Luxury apartment buildings in Chicago are built typically in neighborhoods with no shortage of well-to-do renters or in working-class parts of town where they serve as a vehicle for gentrification. Though the city’s Affordable Requirements Ordinance is meant to stem the drain of reasonably priced rental housing, developers have all too often elected to pay a fee in place of setting aside 10 percent of their units as affordable for people making 60 percent or less of the area median income. Most aldermen hardly put up a fight when developers do this, eager to see any kind of economic stimulus in their wards, especially if it promises to bring in higher-income constituents. This only goes to reinforce segregation in the city, as formerly affordable neighborhoods fall out of reach for working-class people and high-opportunity areas remain hopelessly closed off to lower-income households. Which is why the story of a planned 297-unit apartment building at 8535 W. Higgins near O’Hare is a curious one.
With no one speaking against that proposal at the meeting, nor voicing opposition in the ensuing month, the 11-member Zoning Advisory Committee approved GlenStar’s proposal in January 2017 by unanimous vote with one abstention. In the months that followed, GlenStar prepared to seek approval from the Chicago Plan Commission—the next step toward breaking ground on the apartment building.
E-mail exchanges reveal surprise from those who received Napolitano’s letters. When ZAC chair Mike Emerson asked the alderman to explain his reversal to “help us better understand where and how this ground swell of dissent is being delivered, processed, and acted upon,” Napolitano responded with a link to a Nadig story about the opposition to the building in Arena’s ward. (Emerson didn’t return requests for comment. It remains unclear whether he received any further explanation from the alderman.)
“Given your prior support, the public’s support, and the unanimous support from the [Zoning Advisory Committee] earlier this year, we are surprised and troubled by this situation,” Debb wrote. He added that without the understanding that Napolitano had been in full support of the project, GlenStar would never have expended money and time on the proposal during the prior six months. Given the size of the planned apartments and the “price point of approximately $2,300 a month, there would be no more than six (6) children living in the entire residential portion of the development,” he stressed, adding that the building’s property tax contributions to Chicago Public Schools “could be over $500,000 per year, far in excess of any possible new costs for schools associated with school-aged children living in the new apartment building.”
The next time GlenStar and Napolitano met face to face was that September 11 zoning committee meeting, where the alderman kept testifying about the density and the schools. He also claimed that it was the first time he’d heard that there was affordable housing planned for the site. “In the end, I have to speak on behalf of my community. I have to speak on behalf of the schools. And I have to speak that there was no affordable housing in this until today,” Napolitano said.
Diamond says he doesn’t know what the company will do if this happens. “We’ve never had this situation come up before,” he said, adding that while he can’t be sure, it seems like politics are at play in both Napolitano’s and Solis’s treatment of their proposal. It’s possible GlenStar will simply use the parcel meant for the apartments to build another office building, for which they wouldn’t need to seek any more approvals or zoning changes. If that happens, however, Diamond points out that it will only increase density on the parcel and bring more traffic to the area given the parking requirements for commercial development.
