Developer Ferd Kramer asked Chicago Housing Authority board members Wednesday to join him in seeking about $40 million in federal funds to raze four South Side lakefront public housing high-rises and replace them with low- rise, low-income housing units.
Kramer said the four 16-story high-rises in the CHA`s Lakefront Properties Development have to be torn down to make way for an economic mix of new, low-rise housing he and the Illinois Housing and Development Authority are proposing to rejuvenate the North Kenwood-Oakland neighborhood on Chicago`s South Side.
But the board members, while not formally rejecting the request, expressed skepticism about whether the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) would provide Chicago with new funding at a time when the financially strapped authority already is seeking more than $30 million in federal funds to pay its debts and begin repairing existing housing developments.
”We`ve already submitted a list of requests to HUD for funding we need if we are to survive, and we have yet to get any answers from them,” said Bruce Sagan, chairman of the CHA Board`s Long-range Planning Committee.
”We already have an enormously complex relationship with HUD, and what you are asking us to do is to make our relationship . . . even more complicated,” he added.
Kramer, joined by Kenwood-Oakland community leaders and Kim Goluska, a planner with the architectural firm of Skidmore Owings & Merrill, formally presented his plan to the board for building 3,000 units of low-rise housing, including 450 new public-housing units, in the area bounded by the lakefront, Drexel Boulevard, Pershing Road and 47th Street.
Besides demolishing four CHA high-rises, three of which are vacant, Kramer wants to convert two other public-housing high-rises within the proposed redevelopment area into senior citizen housing. Those two buildings are vacant as well.
Kramer said his plan must be approved by the CHA and the city before HUD will negotiate funding to build replacement housing for the CHA high-rises that would be demolished.
”And without HUD approval and support, this project cannot go forward,” Kramer said.
Sagan said the CHA Board, despite its skepticism, would take a closer look at the developer`s proposal, but he would not say when the board will vote on the plan.
Besides the board`s concerns, CHA Managing Director Jerome Van Gorkom questioned Kramer`s intention to replace only 450 of the 632 units of public housing in the four high-rises slated for demolition.
”We`re talking about (demolishing) 632 units, not 450,” he said.
”I think HUD would insist on replacing that many.”
Van Gorkom also noted that Kramer`s plan may already be in jeopardy from HUD`s standpoint because the federal agency is insisting that the CHA commit $11.4 million in HUD funds to rehabilitate three of the six buildings in the Lakefront Properties Development by Sept. 30.
The buildings were vacated more than a year ago to make way for the remodeling.
