MORE THAN FOUR YEARS AGO, A consultant reported to the Howard/Paulina Development Corp. that what was needed to revitalize the seedy, ramshackle Howard Street shopping strip around the ”L” station was a ”sizzle”
project.
What the group got, and what it still has today, is more like a
”simmer” project. The on-again, off-again Howard Retail/Transit Center is one of the longest-running development dramas in Chicago.
Although unanswered funding questions still cast doubt on the scope of the project, backers say they are finally beginning to think of the center as a reality.
”For the first time, I can actually start to visualize what it`s going to look like,” said Gwen Nordgren, Howard/Paulina executive director, who noted that she felt as if she had been working on it ”all my life.”
The project to revamp the Chicago Transit Authority`s Howard Street station and integrate it with some 50 new stores and restaurants, 200 new apartment units and some 1,500 parking spaces is a development of staggering complexity, involving a host of community groups and government agencies plus a private developer.
Supporters of the center, which will occupy 10 acres bounded by Howard Street on the north, Clark Street on the west, Rogers Avenue on the south and the CTA tracks on the east, contend it will create a transit/shopping/
residential synergism.
The aim is to attract shoppers to the Howard Street corridor that divides Chicago and Evanston, provide desperately needed moderate-rent housing and draw more riders to the CTA. More than 169,000 people live within a two-mile radius of the project, according to the Howard/Paulina group.
The project has won nationwide notice, and developer Ronald Grais has spoken about it at national symposiums sponsored by the Urban Mass Transit Administration, the government agency that oversees federal spending on mass transit programs. ”It`s really a ground-breaking project,” said Grais.
Among those involved are UMTA, the CTA, the Chicago Department of Housing and Department of Economic Development, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Developers around the country are finding that transit-linked projects have wide appeal.
The 1.5 million-square-foot Fashion Centre at Pentagon City in Arlington, Va., increased ridership dramatically on the Washington Metro Area Transit Authority line that serves the development, which it opened last year.
Forest City Enterprises` Tower City Center in Cleveland has a $55 million mass transit station incorporated in the mixed-use project. Melvin Simon & Associates, developers of the Pentagon City project, also have transit connections in mixed-use projects in New Jersey and Manhattan.
In Toronto, a group of developers is teaming with the Toronto Transit Commission in proposing a new subway line that will be privately developed;
each stop along the Sheppard Avenue line would be built as a retail and subway mix. And developers in Miami, Denver and Philadelphia also have attached transit stations to major retail developments.
In Chicago, the budget of approximately $60 million is coming from at least nine different sources, seven of which, adding up to a little less than half the total, involve public funds from the city, the CTA and the federal government.
The fate of the project may hinge on one key public funding component: a $7 million UMTA ”suburban mobility parking initiative” grant earmarked for the project`s parking garage, which would provide 500 spaces for CTA riders.
The CTA, which would provide about $2.5 million in matching funds for the grant, has made an application for the money, but the federal agency is still sorting through a number of requests for funds, according to Martin Johnson, CTA manager of capital development.
The UMTA grant ”is the linchpin to the whole project the way it`s drawn up,” Johnson said. If the grant were not secured, he added, the whole development would have to undergo ”very serious reappraisal.”
For one thing, Johnson said, the dropping or scaling down of the parking component might well cause the CTA to postpone station remodeling, which is another major part of the project. And without CTA participation, the center, even if it were to go forward, would be just a community shopping center with apartments.
”The question is, Will it be sexy or just another shopping center?”
said Johnson.
Grais said he ”absolutely” will go through with a project even if the UMTA grant doesn`t come through. ”The retailing and housing components are just as important, if not more so, than the linkage with the CTA,” he said.
He added, however, that the transit connection is what makes the project particularly exciting. He voiced optimism the federal grant would be forthcoming, noting that UMTA had previously awarded $100,000 for a preliminary study on the project.
Grais said he expects final funding and design decisions and formal land acquisition to take place over the winter and construction to begin late next spring. Two acres of the parcel, comprising the parking lot and the ”L”
station, are owned by the CTA. The rest is in private hands.
If the full project goes ahead, the building process is expected to take two years, with the first element, consisting of a supermarket and a parking deck, to be completed within a year.
Previously announced construction dates for the project have come and gone without action, but Grais and Nordgren expressed confidence despite the federal funding uncertainty.
Considering the number of players involved, and the political changes the city has gone through in the past few years, the time it has taken for the project to reach the last leg of the planning process is understandable, Nordgren said.
”Look at the complexity of the project and all the partners, the mayoral death (of Harold Washington) and election (of Richard Daley),” Nordgren said. ”The project was slowed by the political process that had to take place. It took a long time to get the public funding.”
The CTA, seeking ways to increase ridership and enhance revenues, took a positive attitude toward the project when the earliest proposals came from the Howard/Paulina group, according to Nordgren.
The transit agency sees it as a shot in the arm for a system with chronic money troubles. ”One of the things that UMTA encourages transit agencies to do is to leverage some of their real estate to generate revenue,” said John W. Davis, the CTA`s manager of property development.
”We`ll increase the number of parking spaces out there, and by the improvements made, increase ridership,” he added. ”An improved station should encourage more people to ride the system.”
About 10,000 people pay fares at the Howard Street station each weekday and another 10,000 or more use it as a transfer point from Evanston or Skokie, according to the CTA.
Negotiations are in progress for an anchor tenant for the 65,000-square-foot supermarket. Above the supermarket will be a multiscreen cinema with five or six theaters.
In all, 200,000 square feet of retail space are planned in an area that now is characterized by a multiethnic panoply of dilapidated storefronts.
”This area represents a retail vacuum,” Grais said. ”Dollars are flowing out of the community because there aren`t the proper shopping opportunities.”
The 200-unit housing component will face Rogers Avenue and will be built as a two- to four-story structure on top and in front of the shopping center stores. Forty of the apartments will be low- to moderate-income units.
The apartment design will feature bedrooms separated by a living room, conducive to room-sharing and occupancy by the elderly. ”The area needs housing for older people,” said Nordgren.
If the full project goes forward, the 1,500 parking spaces on five levels will include a 500-space Park-N-Ride component for the CTA, which now has 300 spaces in its station parking lot and has been seeking more. The other spaces will be designated for the residents and retail or theater patrons.
A new CTA office, bus loading areas and a Kiss-N-Ride dropoff point are also part of the plan, which is still in the concept stage. Different parts of the project will be linked by a network of open spaces, walkways and vertical connectors, perhaps escalators, and an effort will be made through the design to draw transit passengers to some of the stores.
The attempt to orchestrate so many diverse elements into a coordinated project involves some formidable design challenges.
The plan calls for two primary and three secondary levels, and takes advantage of a natural grade on the site that puts Clark Street 13 feet higher than the site`s eastern boundary.
The CTA entrance plaza on Howard Street and a parking lot will be on the lower primary level, while the main shopping center with the supermarket and more parking will be one level above that, directly accessible from Clark Street.
Above the supermarket will be three smaller levels, with the first containing the theater and adjacent covered parking. Two more parking decks will top that level.
The shopping center and housing components will be owned by HRT Associates, a partnership of which Grais controls 80 percent and the Howard/
Paulina group controls 20 percent. The CTA will own its parking and offices, if they are built.
The project has won widespread support in the community, according to Grais and Nordgren. ”I`ve never seen a community welcome a project like this,” said Grais, noting that the concept was in fact originally a product of the community. ”There has been support across the board.”
One reason for that support has been the anticipation of as many as 400 jobs generated by the center once it is built. HRT has signed an agreement stipulating that retail tenant leases will require that neighborhood residents get the first opportunity for jobs in the center, and Nordgren said that city job training funds are being sought by the Howard Area Community Center to give unemployed people in the area a better chance at getting work in the project.
Security in the center has been one of the big concerns voiced by residents, the developers said.
”Every time we had a community meeting, people said they were interested in security,” Grais said. ”If people aren`t going to feel safe, they`re not about to come to the area, and the project won`t be successful.”
Security will be enhanced by the fact that the complex will be in use around the clock, with residential, transit, office, retail, restaurant and entertainment uses, Grais said.
The areas will be be well lighted, easily accessible and monitored by a private shopping center security force and CTA personnel, as well as Chicago police, Grais said. An escort service will be available for the parking decks, he added.
”Security is a major concern, and the standard by which we are reviewing the desirability of the design,” Grais said. The Project for Public Spaces, a New York-based consulting firm that studies the way people use public spaces such as malls and train stations, will be looking over security as well as other aspects of the project during the various phases of the development.
Although Grais says he will go ahead with the project with or without CTA involvement, his enthusiasm is clearly kindled by the idea of bringing trains, buses and cars together with shopping and housing.
”There are very few settings in the U.S. or elsewhere where an opportunity for intermodal integration exists,” he said. ”Here it`s all tied together and intertwined.”
He pointed out that the concept of linking transportation and community development has a long history in the U.S., going back at least to the 19th Century when railroads received public grants of land along their rights-of-way so that towns and other destination points could be built.
”Using transit land and assets to improve the community is a very, very important joint development concept,” he said. ”Transit entities should be considered as important players in community development.”
The CTA evidently agrees. According to Davis, the agency has entered into an agreement with an Evanston developer that will result in $75,000 worth of improvements to the Central Street station in exchange for the CTA`s help with assembling a land parcel for a medical center.
”We`re looking at other developments where potentially the same kind of thing could happen,” Davis said. ”It`s good for the CTA and good for the community.”
