Mayor Daley hopes to turn 77 acres of lakefront property near McCormick Place into an Olympic Village to house the athletes for the 2016 Summer Olympic Games, according to a story in Sunday’s Chicago Sun-Times. When the Games end, 5,000 units of market-rate and affordable housing, as well as several hotels, would remain on roughly 30 acres just west of Lake Shore Drive.
City Hall has applied for zoning changes that would allow the plan to proceed. But to convince the United States Olympic Committee that Chicago would be a viable host for the Games, Daley will also have to prove that the city can find private financing for the “futuristic-looking complex.”
Heady planning for a $1 billion project slated for completion nine years from now. Who knows, maybe the complex won’t be considered “futuristic-looking” by then.