Adam Ballard, the Associate State Director for AARP Illinois, the local chapter for AARP, interviewed Brian P. and I about accessory dwelling units. We discussed:
statewide legalization, after two bills – HB 1813 and HB 3552 – were introduced in Springfield
The conversation is 28 minutes long; if you haven’t dived into ADUs yet, this is a great video to help get you up to speed!
Bonus content: AARP is the largest organizational supporter of allowing accessory dwelling units in all communities because of how they expand the options for people to “age in place” (continue living in the same neighborhood when their housing needs change), earn additional income, or rent their big house to their adult children’s families. Explore AARP’s ADU resources.
One of the many benefits of allowing pocket neighborhoods and cottage courts is being able to share high land costs. That, and sharing child care duties, are primary reasons that Phil Levin and Kristen Berman created “Radish”, a pocket neighborhood in Oakland.
Phil founded Live Near Friends, a website advising people on which steps to take to eventually live near friends and family and live happier by focusing on the hard part of finding appropriate real estate, setting up community standards, and arranging rent and legal concerns. He also is a co-founder of Culdesac, in Tempe, Arizona, an apartment complex with a traditional design of close-together buildings and shops near transit.
Phil takes Kirsten Dirksen, who produces videos about uncommon homes, on a tour of Radish, where the viewer can meet the residents, and learn about the architecture of the buildings and outdoor space plus a little about the process to combine two lots into what he calls a “friend compound”.
I previously wrote about cottage courts and how the Chicago zoning code does not allow them, primarily by disallowing more than one house per property. For Chicago, cottage courts can additionally offer the benefit of achieving the same density as a series of two-flats – so as not to reduce the population or population capacity of a neighborhood – while responding to the demand for detached housing and yards – which are putting pressure on two-flats and leading to their deconversions or teardowns. Two-flats have been a typical way for Chicagoans to live in a multigenerational setting, something that cottage courts can also promote.
Radish comprises two properties that started with two existing apartment buildings and an existing backyard house. Levin et. al. added another backyard house (ADU), a small building for a coworking office and shared kitchen (called “Blueberry” on the site plan below), and an RV for housing guests. All of those additions encircle a large shared space with a grassy yard, communal and scattered seating, a fire pit, a hot tub, and a sauna, separated from the car parking area by a privacy fence.
The lot area of the two parcels is about 18,859 s.f. The site plan is from 2020 and the population count reflects that year. Site plan: Supernuclear
In total, there are eight dwelling units on the property in four houses on an 18,589 s.f. set of two parcels. That lot area is the equivalent of six standard size lots in Chicago, on which 12-18 dwelling units will typically be found. But, that large lot size is atypical for Oakland.
Another aspect of cottage courts is that they can facilitate sharing food, high-cost resources (like a hot tub), and child care. Phil, the other residents, and even former residents who live nearby and stop by during the filming, describe how the cooking and child care is shared in the video. Phil’s blog details how he and his wife, Kristen, “built Radish to be a great place to have kids”.
Stay tuned for another blog post on this topic. I worked with Jamin Nollsch to create a cottage court site plan specific for Chicagoans to pair with a memo and sample ordinance that I wrote to promote legalizing this form of housing and living here.
The bridge carries the St. Charles Air Line which itself carries freight and Amtrak traffic over the Chicago River at 16th Street. The City of New Orleans, Illini and Saluki routes use the line (after crossing the bridge, they back in to Union Station).
The park in the foreground is the extension of Ping Tom Park, and has a boathouse in which kayaks are stored.
The massive vacant parcel was once owned by Tony Rezko who was convicted of corruption and fraud.
The land is separated from that history, now, and will be developed by Related Midwest.
I can never remember the names that other people use for this land. I’ve always known it as the “Rezko lot”, so I’m sorry to perpetuate its relation to someone who was convicted of fraud and corruption.
The wonderful Bloomingdale Trail ends at Ridgeway Avenue because any further and you would be bicycling on or next to active passenger and freight railroads.
Even if you walk up to the solstice viewing area at the terminal, which is slightly elevated above the trail level, you can’t get a good view of Chicago’s west side.
Just over the fence is the Pacific Junction where three Metra Lines here (NCS, MD-W, and UP-NW) and Amtrak run. Ten years ago, Canadian Pacific serviced industrial clients along the Bloomingdale Line branch from the junction.
Also in this video are three schools, the former Magid Glove Factory, and the Hermosa community area.
Rahm Emanuel has opened a lot of cool new parks – Maggie Daley, Northerly Island, 606, and Grant Park Skate Park – since he became mayor. (Making arguments that the parking lot south of Soldier Field can’t be anything but a parking lot pretty lame.)
This morning Emanuel cut the ribbon on the Big Marsh Bike Park, first announced in July 2014. It’s still known as Park 564, until the Chicago Park District board adopts a new name.
It’s located at 11599 S. Stony Island Ave. in the South Deering community area in an area already known as Big Marsh. I mapped the park into OpenStreetMap based on a map from the architect, Hitchcock Design Group*.
The single-track trails, terrain park, and pump track, are free and open to the public every day from dawn until dusk. It resembles the Valmont Bike Park in Boulder Colorado, which I visited in 2014.
Big Marsh was listed in the city’s Habitat Directory in 2005, noting, “Big Marsh is the largest individual wetland in the Calumet Open Space Reserve with approximately 90 acres of open water. Hiking and biking trails and canoe launch are ideas for this area in the future. As of this writing, the site is undeveloped.”
A map of the Big Marsh wetland in 2005 in the City of Chicago’s Habitat Directory. The bike park is mainly in the cleared space east of the #2 on the map.
The area is also part of the the State of Illinois’s Millennium Reserve program, a group of projects to restore natural areas, create new economic development opportunities in the area, and build more recreational sites.
There is no bike infrastructure to access the site, and many roads leading to the site are in bad condition, or have high-speed car traffic. There is a large car parking lot at the site.
* If you would like to help me map the bike park into OpenStreetMap, you can load the architect’s map of the site into JOSM using this WMS tile layer.
Panorama of the central plaza of Big Marsh Bike Park.
