Mixed-Use Residential

Welcome to the Villages of Chicago!
Population: 2.9 Million

by Paula Widholm

Walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods have been attracting yuppies as well as empty nesters to downtown Chicago for more than a decade.

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Now, with peak gasoline prices and global warming concerns, the urban planning concept called an "urban village" is even more appealing.

In addition to creating hip neighborhoods, urban villages are also self-sustainable and environmentally friendly. The concept is the opposite of urban sprawl where people transit across suburbs frequently to get to work or shopping malls.

The typical urban village development has buildings with shops on the ground floor and a mix of offices and apartments/condos on upper floors. People can walk from their apartments to their offices and along the way pass shops, restaurants, movie theaters or meet neighbors in a tranquil public square.

While condo sales are off in the entire market, sales at urban village developments are outperforming individual units, says Gail Lissner, vice president of Chicago-based Appraisal Research Counselors.

She adds that some of the fastest-selling Chicago developments are within Lakeshore East and Museum Park at Central Station.

"These are all developments in areas that were undeveloped," Lissner says.

"With them, you have instant neighborhoods. The sense of community develops much faster than residential that's scattered. Retail develops quickly. Some feature parks. Infrastructure gets developed much more quickly."

Lakeshore east is south of where the Chicago River meets Lake Michigan.

Although hot-selling, Lakeshore East's focus on nearly all high-rise condos with just a few townhouses isn't attracting many families with children.

The Museum Park section of Central Station is in the South Loop.

"The Museum Park section of Central Station has more families because there's more variety of housing types with a more significant townhouse section," Lissner says. "University Village also has a large townhouse component and thus has more families."

Urban villages require "large developers with a lot of backers or a lot of partners," Lissner says. "These developments require developers with experience and financial wherewithal to tie up the site for long-term developments that can take five 10 to 15 years."

Units within these urban villages vary in scale but are usually upscale, and development of more of these communities is only limited by the availability of land, Lissner says.

One new Chicago urban village is putting the focus on retail. Centrum Properties' Roosevelt Collection at Roosevelt Road and Clark Street features more than 1 million sq ft of lifestyle retail and luxury residences, including a 16-screen multiplex theater and a new 3-acre park that will host art and music festivals. The development offers 342 loft condos.

"Typically retail follows residential or it plays a minor role in urban villages, but at Roosevelt Collection retail is driving the project," Lissner says.

Suburbs Get Urban

Urban villages aren't limited to downtown. Goettsch Partners is designing one in Oak Brook, a western suburb of Chicago.
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"We're targeting a marketplace that may not want to move to downtown Chicago," says Joe Cliggot, senior associate with the Chicago-based architectural firm. "They may want to move out of a large family home and stay in a village."

The Oak Brook development, the Clearwater, is set to break ground this summer. It will include a 70-unit condo tower, fitness center and hotel, each of which will sit on a retail base.

The 150-ft-tall building will offer condominiums that range between $300,000 for one-bedroom units to $1 million for penthouses, says Michael Kaufman, partner with Goettsch Partners.

The Village of Oak Brook embraced the project, which replaces a warehouse that was an eyesore. The increased density also packs much higher tax revenues onto that plot of land, and the development reduces car traffic.

Cliggot says the biggest challenge architecturally in urban villages is that designers don't want them to look like four or five separate buildings. At the same time, each retail entity wants its brand recognized. He says the solution is to give each retailer its identity but tie them together with a similar palette of materials and textures.

For example, several architectural firms were commissioned to design the towers at Lakeshore East, including: Loewenberg Architects (The Lancaster, The Shoreham and The Tides); DeStefano + Partners (The Regatta and The Chandler); Solomon Cordwell Buenz & Associates (340 on the Park); the Steinberg Group (The Parkhomes at Lakeshore East); and Studio Gang Architects (Aqua). The firms have all implemented S-shaped curves to resemble sails and selected a color palette to reflect the blues of Lake Michigan. (See the sidebar for details on these developments.)

Skidmore Owings & Merrill provided the master plan for Lakeshore East, which situated high-rises in ways to prevent obstruction of views from nearby towers. It also included a multilevel street with underground tunnels and intermediate pathways to prevent traffic congestion.

"Urban villages are healthier for most suburbs and cities," Goettsch's Kaufman says. "There's a concentration of uses that creates a better feel for people who live there, and that concentration creates a higher tax base and creates an environment where you don't have to hop into a car to go get a coffee or go to the dry cleaners."

Pedestrian Friendly

In urban villages, most destinations are placed within a 10-minute walk. A pedestrian-friendly street design is also important, with buildings close to streets. The communities usually offer on-street parking, with hidden parking lots and garages in rear.

Connectivity in urban villages is also important, including an interconnected street grid network that disperses traffic and eases walking. This would include a hierarchy of narrow streets, boulevards and alleys.

The architecture and urban design emphasize beauty, aesthetics, human comfort and a sense of place. There is usually a special placement of civic uses and sites within the community.

There's also usually a traditional neighborhood structure with a discernable center and edge and public space at center. Highest densities are at the town center. The developments also create a more efficient use of tax money with less spent on spread-out utilities and roads. Municipalities benefit from an increased tax base due to more buildings packed into a tighter area.

Planning for compact growth has the potential to greatly increase the quality of the environment. It also prevents congestion problems and the environmental degradation normally associated with growth, according to NewUrbanism.org.

SIDEBAR

New Urban Villages in Chicago

Lakeshore East
Developer: Magellan Development Group LLC