(Above) A building on North Hudson Avenue at Cabrini-Green in 1989. Photo by Camilo J. Vergara (Library of Congress). (Click on image to view larger version.)

By Don DeBat

20-Feb-25 – Two decades ago, private developers tried to kick-start a redevelopment on the edge of the infamous Cabrini-Green public housing development just south of Chicago’s Old Town neighborhood.

Launched in 2000, the development was an experiment with a new concept called “mixed-income housing.” However, the 261-unit North Town Village, at North Halsted Street & West Evergreen Avenue, received mixed reviews.

(Left) North Town Village, located north of the Loop near Goose Island and northwest of Cabrini-Green. (Photo obtained from Holsten Management Corporation.)

Built in 2000 and 2001, the seven-acre development – consisting of a mix of rental apartments, condominiums, stacked duplexes, coach houses, and townhomes – was only a stone’s throw from Cabrini-Green, one of the nation’s most troubled public-housing neighborhoods. Cabrini-Green was razed in stages in the mid-2000s.

True to the spirit of Chicago as a melting pot, North Town Village was designed to draw everyone from nearby families living in subsidized housing to upscale professionals, all of whom could enjoy the neighborhood’s great location and new upscale amenities.

The housing plan for North Town Village called for 50 percent market-rate units and 20 percent affordable housing – rental and for-sale units for families earning up to 120 percent of the area median income. About 30 percent of the units were planned as public housing replacement units dispersed throughout the project.

The rental phase consisted of a seven-story mid-rise, two six-flats, and a pair of eight-flats. There were a total of 116 one-to-four-bedroom rental units built in all. In addition, the developers sold 145 townhomes, duplexes, condominiums, and coach houses clustered on a cul-de-sac in a parklike setting.

Some public housing renters were mixed into buildings with affordable and market-rate renters.

The development also featured two new parks and was close to highbrow shopping along nearby North Avenue. (Right) Closer view of North Town Village.

In 2000, the developers said they were hopeful the North Town Village mission – offering architectural diversity, sensitivity to the able and disabled, comparable quality of construction for all units, and friendliness to the pedestrian, cyclist, and motorist – would be adopted.

Back then, the goal was to create an environment that was friendly, well-constructed, and well-managed, involving maximum participation by residents in all aspects of the development.

Unfortunately, more than a decade later, in 2014, the developers’ goals had not been achieved.

According to one North Town Village duplex-condo owner: “It’s like living in a low-rise Cabrini-Green. There are shootings in the summertime. One public housing tenant runs an illegal candy store out of her apartment, and there is no drug testing for low-income renters.”

In addition, during the recession of 2007 through 2011, the management’s resident-screening program appeared to have slipped, the market-rate condominium owner said. (Left) Kitchen of unit at North Town Village.

“Two-bedroom apartments originally designed for four people often were being occupied by as many as ten relatives and friends,” she complained.

A private investor in one building complained that his public-housing renter chopped a six-foot hole in the living room wall because he wanted his big-screen TV fashionably recessed.

Currently, on the positive side, shopping, entertainment, and nightlife opportunities now abound in the upscale neighborhoods surrounding North Town Village. Today, the development is within a short stroll of Steppenwolf Theatre on Halsted Street and The Second City comedy theater in Old Town.

Back then, in the mid-2000s, the nearby North/Clybourn/Halsted shopping district featured an Apple store, Whole Foods, Crate and Barrel, Starbucks, salons, and other upscale retail shops and boutiques.

A second shopping area, at Division Street & Clybourn Avenue, boasted a new 24-hour Jewel-Osco grocery store and an upscale Target store. A new library, police station, public schools, and improved parks also were part of the City of Chicago’s bold new Near North Redevelopment Initiative.

Is the new CHA plan a mistake?

Despite the overall failure of Cabrini-Green, and the eventual razing of the property, in 2025 the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) appears to be determined to repeat its mistake.

The CHA wants to build 4,080 new affordable units on the vacant Cabrini-Green land south of North Avenue, and the units are not all proposed as low-rise buildings and row houses. The notorious high-rises and mid-rises are part of the plan. Most are affordable residences, and likely will include hundreds of Section 8 public-housing units.

(Above) Rendering by Pappageorge Haymes Partners of 57 West Oak Street, a seven-story 78-unit mixed-income development located within the former Cabrini-Green site. It would replace a vacant lot, owned by CHA, at West Oak Street & North Larrabee Street. Its $52.9 million estimated cost would be paid from tax increment financing (TIF) funds, money that comes from increasing property taxes in a designated area.

Cabrini-Green was launched in the late 1940s as a “social experiment,” patterned after federal government’s Marshall Plan high-rise construction designed to rebuild Germany after World War II.

Over the next three decades, Cabrini-Green quickly became synonymous with poverty, violence, and neglect. At its peak, the development consisted of 23 high-rise buildings that housed more than 15,000 low-income residents.

In the beginning, Elizabeth Wood, head of CHA from 1937 through 1954, insisted on careful screening of the applicants.

“In selecting Black tenants for public housing, the CHA looked particularly for former military officers with combat records, and wives known to be good housekeepers,” wrote Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor in American Pharaoh, a book published in 2000 by Little, Brown and Company.

Unfortunately, the CHA abandoned Wood’s careful attention to tenant selection. The principle behind Wood’s tenant-selection process was that housing projects would only be healthy communities when careful thought was given to the tenants who would be allowed to move in.

“It only takes a very few, very antisocial people to make a floor or a building or a project unsatisfactory to parents who are concerned about their children,” she once said. (Right) Elizabeth Wood at Altgeld Gardens Homes, a public housing project on Chicago’s far south side built in 1944-45. Photo obtained from Chicago Housing Authority.

Wood’s tenant-selection process was abandoned not out of concern for civil liberties, but because the CHA was no longer concerned about the kind of communities that were being created,” Cohen and Taylor wrote in American Pharaoh.

“The biggest problem after 1954, housing project tenants told me, was the breakdown in tenant selection – no real belief that you had to select self-respecting families,” an aide to Elizabeth Wood told the authors. “The chronically unemployed, convicted criminals, and gang members were all ushered into the projects, and hardworking tenants who wanted a healthier environment for their children moved out.”

“Making matters worse, the CHA all but abandoned Elizabeth Wood’s practice of investigating the backgrounds and qualifications of prospective tenants,” the authors wrote. “By the time the last Robert Taylor Homes buildings were filled, there was almost no screening at all. The buildings that had the least tenant screening, at the southern extreme of the project, ended up having some of the worst problems with delinquency and crime.”

Now, the new Cabrini-Green “finalized master plan,” which the CHA says will be implemented starting in 2025, essentially repeats the great 1940s and 1950s landmark public housing boondoggle drafted by planners at the request of the late Mayor Richard J. Daley, who falsely believed that stacking poor people in high-rises would solve the city’s slum-housing problems.

Notably, Mayor Richard M. Daley, son of Richard J. Daley, was the visionary mayor who razed Cabrini-Green, Robert Taylor Homes, and Ida B. Wells projects to correct his father’s mistake.

(Left) Mayor Richard M. Daley and Whirlpool chairman Jeff Fettig (right in photo) talk on an outdoor patio at Reid Murdoch Center on November 9, 2010. Photo by Steven Dahlman.

There is some clarity in the following comments on the new Cabrini-Green plans by Old Town resident and real estate financial expert Timothy J. Carew: “Relying solely on professional planners has its limits. While their proposals are often accompanied by colorful renderings of building sites and LEGO-like structures, they frequently lack a comprehensive vision.”

Carew wonders how residents of the new Cabrini-Green will navigate to and from work in such a densely packed environment.

“The necessary infrastructure to support this ‘urban pod’ concept seems unrealistic,” he said.

A veteran Old Town resident made the following suggestion: “Just like Chicago police and firefighters are required to live within the city limits, Chicago Housing Authority employees should be required to reside in a CHA project, which they and/or their superiors approved as safe and habitable.”

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