View Winnetka teardowns & new construction in a larger map
The current issue of Crain’s Chicago Business (subscription required) reports a moderate resurgence of the teardown phenomenon in suburban Cook County.
According to the Crain’s article, which was based on a recent study published by Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, Winnetka earned the “teardown capital” moniker by seeing nearly 8% of its residential parcels redeveloped from 2000 to 2010.
Several years ago we linked to another study (no longer online) finding that nearly 10% of Winnetka’s housing stock had been torn down and rebuilt between 1996 and 2003. We also suggested that, despite the to-be-expected preservationist lamentations cited in the Crain’s article, most of the redevelopment had been relatively contextual, and not Unkenilworthy.
The above map, which we created several years ago, plots Winnetka teardowns from 2005 to 2007, and a part of 2008, when a slowdown in activity resulted in our ceasing to update the map.