Developer Draper and Kramer will begin delivering the first of 148 rental apartments in June at Lake Park Crescent, a 490-unit mixed-income development that’s helping transform North Kenwood-Oakland, on the South Side.
The nearly $75 million project covers 16.5 prime acres between the lake and Lake Park Avenue from 40th to 42nd. The Chicago Housing Authority highrises that once stood on the site have been demolished and are being replaced with a mix of rowhouses and mid-rises. The for-sale homes, which will begin marketing in mid- to late summer, include a first phase of 130 condos and 13 rowhouses.
As at many projects on former CHA land, Lake Park Crescent is a mixed-income community, with some units reserved for CHA residents, some “affordable” and some market-rate. Sixty of the 148 apartments in the first phase will be CHA replacement units and 52 will be “affordable,” for renters earning less than 60 percent of the area’s median income. Half of the for-sale homes are market-rate with the rest divided between CHA replacement and affordable units. The affordable component of the for-sale housing is reserved for people earning up to 120 percent of the area’s median income.
Brian Moore, asset manager for Draper and Kramer, says the development already is having a strong impact on the area because of its scale and quality as well as the integration of people at various income levels.
“Since we undertook this project five years ago, the neighborhood has gone from one that was underdeveloped to one that’s much more developed,” Moore said. “There’s a lot of new investment going on. We always envisioned ourselves as a catalyst for new development in the area, and maybe psychologically we were even before we started construction.”
The company also has worked to make the mixed-income nature of the development as seamless as possible. Moore says Draper and Kramer has maintained high standards for leasing and designed the public housing units to be indistinguishable from the market-rate homes.
The income mix at Lake Park Crescent is fixed, but the developer has the freedom to switch units of various types, for example making a CHA unit in one spot market-rate and changing a market-rate apartment somewhere else into a CHA replacement unit, as necessary. This will allow for fine tuning after the homes are built, Moore says, and it will make it easier for CHA residents whose incomes rise to shift into affordable or market-rate homes later.
The project sits on a premier site at 41st and Lake Park and has been planned with a three-acre crescent-shaped park as well as a bridge that will provide direct access to the lake. The bridge has been the subject of an international design competition, and Moore says the developer soon will announce its designer.
In addition to the new pedestrian bridge, planned lakefront improvements include a new pier that will extend into the lake and a new field house.