A demolition permit has been issued for a single-story commercial building at 1367 West Wilson Avenue in Uptown. Demo fencing was delivered to the site after the Happy Wash Laundromat closed, and sat in a stack until it was set up to close off the parking lot along Dover Street. It now appears a new residential development for the site is soon to get started.
Demo fencing went up long before the permit was issued. Photo by Daniel Schell
Photo by Daniel Schell
The former Happy Wash Laundromat space. Photo by Daniel Schell
Photo by Daniel Schell
The Mukase Restaurant was the last space in use in the building. Photo by Daniel Schell
The permit was issued on February 27, naming B & K Concrete 1 as the demo contractor, at an estimated fee of $48,500. The building contained four commercial spaces, including the laundromat at the corner of Wilson and Dover. The last remaining business in the building, The Mukase Restaurant, closed in November and moved to a new location in the new-construction building at 4501 North Sheridan Road.
Icon Property Management has a pending permit in the Chicago Data Portal for a five-story, 28-unit building at 4553 North Dover Street. There will be a 25-space parking garage on the first floor, with the residential units contained in the four upper levels. Axios Architects is named in the permit as the architect of record, and Chicago Common Partners is the general contractor.
Renderings of the upcoming project show no signs of reusing any of the terra cotta façade from the current building.
Rendering of 4555 N Dover Street by Axios Architects
4553 North Dover Street is on a transit-rich block. Stops for the Route 22 and 78 buses are within a one-block walk, as is the Route 81 bus, though that will no longer be detoured onto Wilson Avenue once the Lawrence Red Line platform reopens. The Wilson Red/Purple Line platform is five blocks to the east, where the Route 36 Broadway bus also makes stops.
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how sad that another bland box is popping up. Incorporating that beautiful terracotta would have been such a great way to make the building unique and give it a sense of place
Ughhh…this and the Holiday Club project making zero effort to incorporate even a tiny bit of their gorgeous terra cotta facades. Off to the dumpster, you old thing. :-/
I like the density, happy to have more neighbors but can these developers even put the smallest amount of effort on design? I’m going to have to look at this thing every day man.
I actually prefer the cleaner look of contemporary buildings to the terra cotta. I find lots of those tiles just look busy and often look dirty when they are not cleaned.
Wow, great historical architecture being torn down and a boring developer clone going up. Doesn’t anyone put up anything with a little bit of architectural design?
I wish they would’ve kept some retail with all the new residents being added.
Gorgeous. sad to see it torn down
Looks like public housing …. sad sad sad
Another crap decision. Neighbors should insist upon keeping the facade.
No ground floor retail isn’t very NIMBY in my opinion.
I can’t believe this project is getting so much hate, it’s 28 new units replacing a lot with a massive surface parking lot in a transit rich neighborhood! This city needs to support every project like this in order to increase our tax base and ‘build’ our way out of debt.
I agree with you. It would be nice to keep some of the facade, but how much could be kept while building over that parking lot? As for the people lamenting the lack of retail, is the city lacking retail space? There are empty storefronts all over.
None of the comments are haters. It’s just people wishing for a better quality design better fitting a historic landmarked neighborhood and lamenting the loss of a really cool terra cotta facade. The need for more housing shouldn’t be a license to build anything as long as its bigger.
People can be happy something new is being build while still wishing it was better. This is a very ugly building, no matter how you frame things. And it’s sad to see a historical part of our city vanish to make way for something so soulless. Nonetheless, it’s more housing in a neighborhood that gravely needs it.
I think there’s room for both great architecture and increased development. What the city of Carmel, IN does is that they take out loans against some of the increased tax revenue from new buildings and dedicate some of that to improving the exteriors, something like this can work to save facades and add life to stale boxes while not impeding on the pace of new development