Here’s a tip you can take to the bank: when the alderman’s wife is heading up sales for a new home development, the odds are high that the development shouldn’t have been done.
And here’s another: when the city pops for an $11.6 million TIF to clean up a contaminated light industrial site and prep it for residential development, the odds are high that the money was wasted.
If you’re looking for a harbingers-of-hopeless trifecta, place that development between I-57 and the Metra tracks along a forlorn stretch of Vincennes Avenue. The result: Renaissance of Beverly Ridge, now being called The Homes located at Beverly Ridge and the Homes of Vincennes.
The Renaissance of Beverly Ridge began half a dozen years ago. It was originally planned for nearly 200 homes and townhomes priced from the high $200s to the mid-$500s. Only about two dozen homes were started, and eighteen incomplete homes are currently being offered from the high $100s to the high $200s.
The current marketing effort for the development makes a number of questionable claims. It’s touted as being in Beverly – it’s in Washington Heights. The attendance boundaries for the neighborhood elementary school stated in the listings don’t include the development. The huge park within the development that “creates a real neighborhood setting for the homes” exists only in a parallel universe. And so on.
Watch the video for my generally downbeat take on buying into this development.