Preservation is increasingly being embraced as a redevelopment tool by residents eager to save the historic character of neighborhoods they bought into even as the areas were being refreshed with brand-new development.
“There is growing support from the administration about preservation and from more and more active neighborhood groups, for preservation as a redevelopment tool,” says Jim Peters, director of the Department of Planning and Development’s Landmark Division.
“They are seeing preservation as a great stabilizing force for neighborhoods rather than as an obstacle to redevelopment. Preservation helped to anchor areas on the South Side like Kenwood and Oakland, where tremendous redevelopment booms followed the preservation activities of local residents. The same thing is happening lately in Wicker Park,” Peters said.
Peters says 60 of Chicago’s total 181 landmarks have been designated in just the last four years. Thirty of those 181 designations are districts rather than specific buildings.
The landmark division recently has added 15 Near North Side buildings with 50 residential units in them to the roster of city buildings scheduled to go through the city’s three-step landmark designation process that can help to save the buildings from possible demolition. The Near North Side has been bustling with new development in recent years, much of it on sites where older structures have been torn down.
The 15 Near North buildings, mostly in the Italianate and Romanesque style built soon after the Chicago Fire and approved as the Washington Square District Extension, are just one example of several neighborhood buildings to enter the landmark process lately. Others include a row of 10 Burling Avenue townhouses in Lincoln Park.
Peters said it could take up to a year to resolve the status of the recent landmark candidates. All landmark designations must be approved by the City Council. But he said the fact that the properties have been earmarked for designation may be enough to stave off potential demolitions.
Local residents have driven much of the recent activity in the Landmark Division. The Burling Avenue rowhouses, for example, entered the process after Lincoln Park residents approached Peters with concerns about demolition of one of the houses. On the Near North Side, residents and Ald. Burt Natarus (42nd) approached Peters seeking landmark designation soon after learning that the Dearborn and Elm Street building occupied in recent years by Ranalli’s Restaurant would be demolished along with several late 1800s Italianate rowhouses.
“We were just everyday people and we assumed because our buildings were from the 1870s and that because they were in the historic Gold Coast, they would be protected. I was shocked to learn that they weren’t and to learn–while riding in an elevator one day–that the Italianate buildings were being demolished,” said Michael Moran, a member of the board of directors of the Washington Square Association.
The organization, which was unable to save the Italianate buildings, is now fighting for landmark status for the 15 Near North buildings.
The group represents property owners between Chicago Avenue and Division Street and from Wells to Rush Street.
“We have reached a critical mass of people who own their units and who have a deeper interest in the long-term character of the neighborhood. Announcement of that demolition happened right at the cusp of people coming into the neighborhood, like a convergence of this project with the arrival of people who cared,” Moran said.
“The same is going to happen in pockets of River North where there is not yet opposition to demolitions. Right now developers are targeting neighborhoods where they won’t have opposition.”
Initially the Washington Square Association went to Natarus hoping to save the Italianates and another corner building.
“He told us it was too late to save those buildings because the developer already had a permit, but that he would support our efforts to intervene in future demolitions by taking proactive steps now,” Moran said.
Moran, with other association members, then set about identifying and targeting the 15 buildings, mostly along Dearborn Street from Chicago to Division. Natarus ushered the residents to the Landmark Division.
“We talked to the alderman and the community group, looked at other comparable buildings in the area so we could get ahead of the situation, researching that whole corridor including River North, focusing in particular on buildings built in the 1870s and 1880s,” said Peters.
The Washington Square members began their process in February.
“It required many hours of concerned residents taking time from professional schedules to engage in new-found work of community activism,” said Moran.
After staging several rallies and other activities directed at saving the demolition-targeted Dearborn and Elm buildings, the group shifted focus in June to saving other buildings. Aside from the 15 buildings, the group asked for protection for seven 1920s buildings, a move rejected by the Landmarks Division. Moran said that Natarus instead introduced legislation in August to downzone three of the parcels, which could also offer protection from demolition.
When approached with community concerns, the Landmark Division has been quick to respond, Peters contends.
“When buildings are threatened, we try to turn quickly,” he said. “Within a month from the time the Near North community presented their report to the Landmarks Commission in May, the commission pulled together and took a preliminary vote to enter the buildings into the landmark process.
“The 10 attached Burling Avenue rowhouses were approved for landmark process in a month after those residents approached us. The Congress Theatre on Milwaukee Avenue was voted into the process in our August meeting, less than a week after local residents there became concerned that it would be demolished,” said Peters.
