Tag: development

The best ideas from Mayor Johnson’s “Cut The Tape” initiative

April 5, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Mayor Johnson and staff in the Mayor’s Office announced today at the Chicago Cultural Center the finality of administrative and legislative strategies – called “Cut The Tape” – developed for the development process executive, EO2023-21.

Mayor Brandon Johnson
L-R: Bonita Harrison, Phil Beckham, Juan Saldana

What I think makes the “best” are the strategies that I believe will increase housing abundance (a phrase that made it into the vision statement) and reduce development costs. To explain why I picked it, I added a “Why?” statement to each.

A good portion of the 107 strategies are solutions to issues that I’m not familiar with [1], and for now I will be skipping those until I learn more about them.

The best publicly-visible strategies

  • 4. Design a process for expedited review of affordable housing development projects. [Why? Affordable housing already has high costs, some of which are extended carrying costs due to the lengthy review and approval process.]
  • 7. Convene a working group to explore consolidating the Community Development Commission (CDC) and Chicago Plan Commission (CPC) into a single body or to have joint meetings to streamline processes. [Why? Certain project types have to be approved by both commissions, which have different schedules, different application and documentation standards. Approving a project in fewer meetings saves time and effort from staff and applicant.]
  • 9. Propose that the City only present City-owned land sales to the Chicago Development Commission (CDC) if the land has acquisition, remediation, or vertical construction that is subsidized with TIF dollars. [Why? ChiBlockBuilder and similar sales should be able to be done with fewer necessary approvals. City Council would still have to approve these sales.]
  • 17. Reduce the number of internal design review meetings from 3 to 1 and assess how to best engage DPD’s Committee on Design going forward. [Why? Fewer meetings is better – I’m not sure what else to say.]
  • 20. Finalize pre-approved designs to create faster options to build more affordable housing. [Why? Come Home Chicago was a pretty good idea from the Lightfoot administration and it needs a conclusion, in the form of a catalog of pre-approved designs that home builders can license to get permits faster. If the post-TIF Bond gets adopted by City Council then the pre-approved plans will coincide with a missing middle initiative called “pad ready” in the Bond that will prepare city-owned lots for construction of houses in the plan catalog. Learn about how the pre-approved plan program in South Bend, Indiana, is going.]
  • 28. Expand the pilot program for cash advance payment options. [Why? A lot of grant programs are only paid as a reimbursement which makes it harder and sometimes more expensive for small businesses to execute on the reason they’re receiving the grant; this program would offer cash ahead of time with appropriate guardrails to protect potential taxpayer loss.]
  • 59. Expand the City’s Encumbrance Ordinance to enable the clearing of City fines and fees from City-owned vacant lots; to include any debt owed to city, including but not limited to: water or sewer assessment; money owed to the City pursuant to a court order or an order from the Department of Administrative Hearings (DOAH); or demolition liens. [Why? The city has liens on properties it owns, due to acquisition since those liens, for unpaid water and sewer bills, which it expects the acquirer of city-owned land to pay rather than the entity that generated the debt. In many cases, it’s faster and cheaper for the new owner to pay the old debt that belongs to someone else.]
  • 67. Eliminate Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) approval of a special use permit to open a hair salon, barber shop, body art shop, or nail salon. [Why? This one makes it into my top three. I don’t think there’s a valid argument for these types of businesses to have to obtain a “special use” from the ZBA. It’s regressive, it wastes everyone’s time, and the ZBA approves every single one of them.]
  • 68. Explore Universal Affordability Preferences that would allow buildings to add more housing by-right without triggering a planned development, but only if the additional units are affordable. [Why? Affordable housing – really, any new housing – should not be subject to community approval, and this would help overcome aldermanic privilege/prerogative while also generating more housing.]

List continues below

  • 69. Revisit zoning code elements that functionally require all shelters and transitional housing developments to seek approval from ZBA, regardless of building size, form, or underlying zoning designation. [Why? Shelters are necessary, should not be subject to local community approval, and the current system is ridiculous in that a shelter can fail to be approved because a ZBA member seat is unappointed or a member and an alternate didn’t show up to a meeting.]
  • 70. Amend the Chicago Zoning Ordinance to allow applicants for Type 1 zoning changes to incorporate requests for variations and administrative adjustments into Type 1 zoning change applications – eliminating the duplicate review processes. [Why? It lowers the cost of doing business in the city, and lowers the cost and speeds up the acquisition of certain approvals that the zoning code mandates. EXAMPLE: developer proposes a building that needs a 5′ reduction in the required rear setback; rather than see two different boards or committees and prepare two different sets of documentation and analysis, the developer bundles the setback variation request into the “Type 1” zoning change request. IN FACT, this strategy is complete and it’s been in use since February’s zoning committee meeting.]
  • 76 and 77. Allow commercial-to-residential conversions of ground floors while exempting those conversions from additional residential parking requirements. + Allow ground floor residential uses on commercial corridors with excessive vacancy. [Why? Housing abundance, and this would enable more accessible homes, a priority of AARP, Access Living, and others.]
  • 79. Pass ordinance to allow for up to four issues to be heard as administrative adjustments before a ZBA hearing is required. [Why? The documentation burden and the required “findings of fact”analysis for appearing in front of ZBA is unnecessary for the kinds of changes that really should be approved as administrative adjustments.]
  • 80 and 81. Create an interdepartmental working group to streamline special uses and variations by shifting most applications to administrative review processes, while retaining the ZBA’s more in-depth evaluation for applications that warrant an increased level of public scrutiny. + Allow multiple administrative adjustments to not be reviewed as variations, allowing certain parking reductions by right, and investigating whether other variations needed for housing projects may be addressed via administrative adjustment. [Why? Basically the same reason as 79.]
  • 82. Eliminate minimum off-street parking requirements on new developments citywide. [Why? Parking requirements increase development costs, are carbon-intensive, facilitate higher levels of car ownership in urban areas, and “free” spaces causes more traffic.]
  • 83. Remove zoning barriers to City’s Non-Congregate Shelter acquisition program, allowing existing buildings to be repurposed as shelters or transitional residences. [Why? Zoning shouldn’t be used to inhibit new housing, especially for the most vulnerable Chicagoans – see also 69.]
  • 103. Support third-party organizations to develop technical assistance and capacity building programs for emerging and MWBE developers. [Why? Chicago benefits if more people are capable of developing property – see CEMDI for an example of a capacity-building program.]

There are a ton of additional strategies that are largely internal processes but with clear benefits to city staff and the applicants that represent what’s sometimes meant as “streamlining” a process. For example:

  • 46. Explore technology platforms that will allow departments to better organize and track closing documents, beyond the current exchange of documents via email
  • 52. Explore the feasibility of using electronic signatures on contracts.

Honorable mentions

  • 56, which I would like to know more about: “Align Chicago Construction Codes with current national model codes and standards, including modernizing the Mechanical Code in 2024 and Building Code in 2025.”
    What is in the current versions of the International Building Codes that have been adopted since Chicago’s IBC 2018 that would reduce housing costs, or make it easier to build housing?
    According to a contributor, items in the ICC’s mechanical and plumbing codes should make construction more affordable, and updating to the latest IBC allows for more mass timber.
  • 78. Explore options to post DPD’s special use recommendations online at ZBA website seven days before hearing date. [Why? Transparency.]
  • 86. Explore options for ZBA to post applications, plans, findings of fact, and staff recommendations to its website. [Why? Transparency.]

Missing

Other land use and zoning reforms that are on the level of “eliminating parking mandates citywide”:

  • Allowing accessory dwelling units (basement units and coach houses) citywide.
  • Allowing two and three-flats in all residential zoning districts.

Want to organize around these policy changes? Join Urban Environmentalists Illinois.

[Notes]

[1]. For example, I am not familiar with what this strategy is referring to, or the impact it could have, but I trust – based on the overall quality, expansiveness, the expertise of the focus groups who were consulted, and personal familiarity with most strategies – that it’s important: “47. Consolidate DPD Capital Grant funding requirements, structures, and sources of three programs into two grant tracks: Medium and Large”.

Evidence of “Olympic change” in Rio’s favelas

May 16, 2011 / / 0 Comments

I have never read Al Jazeera’s English edition until yesterday. I think I saw a post to this article on Twitter; it’s about how construction for the Olympic games in Rio de Janeiro, Rio, Brasil, is already removing parts of the favelas, or hillside shantytowns. The article is quite relevant for me because I wrote last week about how rising ticket prices threaten the egalitarian nature of watching futebol at the Rio’s most famous stadium, the Maracanã. From Al Jazeera:

This week came a series of troubling tales of the bulldozing and cleansing of the favelas, all in the name of “making Brazil ready for the Games”. Hundreds of families from Favela de Metro find themselves living on rubble with nowhere to go after a pitiless housing demolition by Brazilian authorities. By bulldozing homes before families had the chance to find new housing or be “relocated”, the government is in flagrant violation of the most basic concepts of human rights.

As you might expect, residents and planners have different ideas on what it means to remove these homes:

[Eduardo] Freitas doesn’t need a masters from the University of Chicago to understand what is happening. “The World Cup is on its way and they want this area. I think it is inhumane,” he said.

The Rio housing authority says that this is all in the name of “development” and by refurbishing the area, they are offering the favela dwellers, “dignity”.

The same thing has happened all across the United States and is still happening in Chicago. The Chicago Housing Authority, very quickly in the past 10 years, has demolished all of its high-rises (some were converted to condominiums, like Raymond Hilliard Homes at 54 W Cermak, or transferred to different ownership) under the Plan for Transformation. This displaced thousands of residents; some were moved to newly-built multi-flat buildings in specially-designed, mixed-income neighborhoods. But there weren’t enough of these buildings to absorb all of the residents who had to move out of the high-rises. I’m still not clear on where they went.

A favela in Rio de Janeiro. Photo by Kevin Jones.

Chicago’s final public housing high-rise was demolished in April 2011.

Introducing Grocery Store Bike Parking Ratings

October 20, 2010 / / 0 Comments

This article is part of a series (it seems) of grocery stores with poor bike parking – it first started with my local Dominick’s. I started an inventory and rating system for Chicago. I welcome your contribution. If you want to start a page for your town, I can help you with that.

After seeing the photos of the wacky bike parking situation at the Lincoln Park Whole Foods on Ding Ding Let’s Ride, I had to take a trip there myself!

By my count, I find that with 3 wave racks (of 2 sizes) and 3 grill racks, there are 27 bike parking spaces. You can debate me and possibly find 4 more.

Surely you can fit more, just like you can fit 4 bikes on a 2-space Chicago u-rack.However, the racks are installed so closer together to make this area quite a pain to find a space. And if you have a long wheelbase cargo bike (bakfiets, Madsen, or Yuba Mundo), GOOD LUCK!

The only space available for a longtail cargo bike like my Yuba Mundo is in a car parking space next to a hybrid Chevy Tahoe illegally parked in a handicapped parking space.

Photo showing too-close placement of the two kinds of racks. Notice that some bikes hang into the curb – it was the only way to use that bike rack. Other spaces might not have been opened when these people arrived.

But officially, for planning purposes, the Chicago Department of Transportation considers that rack as only fitting 2. This area could easily be sheltered. I think it’s something the store should look into. It provides sheltered car parking, which costs proportionally more than sheltered bike racks!

In the future, I expect better from Whole Foods.

For now, Target takes home the cake for providing consistently “good” bike parking. (Great’s the best a store can achieve.) So far, the rating system isn’t fully formed or automated. It’s a work in progress!

Sidenote: Access to Whole Foods via bicycle really sucks. There’s a 5-way intersection controlled by stop signs; then there’s the old railroad track and potholes. It might be better if you come in from the south, but then you have more RR track to deal with.

Photo montage showing how to access Whole Foods from Sheffield by bicycle.

The truth about Wal-Mart’s contribution to the tax roll

July 15, 2010 / / 18 Comments

I recently wrote about how Wal-Mart plans to expand its reach in Chicago in a big way (30 new stores big). Politicians around the country consistently like to be heard saying how one way the store(s) will benefit the city is the additional tax revenue the city will see from property and sales tax contributions. Here are selected quotes from Chicagoans:

On Tuesday, [Chicago Mayor] Daley noted that a Wal-Mart expansion would pave the way for sales tax windfall for the cash-starved city budget.

In suburban Cook County, about 20 percent to 30 percent of all sales tax revenue comes from Wal-Marts, Daley said.

Chicago Sun-Times, June 15, 2010

“Everyone realizes we need the tax revenue,” [Alderman Anthony] Beale [9th Ward] said.

Chicago Sun-Times, May 5, 2010

Ald. Richard Mell, 33rd, a pro-union alderman, lamented Wal-Mart’s domination of the nation’s retail market and its tendency to sell foreign-made products, but voted for Pullman Park because of the need for jobs and additional tax revenue.

Chicago Tribune, June 30, 2010

Comparatively, Wal-Mart brings in little property tax revenue on a per acre basis, according to a study from Sarasota County (Florida) and Public Interest Projects and posted by Citiwire. I’ve summarized their findings:

  • Single-family home: $8,200 per acre
  • Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club: $150.00-$200.00 per acre
  • Southgate Mall: $22,000 per acre
  • High-rise mixed-use project in downtown Sarasota: $800,000

That last one’s the kicker! From the Citiwire article, “‘It takes a lot of WalMarts to equal the contribution of that one mixed-use building,’ [Peter] Katz noted.” Read the full story for more examples and for more discussion on how this specific breakdown of costs and benefits is only one way to look at fiscal and retail impact.

If the same tax revenues were true for Chicago or Cook County (and I can’t say it is or isn’t), then the city planners and aldermen should be seeking developers to build high-rise mixed-use projects. Right.

But the issue Chicago and other cities have is that Wal-Mart is one of the most willing developers – they will build where no one else will. They have capital that no one else has. They have the resources to sway the population. It’s more politically difficult to resist such a willing partner like Wal-Mart than it is to seek relationships with developers who have the resources to create more beneficial mixed-use projects in the neighborhoods Wal-Mart seems to prefer.

Wal-Mart moves in, in a big way

July 4, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Every Chicagoan should know by now that Wal-Mart, who currently only has a single store in the city limits, plans to open about thirty new stores (the City Council approved the construction of a Supercenter in the Pullman community area on the far south side*). Wal-Mart announced they want to open “dozens of new stores” in the next five years in various sizes ranging from 8,000 square feet (think Walgreens) to 20,000 square feet (think Apple Store Michigan Avenue) to the typical 200,000 square feet Supercenter.

This is big news for Chicagoans, and residents of New York City (there are no Wal-Marts in NYC). Not only will they be able to buy Coca-Cola for 20 cents a can, they won’t be able to shop at existing stores – because many of them will close. For now, the Chicago Tribune is keeping tabs on the developing story.

People in Chicago protest a new Wal-Mart. Disclaimer: This photo is from 2005, before the first Chicago Wal-Mart opened in 2006. However, in 2010, prior to the City Council vote, there were rallies protesting and showing support for new Wal-Mart stores. Photo by Andrey Smagin.

While they report on the recorded impacts of incoming Wal-Mart stores on new markets, I hope they answer the questions surrounding the confusion over the alleged negotiations between Wal-Mart executives and Chicago labor unions (representing construction and service employees). The unions say they got Wal-Mart to agree to a minimum wage of $8.75 while Wal-Mart says it’s just a matter of internal policy to adjust wages for the market.

Wal-Mart has funded a possibly influential campaign to get Chicagoans to support their new proposed new stores. Part of the campaign included ads on buses and putting signs and t-shirts on youths in the street, saying “Jobs or else.” If you want a Wal-Mart in Chicago, the company urges you to contact your alderman. Photo by Ira of Being Totally Sweet in Chicago.

So what are those impacts?

Wal-Mart can afford to be bold, and its impact is readily seen. Median sales decrease 40 percent at similar high-volume stores when a Wal-Mart enters the market, 17 percent at supermarkets and about 6 percent at drugstores, according to a study published in June 2009 by researchers at multiple universities and led by the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H.

Drugstores like Deerfield-based [Illinois] Walgreens are the least impacted, according to the study, and are generally able to stay afloat by increasing their assortment size.

Supermarkets, the study found, can survive by doing their best to differentiate themselves from Wal-Mart, rather than attempting to compete.

Ideas about marketing and additional discussion of impacts is written on page two of the article. This light investigation from the Tribune comes after a recently released study from the University of Illinois at Chicago (my alma mater). Here’s the synopsis from that study about the sole Chicago Wal-Mart in the Austin (west side) neighborhood:

The study found that stores near Wal-Mart were more likely to go out of business, eliminating the equivalent of about 300 full-time jobs — about as many as Wal-Mart initially added to the area.

Read the full press release on the UIC News site or download the study (PDF).

*UPDATE: Where is the Pullman community area? It’s northwest of Lake Calumet and home to the former Pullman Palace Car Company’s factory and company town (see detailed street map of the Pullman community area). There are four commuter rail stations on the Metra Electric line within walking distance of the new shopping center. The development, called Pullman Park, will be located at 111th Street and the Bishop Ford Expressway (I-94). It includes shopping, a school, and housing, among other uses. The CTA #111/111th Street bus will run near Pullman Park.