Plans are advancing for a mixed-use development project on a site that includes Uptown’s 5-acre Wilson Yard.
Five buildings are planned for the site, along Broadway, east of the CTA’s Red Line tracks roughly between Montrose and Wilson Avenues, according to Chicago developer Peter Holsten, Ald. Helen Shiller (46th) and Chicago Department of Planning and Development officials, who spoke to more than 200 Uptown community residents at Truman College Feb. 19.
The site consists of the 5-acre Wilson Yard and three privately owned lots.
The city designated a partnership between Chicago developers Holsten Real Estate Development Corp. and Kenard Corp. as developer for the Wilson Yard site in fall 2002.
Planned for the site, according to Holsten, are a commercial building with 190,000 square feet of ground-floor space and a second-story cinema; a small retail building with affordable senior housing on the upper floors; a new Aldi store; a commercial building with a ground-floor restaurant and offices on the upper floor; and a rental apartment building. Holsten told residents that three theater operators are vying for the cinema space. The Tribune’s Thomas Corfman reported Dec. 3 that Century Theatres Inc. had signed a letter of intent to lease an 18-screen movie complex on the site.
The Wilson Yard project will be Holsten’s first project involving retail. City officials and the developer are still assembling the development site, Shiller said in an interview last week. “City officials are currently negotiating to buy the Wilson Yard site from the CTA and the developer [Holsten] is negotiating to buy three privately owned parcels along Broadway,” she said.
Holsten’s proposal for the first phase of the development, construction of the new Aldi store, will be brought before the Chicago Development Commission this summer, Holsten said after his presentation to residents. He stressed the preliminary nature of the plans.
He said he expects to begin building the Aldi store in the fall. He will bring his proposal to build the remaining four buildings before the commission in the fall, and hopes to begin construction by year-end.
Shiller stressed that the search for retailers who will operate from the new commercial space will compliment retailers already operating around the site. “After talking to smaller retailers, we felt we had to create a critical mass, do something that is a big box that will generate additional economic activity,” Shiller said.
