The Chicago Plan Commission has approved the multi-phase Woodlawn Central development centered around the intersections of East 63rd Street and South Dorchester Avenue. The approval comes after more than four years of planning by the Apostolic Church of God, which is behind the proposal and occupies a large portion of the property.
Site massing of Woodlawn Central phase one by Gensler
Working with design firm Gensler, the team is imagining a 13-building complex with roughly 1,000 residential units, including senior housing, a hotel, an urban farm, retail space, green space, and a small theater. The tallest buildings within the completed development will sit on the northern end of the site and cap out at 240 feet in height.
Site massing of Woodlawn Central phase one by Gensler
Rendering of Woodlawn Central phase one by Gensler
The first phase will fill out a wedge-shaped lot sliced by the Metra Electric tracks and spanning a whole city block bound by East 63rd Street to the north and East 64th Street to the south. The site will be mostly occupied by a three-story podium capped by two separate towers reaching 160 feet in height, one of which will serve as a hotel and the other as residential.
Rendering of Woodlawn Central phase one by Gensler
In total, the ground floor will hold 26,500 square feet of commercial space spread across a large food market, retail space, and two food and beverage outposts for the hotel. This will be joined by a lobby for each tower, along with one for the 300-space parking garage on the next two levels, which will also be utilized by the church’s congregation.
Floor plans of Woodlawn Central phase one by Gensler
The podium will be capped by a large outdoor deck along with amenity levels for both towers. The 14-story residential building will hold 104 units, of which 22 will be affordable. Units will be made up of studio, one-, two-, and three-bedroom layouts. The hotel structure next door will contain 160 rooms.
Elevations of Woodlawn Central phase one by Gensler
Both structures will be clad in a mix of glass, copper-toned metal panels, and metal mesh screens. This first phase is set to cost $134 million to complete and will now proceed through the approval process. If the team receives all of the expected approvals in time, the first phase should break ground in early 2027 and open in mid-2028.
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
Rebuild the Jackson Park ‘L’ you cowards.
Wow I love this for the neighborhood but now that we have really moved the goal post on what we call “affordable”, I feel sorry for the residents fighting to not get priced out of the area. This investment is so appreciated but bittersweet as Woodlawn is going to look so different a decade from today.
This whole narrative about being “priced out of the neighborhood” has almost become a reflexive response to all development and investment.
Development is GOOD. Investment is GOOD. Rising prices are good. People move. Let the process happen as it should. Efforts to stop investment have only one outcome: another 100 years of Chicago’s south side being full of abandoned lots, crime, and having little socioeconomic diversity.
Change is good here. I hope this development and countless more happen here, unencumbered by the crying and whining of activists who hate change and success
Rising prices are not good lol but new construction doesn’t cause the price of existing units to rise. People think this is the case because the two things are correlated as construction and rising prices both occur in increasingly desirable areas. But for anyone with any knowledge of economics, it’s obvious that new construction fights rising housing costs by increasing supply.
You heard it here folks, displacement is good as long as line goes up. Activists aren’t worried about families being forced out of their neighborhoods, they just hate change and success!
“You heard it here folks, displacement is good”
No, but building more units is good. During a time of massive housing shortage, building more units is absolutely good. When new units are built, that is a good thing.
Here’s the thing I do not get.
Activists decry, yell, and shout at city hall for disinvesting in the challenged chunks of Chicago that have been neglected for decades.
The exact thing they have been shouting about, they now have it. This is the kind of stuff that brings in more jobs, creates economic opportunities, and counters the narrative that once supported the Black Metropolis. How do we enable higher-paid individuals in the local area without breaking the status quo?
The most damaging thing about left-leaning ideology is how to provide when money is tight/inexistent. We can say tax whoever at whatever rate, but those folks will just leave for where they can be rich at ease. Like it or not, that is the reality. We say increase taxes overall; that is bleeding the middle and lower classes to the point where their social programs only work for those at the absolute bottom of the barrel, or those too rich; the impact is negligible. We need less dependency. Chicago has proven it cannot build affordable homes efficiently enough to make the numbers work for all. We simply need a broader general supply without hindering developers during economic downturns. Fuel costs are astronomical; tariffs have impacted EVERYTHING. We have to compromise, and even in such an instance, we are still helping the local community.
So my question is: how do we build up a neighborhood in a city that is broke and has an even more broke population? We have to build wealth somehow. This is not a discussion of being lazy or not financially successful. How do we fix with nothing to give?
But the issue is if the development and investment aren’t coupled with opportunities and social support for preexisting residents in the neighborhood, it all amounts to a form of NIMBYism. “We don’t care where all the poors go; they just can’t stay here.”
You can’t just build and expect the benefits to trickle down. Building needs to be in conjunction with progressive social policy.
Building doesn’t need to come with ANYTHING. Man, some of you people are just so programmed to think that every single thing that happens has to come with some interventionist social engineering plan with stakeholders and officials and 19 different committees making sure that every single person within a 10 square mile radius isn’t offended or hurt.
You “it better not displace anyone!” wackos are the NEW NIMBY’s. You’re just the south side version of the same obstructionism. You are playing the victim, but I see through you all—YOU are the aggressors.
Sometimes a building is just a building. Get over it, let the dang building get built for once, sheesh!
They are not the new NIMBYs– they ARE NIMBYs. The NIMBY brainworms infect people of all political persuasions for completely different reasons.
Oh I know, do they want development or not? And can’t be more than 20% affordable otherwise it’ll turn into Cabrini 2.0 . Great project.
Cabrini was not 25% affordable.
love this project. seems like it’ll be really good at the street level with the podium going the whole block and i like the towers too.
Awesome. I like the depth and angles of this design.
White Neighbors Matter
For a mega development owned by a church, I would have expected a higher number of affordable units. I suppose they’re paving their way to heaven with the senior housing? Congrats to them for hanging on to all that property long enough to see it become valuable. They clearly have some pros passing the plate.
do the people typing long paragraphs about displacement understand that these are currently parking lots?
I lived for almost 5 years just a few blocks away from this project. This will have a massive POSITIVE impact on the Woodlawn community. That is why, when Alderwoman Taylor put this development to a vote of all 20th Ward residents who live within 1.5 miles of this site (as she always does), we voted to SUPPORT it. Currently, as others have mentioned, all of these are EMPTY lots that are only used on Sundays when folks come to the services at Apostolic. This is an exponentially better use of this land.
Yay more units but… Is this architectural style really conducive to the neighbor-oriented lifestyle of Woodlawn? I just can’t picture working class families moving in. Hopefully design changes will be made to really support this community while maintaining some of the benefits.