This morning, Yo attended the ground-breaking ceremony for Hansberry Square, a 238-unit phase of Legends South, Bronzeville’s massive new mixed-income housing development. Hansberry Square is located on 12 acres along South State Street between 40th and Root streets, and was once occupied by Robert Taylor Homes.
The new development is the latest phase in the Chicago Housing Authority‘s controversial Plan for Transformation project, a joint venture with private developers where public housing is razed to make way for mixed-income developments. Plans for Legends South call for up to 2,388 affordable and market-rate units for rent and for sale, as well as retail space and community facilities.
Critics of the Plan for Transformation say it will displace many public housing residents, but Terry Peterson, CEO of the Chicago Housing Authority, was talking the project up today, hailing the ground-breaking as an “historical moment.”
“No one is doing what Chicago is doing here,” he said. Hansberry Square will nix the imposing, boxy public-housing high-rises in favor of a wide variety of building types, all under five stories. The new homes will feature masonry construction, gables, bay windows, Prairie School-style details, decorative fencing, landscaping and public green spaces. Landon Bone Baker Architects and Johnson & Lee Architects/Planners designed the buildings.
Hansberry Square will include 181 rental apartments, 57 for-sale single-family homes, condos and two-flats, and 83 public housing units.Thirty of the rental units will be market-rate, renting from about $760 to $1,080 a month. The market-rate one- and two-bedroom condos will be priced from the $210s to the $240s, while three-bedroom single-family homes will range from the $440s to the $520s. The sales center is scheduled to open on-site in mid-May.