City planners are looking for a retail or mixed-use developer for long vacant city-owned land at 47th Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.
“This is prime retail space. The idea for a park was conceived over the last 10 years [by former Ald. Dorothy Tillman], and … it sat vacant, non-productive, a blight in the community while there is tremendous need for retail,” Ald. Patricia Dowell (3rd) told the Community Development Commission.
The commission approved the Chicago Department of Planning and Development’s issue of a request for development proposals. That request was made last week.
The site at 4700-4704 S. King Drive has 0.26-acres. That land, at the northwest corner of 47th and King, is in a neighborhood that has been rebounding for five years, a Planning Department project manager told commissioners.
Despite development of an African market, a comedy club, a restaurant and a cafe at that intersection, retail is sorely lacking in the Bronzeville neighborhood, where residential development has boomed.
Seeking $765,000 for the land, city planners are particularly looking for innovative re-use proposals and will consider requests for tax-increment financing grants. That will provide a discount on the land purchase for projects that include affordable housing along with retail.
Tillman told commissioners that she is prepared to sue the city if they abandon the plan for the park, for which she has used city funds to buy art.
Dowell said she would redistribute the city-owned art and added that development will eliminate the city’s clean-up cost and loitering. Retail also would create jobs for the neighborhood as well as putting the land onto the tax rolls. “Residents say they don’t need a park there but do need retail,” Dowell told commissioners.
The Planning Department will hold a pre-bid conference Nov. 15. Submissions are due by Jan. 16.
