Amenities-Heavy Development Plans Unveiled For Logan Square Mega Mall
By Rachel Cromidas in News on May 8, 2015 7:00PM
The effort to turn Logan Square into a luxury residential playground continues apace, with plans for the massive Logan Square Mega Mall redevelopment presented to community members Thursday night.
Developer Terraco Inc.'s plans for the site of a decaying former mall, located at 2500 N. Milwaukee Ave., include a rooftop herb garden, a bike room and 350 parking spaces to serve the 267 residential units and a grocery store. A packed room of community members showed up to weigh in on the plans, DNAinfo reports, with several community groups pushing for more of the units to be affordable housing. The developers are required to make at least 10 percent of the units affordable under a city ordinance.
The developers will also need the green light from Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd) to get the zoning changes required before the site can be approved for development, meaning it will be more important to garner community support.
Logan Square Neighborhood Association Housing and Land Use co-chair Daniel LaSpata said he would like to see the project, dubbed "Logan's Crossing," include a small business incubator, in the spirit of the site's long-running flea market, where three tenants still sell their wares.
Logan Square is in the midst of a development boom, with the transit-oriented Twin Towers development, the Bloomingdale Trail-adjacent Centrum 606 and the micro-apartments on California Avenue among several projects in the works.
Many of the developments call for luxury rental units that will rent in the thousands, with the California micro-apartments expected to go for $1,200 a month or more. And community groups have raised concerns that they will compromise the character of the Northwest Side community without providing enough affordable housing to keep longtime renters from being pushed out of the neighborhood.
With months yet before the city's new affordable housing ordinance takes effect, requiring developers who request zoning changes for their projects to set aside a certain number of units as affordable housing, or face steeper penalties, some worry developers are charging forward with new plans to evade the rules.
An individual can qualify to rent affordable housing in Chicago if his or her income falls below 60 percent of the Area Median Income, which is just under $32,000 a year. In 2014, units designated as affordable housing should have rented for $727 a month for a studio apartment, including utilities, and $826 for a one bedroom, under HUD's fair market rent guidelines.