Our recent post on development in Avondale sparked a lively discussion about the merits of the neighborhood west of the Kennedy Expressway. Yo readers termed the area “kinda nice,” “a sort of mini Old Irving for single family homes” and a place where “lurking under the surface radar is a very strong and committed longtime older resident population that has no intention of being bullied out of their neighborhood after overcoming the worst of the gang-infestation years.”
Not surprisingly given those descriptions, Avondale west has fewer new developments than its eastern counterpart, and the flood of new condo buildings on Belmont in Lake View slows to a trickle. We spotted three developments on Belmont between the Kennedy and the Metra tracks:
3641 W Belmont Ave: three bedrooms and two baths, $320s
Shoemaker Lofts, 3963 W Belmont Ave: 175 lofts with one or two bedrooms and one or two baths, from the $250s to the $400s
Belmont Lofts, 4131 W Belmont Ave: 54 lofts with one or two bedrooms. Three units remain, priced from the $240s to the $270s.
I don’t think current development on Belmont has anything to do with neighbors or the neighborhood, the current development is primarily filling in vacant lots/converted industrial areas, so there hasn’t been any issue of tearing down homes.
It’s all being driven by housing prices on the east, and those aren’t likely to drop. My guess is Belmont in 10 years will be unrecognizable, for better and for worse.
Actually, I should revise that – there is definitely a smaller number of people living in smaller single family homes or two flats on Belmont as you get west of Kimball that are selling their lots to developers.
Personally, this is where my sympathies and desire to maintain a neighborhood feel on the side streets ends – while I don’t think eminent domain or TIF funds should be used to replace those buildings with newer ones, I can’t fathom in any way the idea that Belmont shouldn’t be a vibrant strip with commercial and higher (somewhat, no bloody skyscrapers, please) density.
It’s a bloody truck route for crying out loud – I go by a pretty straightforward interpretation of our grid, which is every 8 blocks, you have a major artery, with perhaps Kedzie being a bit of an exception where it physically narrows north of Addison. Really, the major gridlock/congestion problem in Avondale is due to the lack of a major north-south artery, so instead we have cars flooding Kedzie, Kimball, Central Park, etc.
3641 W Belmont Ave: three bedrooms and two baths, $320s
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hahaha just LOOK at that picture! that condo bldg HAS to be a fire code violation. look how close it is to those shacks on either side.