Last month Marcy McAfoos packed up the things in her Wrigleyville apartment, took her dog and moved to a condominium in Albany Park, a neighborhood on Chicago’s Northwest Side known more as a port of entry than a destination for young professionals.
McAfoos, owner of two stylish apparel shops in the Lake View neighborhood, admits she feels sort of like an urban pioneer.
“I stick out like a sore thumb,” said McAfoos, adding that she’s probably one of the few young white people in the neighborhood.
That doesn’t seem to bother her. She likes to walk her dog in the nearby park. Some evenings she stops by the Tastee Freeze, where the commotion of children eating ice cream reminds her of warm nights in the small southern Illinois town where she grew up.
“I’m not afraid to walk around here. There are a lot of people with kids,” she said.
So begins the changing of a neighborhood.
Community organizations and developers alike are hoping that more middle-class people will move into Albany Park, an area roughly bounded by Pulaski Road and Kedzie, Foster and Montrose Avenues.
Real estate experts say the housing stock is relatively good. The community’s location, the last stop on the CTA rapid transit’s Brown Line, makes it the next natural spot for redevelopment.
Recognizing potential, banks and real estate companies are starting to invest in the neighborhood. A scattering of apartment buildings and single-family homes is being rehabbed.
For now at least, there haven’t been many complaints from long-time residents about the downside of gentrification–mainly rising rents. But questions remain whether a big-scale revitalization will occur at all, because rundown buildings still generate plenty of rent money for their owners.
Traditionally, Albany Park has been a gateway community for new immigrants. The neighborhood most recently has been a popular entry point for Koreans.
A short stretch of Lawrence Avenue has even been unofficially renamed Seoul Avenue. And looking at the number of street signs with Oriental characters, it’s easy to think this is an Asian enclave.
But Albany Park is a more varied stew. According to 1990 U.S. Census figures, the area is 26 percent Asian, 31 percent Hispanic and 12 percent Arab. The remaining residents primarily are white, of European descent. Approximately 47 percent of the area’s population was born in another country.
Partly because of its roots as a starting point, a place where people move from and not to, Albany Park is still primarily a rental community. Census figures show that 61 percent of the housing units are rented.
That equation is changing somewhat, though, now that a handful of developers are turning rental buildings into condominiums.
Marla Mason, co-owner of Chicago-based JMM Contractors Inc., has converted an abandoned apartment building into nine condominiums, all of which have been sold.
Mason says the vacant building had been a neighborhood eyesore. None of the utilities worked in the building. Windows were broken. Squatters, some trafficking in drugs, lived there.
“We try to buy the worst building on the block,” said Mason, proud of the way the building has become the best on the block.
The three-bedroom, two-bath condominiums sold for $130,000, a modest amount in today’s hot real estate market.
“We like to do properties in the $120,000 to $150,000 range. It’s an underserved market if you want something that is not tiny,” said Mason, a bit surprised that all the buyers have been young professionals rather than people from the neighborhood.
McAfoos bought a 1,500-square-foot unit in the building and got nice features like central air conditioning and hardwood floors. She thinks a similar place in Lake View, where she had been renting, would have cost $350,000.
Home prices in Albany Park average about $115,000. Real estate experts say a similar house in the nearby, and more trendy, Ravenswood neighborhood would cost about $250,000.
The reasonable prices say something, however, about the location.
Small groups of teenage boys hang out on the street corners of Albany Park during the day. People sleep on the bus bench in front of the local blood bank.
Residents complain about drug trafficking and prostitution in the neighborhood. One elderly homeowner says he won’t go out of his house at night for fear of being mugged. He thinks the neighborhood just isn’t as nice as it used to be.
Other residents say the problems are caused by the big, rundown rental buildings where too many people are crowded into small apartments.
Driving around, most of Albany Park doesn’t look all that bad. Side streets, lined with single-family and two-flat homes, are pretty.
The grass is cut. The streets are tidy. The stores on Lawrence Avenue are busy. A big addition is being built at Hibbard Elementary School.
A new red brick shopping center sits on the corner of Kedzie and Lawrence Avenues.
Local groups are trying to upgrade Albany Park, which should eventually help attract more developers.
Jonathan Silverstein helps run the housing program at the Albany Park Community Center, a hub for neighborhood services. He says buildings are being improved with several programs.
For instance, a $200,000 city grant is being used to repair exteriors of single-family and two-flat houses.
So far, 42 homeowners have received fix-up money.
“People take pride in their homes, but 87 percent of these houses are 60 years old or older,” Silverstein said.
Homes on the 4800 block of North Christiana Avenue, in particular, were targeted for improvements.
“There are several thousand homes in Albany Park, so this is a drop in the bucket. But by concentrating on several blocks you create a noticeable effect,” Silverstein said.
Some commercial buildings are getting attention, too. The city will spend $600,000 to rehab the facades of three architecturally significant buildings on Lawrence Avenue between Christiana and Spaulding Avenues.
The brick exteriors will be cleaned. Windows will be replaced. Underneath one building’s aluminum siding is a dark blue terra cotta seascape that will be restored.
Another building, originally a theater, will have the Greek face masks on its exterior repaired.
Other redevelopment funds are flowing into the community.
The local bank, Albany Bank and Trust Co., lent about $10 million last year to area developers for property improvements, according to bank President Robert D. Gecht.
“We are seeing more people buying houses and fixing them up,” said Gecht, a member of the Albany Park Housing Project, a task force created to encourage area homeownership.
Community Investment Corp. (CIC) recently financed the upgrade of three 25-unit apartment buildings in Albany Park.
“We are trying to increase our activity there,” said John Pritscher, president of CIC, a multifamily rehab lender active in changing neighborhoods.
Landlords who won’t sell or fix their buildings are a deterrent to redevelopment in Albany Park. Big, rundown apartment buildings charging monthly rents of $500 to $600 per unit generate a lot of cash for absentee property owners. They’d rather keep the money than spend it on repairs.
“The apartment buildings are scummy. These landlords don’t give a damn,” said Nancy Trosper. She recently replaced the windows in her single-family Albany Park house, hoping to improve its value, but she worries about the appearance of other area buildings.
Marty Max has rehabbed several apartment buildings in Albany Park. His company, Chicago-based MLC Properties Corp., currently owns and manages a 23-unit apartment building there.
“We buy a building and fix it up. Our philosophy is to treat people the way they want to be treated. But we are very tough,” said Max.
Property management is a big issue in densely populated Albany Park. Renters don’t want to live in shoddy buildings, but in many cases they don’t have a choice.
Figuring some property owners just need more management skills, CIC is offering courses in property management to neighborhood landlords.
For now, developers would like to find more buildings to buy and fix. Though some renters fear a rash of apartment conversions, the economics don’t work in many cases.
Landlords who own buildings that generate a lot of cash want high prices for their properties. At those levels, most developers can’t afford to buy the building, fix it and still make a profit.
Jose D. Flores Jr. hopes to construct a new, affordable senior citizens apartment building where the rundown Ainslie Hotel now sits at the corner of Ainslie Street and Kedzie Avenue.
The dilapidated yellow and brown building currently has 83 rooms that rent by the week.
Local residents say the building, one of the largest in the area, has become the focus of drug dealing and prostitution. Windows are broken. Operating systems often don’t work. And yet each apartment probably generates at least $450 a month in rent for the owner, a community activist figures.
Now, the City of Chicago is trying to purchase the building, a process that could take another year. If successful, current residents will be relocated at the city’s expense.
Flores, in turn, hopes to buy the property from the city and replace the old building with the new seniors-only facility. Flores first presented his plan to the Albany Park community back in 1996.
“There are a lot of seniors in the neighborhood and we think this is the right location. We are moving ahead,” said Flores, head of Filipino-American Senior Homes Inc., a Chicago-based non-profit corporation.
Meanwhile, first-time home buyer McAfoos seems satisfied with her decision to move to Albany Park. She thinks she’ll stick it out just like a lot of the old-time residents who have seen the area rise and fall several times.
She said: “I looked for a place in Andersonville, Uptown, Lincoln Square and Ravenswood. I like this neighborhood.”
