7-Jun-15 – Now that the once sprawling and infamous Cabrini Green public housing project has vanished into the sands of time, developers are busy renaming the vacant patches of dirt and weeds that remain just south and west of the Old Town neighborhood.

Salivating over the last scraps of open land on the wealthy North Side, developers and their marketing people have decided to re-brand the neighborhood NoCa for North of Chicago Avenue.

We are talking about the former no-man’s land bounded roughly by Chicago Avenue, North Avenue, Larrabee Street, and Halsted Street. The area formerly known as Cabrini Green is north of River North, the high-rise haven, and west of the ritzy Gold Coast. (Left) Google Map of area. Click on image to view larger version.

The NoCa movement no doubt was inspired by the creation of the hot SoNo district immediately to the west. A once gritty industrial neighborhood, SoNo is bounded by North, Division, Halsted, and the north branch of the Chicago River.

With the buzz for NoCa in the air, the “World’s Greatest Newspaper” asked its readership in late May to name the neighborhood. The Chicago Tribune received more than 100 name suggestions, some silly and fun, some stupid, others straight from out-of-town or off-the-planet. New monikers included: Cabriniville, Chatown, Chiboom, Corruptionville, East Goose, Gautreaux Town, Newbrini, Urbanview, and Yuptown.

There were also a few sensible choices such as River East, Northtown, West Old Town, and Old Town South.

Of course, the best choice for the area name would be the historically correct North Town, which is what the neighborhood was called before World War II. The origin of the name was derived from North Chicago Township, which today is listed on every real estate tax bill for property owners in the neighborhood.

(Above) National Park Service photo looking northeast toward Cabrini Green in 1999. West Division Street is at left, North Halsted Street at right, and Goose Island at bottom of frame.

European design seemed modern in 1950

Growing up six decades ago on Halsted Street just north of North Avenue, only two or three blocks north of Cabrini Green, this writer has first-hand experience on the impact of a giant public housing development on the surrounding neighborhood.

During the late 1940s and early 1950s the European design concept of Cabrini Green seemed like a progressive way of dealing with the problem of affordable housing.

Obviously, the cramped urban high-rise was the affordable solution to warehousing America’s poor. But it was an inhumane solution, experts now say with 20-20 hindsight.

The social and cultural implications of Cabrini Green were vast for the white, Hispanic and black children growing up in the neighborhood. Elementary schools such as Newberry School, located on Burling Street, were grossly overcrowded.

The factory neighborhood of Lincoln Park was launched on the long road to trendy and affluence in 1956, when the Community Conservation Board designated the vast majority of the area for urban renewal.

In the early 1960s, urban renewal started to displace many of the older ethnic residents, and set the stage for gentrification.

(Above) Row houses in low-rise section of Cabrini Green, photographed by Iker Gil for Living in Cabrini, an article written by James Lockhart, a former resident of the Chicago housing project.

Cabrini Green in transition by 2000

With gentrification in full swing, the era of concentrated public housing on the Near North Side was over, and the new concept of “mixed-income communities” was in vogue. Much of the new construction was built on city-owned land with 99-year ground leases.

On the western edge of Cabrini Green, a landmark $65 million mixed-income housing community was launched on seven acres at North Halsted Street and West Evergreen Avenue. Co-developers Hal Lichterman and Peter Holston asked their media consultant, a former Chicago Sun-Times real estate editor, to come up with a name for the new community. North Town Village was the choice.

The planned 261 residential units included rental apartments, condominiums, stacked duplexes, coach houses, and townhomes. Recreational facilities and a nearby commercial district were also part of the Near North Redevelopment Initiative, according to Kenard Corporation and Holsten Real Estate Development & Management Corporation.

The innovative North Town Village was the first development of its kind in Chicago. Kenard and Holsten’s successful mixed-income housing plan for North Town Village called for half of the housing to be market-rate units, while 20 percent would be affordable rental and for-sale units. The remaining 30 percent were developed to replace public housing units and were dispersed throughout the project.

“It’s clear that the there is a huge demand for vibrant, accessible, and mixed-income housing in the North Town community,” said Lichterman in 2001, “which fits in snugly with the Old Town and Lincoln Park neighborhoods.”

Fifteen years later, North Town Village is a key residential anchor in its neighborhood, and as a result the area around it should be named North Town in its honor.

The development has served as a model community for several other innovative mixed-income developments on the South Side, including Oakwood Shores and Jazz On The Boulevard, which replaced downtrodden public housing projects.