The Chicago City Council has approved the rezoning of a mixed-use development at 3914 N Lincoln Avenue in North Center. Located in an oddly shaped lot wedged between N Damen Avenue to the west and N Lincoln Avenue to the east, the project replaces an empty lot and various existing buildings, one of which was orange-rated. The team behind the dense project is Longford Construction with SPACE Architects + Planners as the designers.
Damen Avenue Facade by SPACE Architects + Planners
The rezoning of the lot has multiple layers, it will initially be rezoned from a B1-2 Neighborhood Shopping District to B3-3 Community Shopping District before being converted to a Residential-Business Planned Development, which will absolve it from further approvals. The 24,554-square-foot lot will be filled with a 97,773-square-foot building rising five stories and 61 feet in height and hold 68 residential units.
Updated ground floor plan of 3914 N Lincoln Avenue by SPACE Architects + Planners
After significant community input on the original treatment of the N Damen Avenue streetfront, the approved design will deliver 27 vehicle parking spaces bound by a 6,300-square-foot retail space on N Lincoln Avenue and a smaller 1,247 square foot retail space and gym on N Damen Avenue. The floors above will contain 60 two-bedroom and eight three-bedroom units starting at $2,300 a month, all of which will have private inset balconies and access to communal amenity spaces in the transit-rich area.
Floor two-four plan of 3914 N Lincoln Avenue by SPACE Architects + Planners
Seven of the units will be on-site affordable residences with the remaining seven required by code being located off site. Residents won’t just have access to the CTA within a short walk, but will also receive a one-year Divvy bike membership as a station is located directly across the street. Longford Construction will break ground soon with an anticipated spring 2023 delivery date.
Subscribe to YIMBY’s daily e-mail
Follow YIMBYgram for real-time photo updates
Like YIMBY on Facebook
Follow YIMBY’s Twitter for the latest in YIMBYnews
Decent infill but still, when did it become acceptable to have bedrooms WITHOUT windows?!
If housing is about habitability, why is the city allowing reasonable architects and developers to build this way? (I know, the walls won’t touch the ceiling, or there will be an air vent…..then design loft spaces?!?!
I think most people in the target demographic for this development would use the “non-window” bedroom as an office, den, spare room for guests, infant nursery, etc. (Is it wrong not to have a window in a nursery? We never once opened our blackout shades in our baby’s room.)
Not that this contradicts your point about habitability in general, but the developer here gets to have it both ways and market 2- and 3-bedrooms at those market prices while knowing most buyers aren’t actually going to use those rooms as bedrooms. They know if buyers are balking at windowless rooms there is plenty of supply elsewhere, so clearly this isn’t something that’s worrying them.
As a born Chicagoan, I feel I can comment….I live in NYC and you cannot have a bedroom without light and air, ie a window. Call the space a den, or an office, and legally, you’re not housing people in windowless rooms – and let the tenant decide. It’s lazy for the designers or the developers to not strive and make homes that are habitable.
and, for SPACE Architects…their ain’t no space around the bed in most bedrooms (no space for a chair, a dresser….and in the second bedroom, I don’t think you can even walk around that bed (what happened to accessibility codes?). I’m not a stickler to all that, but I know an un-furnishable plan when I see one.