave. were absolutely scary and filled with junkies shooting up, bag ladies, and thugs.
What makes the fast-paced gentrification of Ukranian Village interesting to me is that it seems to be one of the first young neighborhoods to do so without good access to the “L” (or in the case of eastern Lincoln Park, a whole mess of express busses). Eastern Humboldt Park is really changing now too. How far will it go? Will the ever-hopefull East Garfield Park boosters get their day in the sun?
UptownR – my thoughts exactly. How did this neighborhood “come up” without a convenient L stop?
It was the lack of transit options that prompted me to move OUT of the neighborhood earlier this year.
not much of a mystery IMO, it’s simply people who got bumped out of the neighboring areas with better transit when prices/rents increased, but didn’t want to leave the larger area altogether.
public transportation is huge but it ain’t everything, as it doesn’t explain much of Lincoln Square, or the original Roscoe Village strip – the Brown line is sluggish, and you’re miles from the expressway or LSD.
The Brown Line may be sluggish, but it is a gentrification incubator. Nearly every neighborhood near a Brown Line stop has gentrified greatly. There was even an article in Preservation Magazine a few years ago featuring the Brown Line and its effect on the surrounding neighborhoods.
Roscoe Village is a good example of a gentrified neighborhood with poor access to the “L”. But this lack of transit is definitely one of the reason I’ve never lived there.
it’s true, but I don’t see gentrification being the “win win” many do. Neighborhoods can improve without wide-scale displacement – the City should be using all of the extra property taxes gentrification has brought to improve CTA service for the displaced IMO.
Look Carter the Martyr is back.
“Fire Bad, Gentrication bad, FrankenCarter hate gentrification”, aaaaaaaaaaaaagh.”
The city should use property taxes to improve the CTA? The CTA is a REGIONAL entity and while I would have no problem with city money funding station renovation beyond that it is other entities that need to fund it.
The true use of additional property taxes should be to give generous contracts to mayoral supporters and relatives. I believe I just found a distant connection to “Da Mare” and I will be expecting the Guinness concession at the next Taste of Chicago. Cousin Rich, you know I will spend the money in Chicago and send some to some of your nephews as “consultants”. You know how to contact me!
You are a broken & shrill record, but hey, it’s what we’ve come to expect from you.
The City should be kicking in money far above and beyond the paltry 2 million or so bucks it does no.
Funny, it’s always someone else’s bill/problem with you pro-gentrification-at-any-price folks, up to but not including the need to give developers our tax dollars.
WAAAAAAAAAAGH,
too bad you got priced outta “Lakeview”. Notice how I said it in the appropriate way. By my definition not by YOUR definition of “Lake View”
What people have come to expect from me is witty and incisive commentary that brings light to the darkness. You are nothing more than a verbose “Huh” or “Jane” who criticizes yet offers little actual knowledge or facts or even dare I say “experience”.
What we have come to expect from you is “feelings oh oh feelings” and nostalgia for a city that was never as good as you remember and can never return.
City tax dollars fund lotsa stuff at the CTA. Security, some station improvements or renovations and more. You don’t know that though because you went to St. Ignatius and while you picked up the “social justice” concepts from the Jesuits you missed the innovative thinking they are famous for. My Catholic education taut me how to find pussycats and tink………unlike yours. Just call me Tweety Pirate from now on.
Should the city fund AIDS research? I remember discussions about that in the past. The CTA is a regional entity so unless every suburb served by the CTA is going to start kicking in an appropriate amount of cash then the City of Chicago should not be left paying the freight. Different governmental entities have different responsibilities. Should the City build a new County Jail? Should the City fund research into cancer drugs? Are my blues existential?
As for TIF’s your general argument has valid points. What is wrong is assuming that every TIF dollar spent is somehow wasted. My guess is that merely 2 outta 10 dollars fall into that category.
The other 2 will hopefully be lining my pockets after I explain to “da mare” how we are cousins.
I’m going to do something that’s unusual for me and come to the defense of a commenter – Carter.
He’s offered more here than just feelings and nostalgie.
Besides saying that neighborhoods adjacent to “better” neighborhoods benefited from people being “displaced” I see nothing Carter offered that was constructive or even borderline factual.
Lincoln Square is virtually in the middle of LSD and the Expressway and the Brown line is clearly a major catalyst for “gentrification”. If you need to travel downtown by train or car or to the airport the same way it is a decent, if imperfect, compromise.
As for neighborhoods improving without widespread displacement what FrankenCarter fails to recognize is that generally people move frequently in this country. Poorer folks generally move more often unless they are in some form of “subsidized” housing. While gentrification does “displace” some people what happens more often is that the people who are leaving are not being replaced by people of a similar background.
Their is a small courtyard building by me that was converted to condos recently. I know the woman who managed the property for years. The building was entirely filled with Mexican and Central American immigrants who generally stayed for less than a year then moved on. Sometimes to other city neighborhoods, but also to some suburbs. In the years she managed the place no person every stayed longer than 18 months and the building seldom had a vacancy lasting more than a few days.
Get the point? The people who were displaced by the “condo conversion” would have moved anyway. They just weren’t replaced.
“Feelings, oh oh feelings. I miss my Lake View when Cubs games cost a few bucks. Feelings, oh oh feelings, I hate the condos cause they cost too many bucks. Feelings, oh oh feelings, I hate those taxpayers cause they changed the feel of my hood……….feelings……..”
I feel aggressive today. Better go find a nice Uptown Hooker. It could be awhile. Perhaps I will find the real Santa Claus first.
This whole “The CTA is a regional transit authority so the city has no need to fund it” business is pretty stale. How many miles of CTA bus routes and el lines are outside the city as a proportion of total miles? The suburbs shouldn’t get a free pass, but it’s just ridiculous to claim that the CTA is anything but a Chicago transit system that occasionally stumbles into Evanston and Oak Park.
Yet somehow it is more important for the taxpayers to cough up sixty million dollars to plunk new construction on top of Union Station (which will pay itself off in how long, exactly?) than to invest in a transit system that is overwhelmingly used by city residents. Compared to other American cities with superior transit, the City of Chicago contributes almost nothing to the CTA.
Abner,
By your logic the city should start funding the Cook County Forest Preserve, since pieces of it lie within the city limits.
The city should also pay to rebuild any of the various expressways in Chicago…….same logic……or lack of it.
Let’s buy the Water Reclamation district a new office building. I could go on and on and on and on.
Joe, this is the single silliest argument you have ever made on this site. First, nobody said the city should fund the entire CTA, just that it certainly ought to be chipping in a few hundred million more than it currently does. Other cities take much more responsibility for their transit systems, including New York, and mayoral caprice alone has bred the City of Chicago’s current position on the subject. Second, although the large majority of Cook County Forest Preserve land lies outside the city, almost all CTA route miles are inside the city, not just “pieces,” and the difference is much larger when you take frequency and hours of operation into account. If you think there are other reasons the city shouldn’t contribute more than security to the CTA, by all means explain them, but if it’s because you’re afraid of subsidizing those grubby suburbs, you’re just off your rocker.
irishpirate,
You’re saying that the city shouldn’t be contributing to the CTA because the CTA is more analogous to the federal highway system than to Streets & Sanitation? That’s a judgment call, but as I keep saying, Chicago would not exactly be the first city to decide it’s worth some scratch to prop up the transit system. In fact, cities elsewhere are actually deciding to EXPAND their transit systems, partially at their own expense. You may think it’s nuts for the city to try to pay for the infrastructure its residents use, but that would put you in the minority these days, as would be obvious if you ever ventured out of your cove.
Abner,
Well, I think I’ve made sillier arguments …
I’m in the dark about the legality of the city’s ability to provide funds to the CTA. Do you have a firm grip on it? The CTA is a municipal corporation, which generates funds internally (fares, advertising, etc.) and from the RTA and from federal etc. grants.
I’m not aware that the city directly funds any of the CTA’s current operations. Can you enlighten me on that? And can I have your considered and I’m certain knowledgeable opinion on whether the City of Chicago has the legal authority to fund the CTA? And, of course, you know for a fact that other cities that fund “their” systems better aren’t operating against different legal constraints than Chicago is.
And I haven’t even touched the very serious public policy arguments against the city providing funding to the CTA.
And where, pray tell, would the City get hundreds of millions of dollars? I know – from the evil developers.
It seems your idea of “silly” is anything that takes account of some of the very real complexities in this world rather than in the cardboard cutout version of it that too many readers of this site inhabit.
Overview of City of Chicago Budget.
“A few hundred million more”.
HMMMM, 3.2 BILLION dollar budget. Let’s just add 320 million to the budget and give it to the CTA.
Your argument stinks like an alewife on Oak Street Beach circa 1973. However, your “cove” remark was funny. I hope it was intentional.
My “few hundred million” remark was intentionally flippant. However, if pressed, I certainly wouldn’t miss half the TIF districts in the city, which would amount to about that sum. Of course, you could leave the TIFs in and use them for their actual purpose–infrastructure improvements that increase property values–instead of such dynamo ventures as the Old Post Office mangling. Using TIF money for CTA capital expenses such as station rehabs wouldn’t allow resources to be shifted to operating expenses, as far as I know, but it could sure improve things anyway.
Joe, my assumption is based on the fact that the City currently contributes a token $3 million to the CTA’s operating expenses, and I know of no reason why it would be prohibited from increasing that amount. If you know of some reason that you have been cleverly waiting to bring forth until later, by all means spare me the suspense, but Daley’s ready response has always been “Not my job,” which seems to have caught on quite successfully.
The most sound argument that I’m aware of against using the city budget as a funding source is that city budgets are fickle and transit needs aren’t. Hence the push to make transit budgets rely on dedicated sources (like the real estate transfer tax in NYC). Unfortunately, we have done a great job of demonstrating that so-called dedicated sources have a way of turning into the political footballs they were intended to avoid.
Abner,
The $3 million from the city, and $2 million from the county, were mandated by the Metropolitan Transit Authority Act, which created the CTA. Both the CTA and the City of Chicago are creatures of the state, and have only the powers granted them by the state.
The CTA does have dedicated tax funding in the form of a share of special sales tax revenues from the RTA.
I’m not going to debate the legal and institutional backdrop, which I don’t fully understand. I was merely suggesting that you’re arguing from the assumption that there are no constraints and that money can be moved around at whim.
“Lincoln Square is virtually in the middle of LSD and the Expressway and the Brown line is clearly a major catalyst for “gentrification”.”
Apparently beyond being in need of a new needle for his broken record, pirate is also in need of new eyeglasses.
“virtually” in the middle of Lake Shore Drive?
“virtually” in the middle of the Expressway?
LOL, great stuff, more drugged out in its surrealism than Hunter Thompson could have dreamed of.
and I’m proud so you vehemently disagree with most of my views, it lends them credence when contrasted with the same old – same old you like to think is wit.
You want wit? From one dumb mick to another, here you go:
“When some people die, it’s time to be sad. But when other people die, like really evil people, or the Irish, it’s time to celebrate.”
Jimmy Bender, from the show “Greg the Bunny”
I suspect Joe is right that there are budgetary constraints, but I also suspect that were Daley to finally come out of his cocoon and to offer to pay a more realistic share of the CTA, that Springfield would be all ears.
The celebration line is good Carter. I even posted it on my website the other day about a dead soldier who used it in his “final post”. Check out the post or google “Andrew Olmsted”. The man made me laugh from beyond the grave. Tragic loss.
As for the being in the middle comment what I meant and what you clearly know I meant, is that Lincoln Square is geographically roughly evenly between the expressway and Lake Shore Drive. Of course you needed some lame attack on me and found one.
One thing that would be nice is if we could edit our posts on this site. No bigge though. Just makes it more fun.
Now let’s raise Carter’s property taxes to fund the CTA. Not mine though. Don’t tax me, don’t tax thee, tax that Carter behind the tree.
“As for the being in the middle comment what I meant and what you clearly know I meant, is that Lincoln Square is geographically roughly evenly between the expressway and Lake Shore Drive”
It’s still a clueless observation, as you were attempting to champion LS’s proximity to those roadways (presumably). See how long on a Sat afternoon it takes you to get to either LSD or 90/94 from the Western stop.
back to the south side witcha, your north side chops are lacking (though you might be able to give Jesse a run for his money with those rhyming skills).
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