Conscious Choice: Infill: An Antidote to Sprawl?

February 2000

Infill: An Antidote to Sprawl?

by Jonn Salovaara

Yesterday, in a fairly brief circuit while delivering my son to a birthday party at North Pier from our home in Wicker Park, I saw new construction in old neighborhoods everywhere I looked. I passed numerous townhome developments along Milwaukee Avenue. Turning east on Grand I noticed the Londonish upscale townhomes going in where there used to be a parking area across from the East Bank Club. The Near North area and Streeterville add high-rises faster than I can count them.

On a run to the Near North branch of the library after dropping off my son, I marveled again at the redevelopment of Seward Park at Division and Orleans, which can only signal another stage in the relentless march of townhomes into the area. If the advertisements for all these places are correct, huge numbers of people are living, or will be living, in "luxury." In contemplating the proximity of Seward Park to Cabrini-Green, I seem to hear an unpublished decree: "Where public housing once languished, luxury now shall thrive."

In addition to luxury residences, though, ordinary housing is also being constructed. A percentage of the Cabrini-area developments are reserved for low-income residents, for example. Several modest homes are being built in the shadow of public housing high-rises along Lake Street. In parts of the Humboldt Park area, "scattered site" housing is a common way to help low-income people afford a home. And last November, the city announced a sale of $100 million in guaranteed bonds to support its new Chicago HomeStart program. The money will be used to spur development of new homes in residential neighborhoods with empty lots.

What’s it all about? In a word, infill.

According to Gerald Adelman, "Infill development is new construction in established neighborhoods. It can take a number of forms. It could be an individual lot but it may be a larger site — a factory or a school or a hospital — that’s cleared to permit redevelopment." Adelman is president of the Openlands Project (a nonprofit group working to preserve and extend public open space in the Chicago region), whose work necessarily interfaces with infill development projects. Adelman continues: "Infill covers this spectrum, from individual structures built on individual lots to larger assemblages of land cleared of previous structures and redeveloped." Examples range from the site of Augustana Hospital in Lincoln Park, which was razed and replaced with townhomes; to Homan Square — new housing on the old Sears, Roebuck site near Homan and Roosevelt; to Central Station, a development built on old rail yards, where Mayor Daley now lives. At the moment, the city’s cup seems to be running over with infill development.

Anyone with an environmental bone in his or her body must, it seems, prefer infill over "greenfield" developments — those places on the fringes of current habitation where the cornfields are transformed into cul-de-sacs. Of course we should build in the city where services, infrastructure, and public transportation already exist. Here, building doesn’t threaten open land, or mean more and more cars commuting on the expressway or out doing errands all day long. Infill doesn’t always mean gentrification, though frequently it does, given the fact that it is largely market-driven. To maximize their profits, developers create an expensive product.

Thus, from a sociologist’s point of view, the issue of infill may be more complicated than it seems. Infill development may be a partial antidote to sprawl. Yet, without careful implementation — and markets don’t tend to be very careful — it may represent the further balkanization of rich and poor. At the very least, it can spell trouble for our fellow citizens.

In my own neighborhood, near Division and Ashland, an activist raised this red flag several years ago. Should poorer residents have nothing to say about the infill construction of luxury buildings and the resulting pressure on rents? She asked a simple question: "Can you afford a luxury townhome?" For many of her listeners, the answer was clearly no.

Despite her concern, and her various successes to meet the needs of low-income residents, the market seems to prevail. Numerous vacant lots have been turned into flats much more expensive than the old ones next door. And, in turn, some of those old flats have been rehabbed to command rents closer to those charged for the new construction. Certainly some people have been displaced to cheaper neighborhoods. And it isn’t just renters who feel the pinch: I myself watch nervously as my home’s value increases and my property taxes rise.

Still, infill development is restoring much of the city’s blighted land, and saving valuable open land from development. That’s a thrill not only for environmentalists, but for city officials like Eileen Figel, Mayor Daley’s coordinator for the redevelopment of the Southworks plant property and the surrounding neighborhood, where 15,000 jobs were lost when the plant was closed down. This area is located on the lake, just south of the South Shore neighborhood. The plant property is still owned by the company formerly known as U.S. Steel (now USX).

The ultimate effect of the plant closure on the adjacent neighborhood was devastating. First buildings that had been rooming houses and flats for steelworkers were abandoned, with many eventually demolished by the city, leaving up to a thousand vacant lots and forty abandoned buildings. As for the site of the abandoned steelworks itself, though certified by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) as "cleaned up," there are a hundred old building foundations as well as old rail lines and sewers still in place.

The city Department of Planning and Development, where Figel works, is taking action in both the neighborhood and in the industrial "brownfield." In the neighborhood, the city is working to purchase vacant lots. When they are adjacent to occupied homes, the city intends to sell them for a nominal charge to the homeowners. With a restriction that prevents them from building on the land, these homeowners acquire garden or yard space and the properties begin to receive long overdue care and attention.

When a large number of lots are together — in some cases entire blocks are vacant — the city is working with neighborhood organizations to determine the most desirable type of development and then to implement the development with nonprofit development agencies or with private developers.

As for the actual site of the old steelworks, the city and the community are interested in developing at least part of it as an industrial park. The other half of the old plant area will be for residential development and open space. Since the project report was released in February 1999, a major industrial tenant has agreed to move into more than a third of the industrial park. Solo Cup is planning to move there, from cramped quarters at another site in the city which it was planning to leave for Indiana.

This move will keep 550 jobs in the city that might have been lost to Indiana and, with the expanded facility, at least 200 jobs will be added to that. Additionally, Figel points out, the property to be leased by Solo Cup provides enough space for another 200 jobs beyond that number.

When I asked Figel to name the largest barrier to infill development in this case, she said it was overcoming the perception that the area was not coming back, or, rather, creating the perception among residents that it was coming back. "There must be a community perception that things really will improve, or infill development becomes much harder to accomplish." In the case of the Southworks project, the various interests involved seem to have cleared that particular hurdle. The Board of Education has plans to break ground for a new elementary school and Metra plans to break ground for a new commuter rail station.

Obviously, the city has a huge interest in this kind of development. So do neighborhood groups, and so do private developers. According to Figel, there is a fourth group involved in the equation and they have to be considered. These are the current homeowners in the area who worry that if things do in fact improve, they may be forced out. A large part of Figel’s job is addressing the concerns of such people whether by involving them in the development decisions or by making them aware of possibilities like a cap on property taxes for long-term homeowners.

No matter how you might feel about possible inequities for such people, you have to applaud efforts to revitalize the city. This is all the more true as you become aware of the full effects of sprawl, especially in the light of the 25 percent population increase expected for the region in the next twenty years by the Northeast Illinois Planning Commission.

According to Adelman, it will not be possible to absorb all of that increase in the city itself, or even with additional infill in older inner suburbs and satellite cities. Even if it were possible, it wouldn’t make any sense since job growth will continue to soar in the outer reaches of the region. There are already enough reverse commutes. Some degree of "smart growth" will continue to be necessary in the hinterlands.

Still, especially on the south and west sides, there are huge amounts of vacant land within the city and more to come if public housing high-rises continue to hit the dust. We can only hope that careful infill development — with the active participation of the city, the neighbors, and increasingly enlightened developers — will continue to thrive.

Infill and Transit: Made for Each other

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