The Chicago Housing Authority’s Hilliard Homes will be redeveloped over the next several years into a mixed-income community of renters. The redevelopment will begin early next year and conclude in 2004.
Holsten Real Estate Development Corp., headed by Peter Holsten, earlier this month won approval from the Community Development Commission as the designated developer for Hilliard Homes.
Holsten is building another mixed-income community, North Town Village, on the Near North Side. The project combines units for market-rate home buyers and homes for public housing residents displaced by the redevelopment of nearby Cabrini Green.
“The North Side project is going incredibly well,” Holsten said of North Town Village. “We sold out the first phase 125 homes in two months.
“We let home buyers know it was a mixed-income community and nobody cared. They wanted the location and they had and still have confidence that public housing is being reworked positively.”
Hilliard Homes provides Holsten a similar redevelopment opportunity on the South Side.
The four residential buildings are often called a bright spot among public housing projects for the uniqueness of the buildings themselves and for their setting in a 13-acre park.
Hilliard Homes, stretching between State and Clark Streets and from Cermak Road to Cullerton Street, was designated a national historic district in September 1999.
Its unique features are what Holsten said prompted him to respond to a 1997 CHA request seeking qualified developers for the project.
“Like many of our high-rise buildings, Hilliard presents significant challenges as a renovation project because it is an historic site,” said John Roberson, chief of development at CHA.
“This deal (also) represents one of our more complex financial transactions with three or four different sources of funding, some from the federal government. Having someone that understands those different nuances and can pull them together is very valuable,” Roberson said.
“Through historic tax credits, Holsten brought additional funds to what we had to the project. He’s a talented developer and understands how to maximize opportunity and how to leverage public funds to attract other private investment.”
He said that Holsten “also understood the architectural and historical significance of these buildings, and wanted to keep their historic properties. We felt that would be a great marketing advantage to some other redeveloping under way around Hilliard.”
Across the street a new Chicago Public School is about to be built, a state of the art teaching academy.
“That will have some synergy in conjunction with what Peter is doing in the area,” says Robeson.
Formally known as the Raymond Hilliard Center, named after a Cook County public aid director, four residential Hilliard Homes buildings and one community building on the site were designed by Bertand Goldberg between 1962 to 1966 and built in 1966.
Architectural design of the four buildings is reflected in two of Goldberg’s later works.
Two 22-story family buildings at the north end of the complex are crescent or arch shaped, and suggestive of River City, built in 1989. Those units will remain family residences after Holsten’s rehab.
Two circular seniors buildings, each 16 stories high, are suggestive of Marina City, built in the 1960s at just about the same time as Hilliard Homes were built. They are perhaps the work for which Goldberg is best known.
The four residential buildings — at 2111 S. Clark St., 2131 S. Clark, 30 W. Cermak Rd. and 2030 S. State — contain 712 public housing units, 280 of which are occupied.
Holsten’s renovation will reduce the number of residential units on the site to 654, a mix of one- to four-bedroom units.
The CHA will retain ownership of the land and of 30 percent, or 306, of the units. Another 245 units will be leased at affordable rates, with rents subsidized by tax credits, to families earning up to 60 percent of the area’s median income.
Roberson expects the affordable rents to range from about $500 to $800 a month, depending on prevailing market rates at the time of the project’s completion.
Speaking before the CDC, Holsten said 101 units will be leased at market rates, anticipated to range from about $720 to $820, to families earning 80 percent of median income and beyond.
Holsten will redevelop the $80 million project in two phases. And, just as Holsten Realty assumes management responsibility for North Town Villages, it will assume management responsibility for Hilliard once the renovation is completed.
At least initially after the redevelopment, fencing will be used to restrict access to the project’s ample green space to Hilliard residents only. Holsten expressed the need for such limited access until surrounding properties are redeveloped.
The green space — which will include tennis courts, a community building and recreation areas — will have two entries staffed by full time guards.
“Our first priority will be to assure safety for households who will reside here, but we can open the green-space up down the road. Our first point is to keep nonresidents out, and to screen the criminal element out,” Holsten said.
Studies have concluded that criminal activity around Hilliard Homes has come from outside the area.
“Cars pulling up to buy drugs in the area come from all over Illinois, Indiana, Winnetka and beyond, according to car stickers on those cars,” said Roberson. He added that a Community Action Policing program will also be implemented throughout Hilliard.
Meanwhile, Holsten says he’s already learned lessons while developing and managing North Town Village and will translate those lessons to his undertaking at Hilliard Homes.
“We are working on a jobs program for residents and will do something called community building where we get residents to get to know residents outside of the site as well as each other,” he said.
“We will do a transformation plan that will help current public housing residents learn to take better care of their homes and transition into functioning as part of the community.”
Holsten hopes to close on financing in December and expects to begin rehabbing the buildings in January, pending City Council approval of a city tax exempt bond program for the project.
