A pair of demolition permits were issued on March 7 for the property at 4846 North Hermitage Avenue in Uptown. The main permit will tear down a three-story brick residential building from the 1890s, while the second demo permit allows for the removal of a recently rebuilt four-car detached garage. The buildings are being removed to make space of a single-family residence permitted for construction back in early February.
4846 North Hermitage Avenue, built in 1893, to be demolished in 2025. Photo by Daniel Schell
Photo by Daniel Schell
Real estate records show the building dates back to about 1893. It sold to Amazing City LLC in November of last year for $1.21 million. It had remained until the same ownership since 2000, when it sold for $400,000.
Photo by Daniel Schell
Photo by Daniel Schell
A new construction permit was issued by the city on February 5, after having been applied for less than two weeks earlier, calling for a two-story with basement single-family home. A detached three-car garage accessed from the alley will replace the existing four-space structure. Both the home and the garage will have rooftop decks. Hanna Architects is the architect of record. Amazing City LLC is the developer, new construction general contractor, and demolition crew, per the permits.
The front entrance. Photo by Daniel Schell
The garage was recently redone. Photo by Daniel Schell
Back of the building from the alley. Photo by Daniel Schell
As of March 8, demolition fencing surrounds the entire property, but there is no demo equipment on site. No work had started on the garage, which will be removed first so crews can access the residential building from the rear.
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Well that sucks
Seriously unfortunate that this wasn’t able to be renovated/updated. Double/extra deep lot. I can’t wait for the white box that Hanna will replace this with.
Single family home replacing a multifamily building right by transit. Hey developers, you’re going backwards.
3 story down to 2 story and we are replacing a multi unit building for a single family one. Oh and the new building will be 5 times as ugly. Why do we keep allowing this to happen? Why do developers do this, how is there no vision here?
The city shouldn’t allow down zoning like this! Don’t blame the developer for the city’s lack of action against giant SFH
Louie, the city not only allows this kinda crap, it ACTIVELY encourages it!
The existing underlying zoning here is RS-3, so the only thing that could replace the existing grand-fathered 3-flat as of right is a SFH. Like so much of the city, that area was downzoned ages ago because this city is run by complete and total idiots, and has been for far too long (and may very be forever).
Yes, developers are often egregiously stupid.
But so are the powers that be in ths town.
A nice and tidy closed feedback loop of stupid.
Our building is on the market and I worry about ppl like “yimby” buying it and demolishing it. We are in an up and coming area. We have “yimby” construction that will be happening on both sides of us. And our building has been in the family over 100 years so we have many memories here. My great grandfather owned a terrazzo company so our back hallway is done by him.
This just saddens me
Back in the mid 20th century, the middle class was largely abandoning the inner-city for the outskirts and the suburbs. People wanted detached single family homes. Neighborhoods like Uptown were in decline, falling land values and shrinking populations. Many leaders at the time felt that the solution was to suburbanize the inner-city. While they were encouraging the vertical and geographical expansion of the downtown, they often took the opposite approach in outlying residential neighborhoods. That’s why so many older existing 2 flats and 3 flats were zoned as RS.
Obviously today’s inner-city is mostly on the opposite trajectory. Yet City Council has not updated the zoning map. Is it because they are lazy? No. They updated the zoning code a decade or two ago, but they left the zoning map the way it was. Why? The tradition known as “adermanic prerogative”. As long as developers need the aldermans permission to build what they’d like to build, the alderman can count on developers donating to their campaign funds. That is a power that can only be taken away from them by themselves. They’d have to give up that power voluntarily and they’re not gonna do that.
So while high-rise apartments are going up all over the inner-city in Houston or Miami… In Chicago it’s often easier just to build a mansion than to deal with the alderman and all the b.s.
That’s going to be an expensive project if the acquisition cost alone is $1.21.