(Above) Rendering by GREC Architects of Old Town Canvas, including a Walgreens store at lower left. (Click on image to view larger version.)

By Don DeBat

27-Feb-25 – “What we have here is failure to communicate,” said actor Strother Martin in the 1967 movie, Cool Hand Luke. The famous quote truly illustrates the ongoing high-rise controversy in Old Town.

On February 20, the Chicago Plan Commission approved the 36-story, 349-unit Fern Hill high-rise deal with “full orchestration,” according to Timothy Carew, an eloquently outspoken opponent of the project.

Carew, a retired banker and financial consultant who resides in Old Town, is miffed about the approval – along with the vast majority of Old Town residents.

“From the start, this $225 million high-rise deal, which includes 333 parking spaces, has been a carefully crafted master narrative, a scripted performance disguised as public process,” charged Carew (left). “We were told at the Plan Commission meeting that Chicago only has a handful of active high-rise construction cranes. So, we must stop that trend.”

In Carew’s opinion, the era of big towers as a solution to the city’s affordable housing crisis has long passed.

“We have tried to tell our politicians that high-rises are not the answer,” Carew said. “But they won’t listen – just like they refused to listen to the Old Town community during those ten so-called public meetings on the Fern Hill project.”

Despite the opposition, Fern Hill developer Nick Anderson (right) said: “We will remain vigilant in moving forward with this development, which will revitalize vacant properties, brighten an uninviting block, improve walkability, increase safety through the closure of two area gas stations that have been riddled by violent crime, [expand] much-needed affordable housing, invest in traffic improvements, and expand revenue opportunities for local businesses and the City of Chicago.“

This writer advocates that part of those “affordable rental units” in Fern Hill’s planned high-rise be set aside on a “golden list” for Old Town’s long-term low-income senior citizens so they can avoid being gentrified out of Old Town.

The building’s floor plan for 349 apartments now calls for 105 studios with 400 square feet of living space, 126 one-bedroom units with 700 square feet, and 42 two-bedroom units with 1,400 square feet.

There will also be 42 three-bedroom units with 1,850 square feet, 30 four-bedroom layouts with 2,113 square feet, and four penthouse units each encompassing an expansive 3,170 square feet.

With Old Town and Lincoln Park apartment rents now more than $3 per square foot each month, you don’t have to be a math expert to see market rents ranging from an estimated $1,200 for a tiny studio to $6,339 for a four-bedroom layout. Penthouses likely would run $9,510.

High-rise protection ordinance?

Meanwhile, critics say Fern Hill is hiding behind the Lakefront Protection Ordinance that was designed to protect people’s access to parks and the lakefront – and not to ensure rights to develop high-rises.

“The city should rename it the Lakefront High-rise Protection Ordinance,” Carew said. “No one on the Plan Commission took issue with this obvious ploy to bend a longstanding ordinance to fit their development gambit.”

In the opinion of The Home Front, this high-rise approval is only the tip of the iceberg in what will be unveiled in the future of Old Town, which may eventually be renamed “High-Rise Town.”

Several major Old Town rezoning requests were quietly approved in January and February of 2024, and currently are included in a new amended zoning ordinance that will change the face of the neighborhood forever.

All this high-rise banter reminds this writer of a 1980s Chicago Sun-Times interview with apartment developer Thomas Rosenberg, who was busy developing several tall Gold Coast projects along LaSalle Street south of Division Street. Rosenberg, a smart guy, omnisciently told this reporter: “The Manhattanizing of Chicago is underway.” (Right) Publicity photo of Thomas Rosenberg.

Rosenberg’s true talent was raising investment capital, so he moved to Hollywood to produce dozens of bombshell movie hits, including Million Dollar Baby, which won him the 2004 Academy Award for Best Picture.

If you check out the new rezoning map for Old Town, you now know the once gracious and charming landmark neighborhood is doomed to be “Manhattanized” into the next River North – a high-rise-infested neighborhood.

(Above) Map released by the City of Chicago showing the boundaries of the Old Town Triangle landmark district in comparison with the Lakefront Zoning District. (Click on image to view larger version.)

Critics say Fern Hill worked in the shadows for months to quietly engineer a completely new high-rise zoning map for Old Town, and apparently the city is going along with the plan.

Through a new entity, Old Town Triangle Partners I LLC, the revised 2024 Old Town high-rise zoning application calls for much more than rezoning of the original proposed vacant Moody Church parking lot into an apartment tower.

The partnership also includes the Moody Church and Walgreens – which despite its recent financial problems is planning a new store at North & Wells.

(Right) This rendering by GREC Architects shows another angle on Old Town Canvas. (Click on image to view larger version.)

The secret 11-page zoning document obtained by The Home Front further includes the Piper’s Alley tract, now owned by Old Town Development Associates, LLC, a partnership headed by politically connected Thomas Tully, who served as Cook County Assessor from 1974 through 1978.

One tower could lead to three

Insiders say Fern Hill’s original proposed 500-unit Old Town Canvas high-rise, now reduced to 349 units, apparently is planning through various partnerships to stretch the “land canvas” for at least two additional towers on the north side of North Avenue, west of Wells Street.

In play in the long-range rezoning chess game is the Piper’s Alley complex, including the LA Fitness (formerly known as XSport Fitness), Starbucks, The Second City, and more than a dozen commercial properties that ring the northwest corner of North & Wells running west to North Park.

Zoning experts say the rezoning of the 84,078-square-foot Piper’s Alley site to allow a floor-area-ratio (FAR) of 420,390 square feet could eventually pave the way for two additional high-rise towers on the north side of North Avenue between Wells Street and North Park Avenue.

As proposed, the sweeping zoning changes under Fern Hill’s expanded planned development partnership could result in up to 1,400 new units for 4,000 to 5,000 people along a two-block stretch of North Avenue between LaSalle Drive and North Park Avenue.

Although Fern Hill’s rezoning application does not immediately allow residential units on the Piper’s Alley commercial site, that likely will happen in the future.

The rezoning application also provides that the 392 parking spaces in the deteriorating Piper’s Alley garage could be removed at the time of that parcel’s “site plan approval,” resulting in a sharp reduction in the area’s much-needed parking.

Earlier, Anderson said Piper’s Alley owners recently signed a new long-term lease for The Second City and have assured him that they have no future plans for high-rises.

“If another development proposal for Piper’s Alley comes along, it will be judged on its own merits,” said 2nd Ward Alderman Brian Hopkins (left).

If the city’s road map to boost its billion-dollar budget shortfall is raising hundreds of millions of dollars in high-rise development cash by transforming Old Town and Chicago’s lakefront into Manhattan, long-time neighborhood resident and housing expert Dan Baldwin suggests an alternative.

“Chicago needs to create a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to cut payroller waste and streamline budget costs to hold real estate taxes down,” Baldwin said. “Then the city wouldn’t have to allow developers to build endless rows of high-rises to generate tax dollars.”

Previous story: Approval of residential high-rise met with Old Town backlash