My architect has issued architectural plans for bidding!
(This happened a month ago, and I don’t dedicate enough time weekly to send the bidding instructions to general contractors and to follow up with them asking if they’re still planning to send a bid.)
If you’re an interested GC, look at the “bid package” where you’ll find…
- links to the architectural plans
- structural plans (for the basement)
- photos of the interior and exterior
- schedule book
What’s happening in the neighborhood
The house is one block away from the Kedzie Green Line station, which offers a 20-minute ride to downtown or to Oak Park. Behind the station is The Hatchery, a major shared commercial kitchen and food business incubator.
The Cook County Land Bank Authority owns several properties on the block and is marketing these to developers for new housing.
Starting in 2022, the City of Chicago began the process to redevelop land it owns adjacent to the Kedzie station into mixed-use buildings.
How I’ve found general contractors
I’ve already had a few GCs walk through the house and tell me they’re going to submit a bid. I found them either by asking architects I know, and by scouring the Building Permits Browser on Chicago Cityscape.
I filtered the permits, looking for “renovation/alteration”, set the estimated project cost from $100,000 to $400,000, and then skimmed the project descriptions for words like “two-flat” and “rehab”.
I made a list of those contractors and found their phone numbers and emails elsewhere (the city used to include their phone numbers in the building permits dataset, and took it out in 2019 or 2020).
