New housing is coming to a portion of Bronzeville that previously failed to attract developers and builders even as nearby North Kenwood/Oakland was being renewed.
Vacant lots scattered throughout the community are interspersed with scattered-site public housing, creating problems in assembling desirable development sites. But now, city officials are preparing to convey 29 non-contiguous lots to a development group that plans to build 53 apartments in nine buildings on several north-south streets between 43rd and 44th Streets.
Hearts United Phase III Ltd. Partnership, consisting of developer Fred Bonner of Bonheur Development Corp. and Hearts United Community Development, a group of area churches and community groups will build the apartments in nine buildings between 43rd and 44th on Champlain, Vincennes, St. Lawrence, Langley Avenues and at 43rd and Evans.
The project, being dubbed the Leontyne, after opera singer Leontyne Price, is going up as a mixed-income development in which 13 units will be leased by the developer for replacement housing for existing scattered-site Chicago Housing Authority projects in the area. Another 13 units will be leased to families earning up to 60 percent of area median income, or $40,740 for a family of four. The remaining 27 units will have market rents. Hearts United Community Development will oversee tenant selection, social services and community participation in project planning for all three construction phases, according to Bonner.
The Leontyne is the third phase of a Hearts United redevelopment in the area around 43rd and 44th Streets and Cottage Grove in recent years. The development partnership completed 116 non-contiguous apartments in 15 buildings, called The Langston Apartments, last year. Another 106 apartments in 16 buildings, called the Quincy Apartments, will be completed in March, Bonner said.
Five of the Leontyne buildings will be built as six-flats. A five-flat will combine ground-level units into one large, wheelchair-accessible apartment, and another apartment building will offer four units. Two rows of three-story townhouses will have 14 units. “Again we are combining two ground-level units in each row of townhouses to create large, four-bedroom, wheelchair-accessible units,” Bonner said.
While planning for the project is still early, Bonner expects market rents to range from $615 for 690-square-foot one-bedrooms to $1,195 for 1,480-square-foot four-bedrooms. He expects construction to begin by year-end and the first building to be occupied by September.
The land will be conveyed for $1 per lot. The Community Development Commission last month approved tax increment financing assistance of $1.4 million to be used as a subsidy for interest incurred over the life of the developer’s $10 million first mortgage with Prairie Mortgage Co.
In a separate project, Bonheur Development has partnered with the Mid South Planning and Development Commission to build 14 New Homes for Chicago on non-contiguous lots between 43rd and 41st Streets near Cottage Grove. Construction of those 2,300-square-foot single-family homes began earlier this month, and 10 are under contract. Bonner says his Bonheur Realty Corp. is selling the homes for $180,000 to $190,000 before the cost is reduced by the Department of Housing’s $40,000 home-buyer subsidy.
Blocks away at the 4000 and 4100 blocks of South Vincennes Avenue, 5-year-old faith-based developer Genesis Housing Development Corp. is building 26 single-family homes, also marketed with a New Homes for Chicago subsidy.
That coalition consists of Holy Angels and St. Elizabeth Catholic Churches, St. James United Methodist and Blackwell Memorial AME Zion. Genesis was founded specifically to reuse vacant lots in the area as affordable housing for area residents.
“Churches are the first in and the last out,” said Donnie Brown, director of the development corporation. “We will be here for the long hall, or until this neighborhood is rebuilt, to insure affordable housing will exist among all this gentrification.”
Sixteen of the homes are 1,600-square-foot, three-bedrooms, plus an unfinished basement, priced from $210,000 before the $30,000 New Homes for Chicago subsidy. Six of those 16 houses are two-flats with income-earning garden units. Another 10 1,600- to 1,800-square-foot, two-story houses can be customized with brick facades. Brown says they will range from $140,000 to $159,000 before subsidies that can run from $10,000 to $40,000, depending on the buyer’s income.
The homes are being marketed from an office at Blackwell Memorial AME Zion Church, 3956 S. Langley. That is also where the developer sponsors home-buyer workshops. Brown says there is a waiting list of 200 to buy the homes.
Genesis also is preparing to build 40 single-family homes at 43rd Street and Ellis Avenue, half of which will be leased as CHA replacement housing and half to be sold at market rates starting at an estimated $200,000.
One private developer, Andrew Scholnick of Ansco Development, says the neighborhood’s “potential simply has not been discovered yet. Currently it may seem a no-man’s land with a lot of vacant property, but it is a great location. It’s kind of a pocket just waiting for pioneers,” continued Scholnick, who has rehabbed small masonry buildings into condominiums in redeveloping neighborhoods such as Woodlawn and North Lawndale.
Scholnick is converting a brick building at 4100 to 4108 S. Cottage Grove into condominiums. Scholnick will convert the building into 16 1,800- to 2,200-square-foot duplex condos on five floors. He expects to sell the duplexes for $180,000 to $225,000. He expects to begin interior demolition within a month, and to market the units from an on-site model in spring. He expects the building will be fully occupied by late next year.
