A while ago we told you how a bunch of developers is getting together to promote the South Shore as the city’s hot new affordable neighborhood. But what about Washington Park, or WaPa, as developers are bound to start calling it sometime soon?
Washington Park is an affordable little neighborhood just south of Bronzeville and west of Hyde Park. One of the top attractions is the park that the neighborhood is named for, a lush, 1,000-acre green space that, like the broader area, had fallen on hard times between the 1960s and 1990s, but in the last five years has become a family-friendly little oasis.
Another of Washington Park’s attractions is that in the last few years, developers have begun converting vintage courtyard apartment buildings into condos and are selling them at prices that would make a North Side homebuyer salivate.
Developer Foreit Properties is offering Courtyard on the Park, 5936 King Drive, (sorry, no link – their Web site is playing up – try www.foreitproperties.com) where one-bedroom garden units are priced from the $120s, while three-bedroom condos are priced from the $240s. You’d be struggling to find a nice two-bedroom condo in a North Side neighborhood like Rogers Park in the $240s.
Developer Mark Foreit tells us that Courtyard on the Park, which was built in the 1920s, has an interesting history as a rental building. According to Foreit, when he bought the property in 2002, it was rundown and had been vacant for six or seven years.
It was once home to famed playwright Lorraine Hansberry, Foreit says.
Hansberry, of course, was the author of A Raisin in the Sun, the first play by a black playwright to be produced on Broadway, and also a celebrated civil rights activist. Nina Simone’s song To be Young, Gifted and Black, was an homage to Hansberry, her friend, whose autobiography bore that title.