CHICAGO-A controversial $500-million project, which has been scaled down during more than a year of negotiations between the developer and Lincoln Park community groups, is headed to the city council. American Invsco's 325-unit project to be built around a portion of the now vacant Columbus Hospital gets a favorable recommendation from the plan commission Thursday despite cries that the redevelopment will only make gridlock in the upscale neighborhood worse.

Sale of the 3-acre site at 2520 N. Lakeview Ave., which is expected to generate around $30 million for Catholic Health Partners Services, is expected to take place in January, consultant Brad Neuman tells GlobeSt.com. Given 43rd Ward Alderman Vi Daley's support, city council approval is expected.

American Invsco is controlled by the Gouletas family, which helped pioneer condominiums in the late 1970s and 1980s. American Invsco also is redeveloping an office building at Lake and Wells streets into condominiums.

However, the project designed by renowned architectural firm Lucien Lagrange & Associates is breaking new ground north of Downtown, where only a few projects so far have hit the $650 per sf price point the Columbus Hospital redevelopment is expected to bring to the Lincoln Park market by 2006.

Units also will be built in the 2,200-sf range, with the possibility for buyers to combine them, attorney Theodore J. Novak tells the plan commission. That puts the entry-level price at the three-tower development at more than $1.4 million.

“The developer had a goal when he started the process,” Novak says. “That goal was to develop a premier building on the site. We believe this development does that.”

The three towers will feature distinctive architecture with varying heights.

The Lincoln Park Chamber of Commerce eagerly anticipates nearly 1,000 new affluent residents, which is expected to help a Clark Street commercial area that despite its location in one of the city's most upscale neighborhoods, already is seeing vacant storefronts.

Zoning of the site was reduced from R-7 to R-6 after American Invsco began planning the project. Even under the less generous zoning, the proposal is less than half the 721 units that would be allowed on the site, department of planning and development officials say.

While city officials note the 325 units are expected to generate less traffic than the hospital did, the developers nonetheless agreed to contribute $50,000 to a study of solutions to longstanding gridlock in the medium- to high-density residential neighborhood bordering the lakefront park.

A condition of the sale requires American Invsco to build around and preserve a chapel built in honor of Mother Cabrini, the first US citizen to be canonized a saint by the Roman Catholic Church. Mother Cabrini helped open the hospital in 1905, and died there in 1917.

The religious order running the hospital has had to sell nearby St. Joseph Hospital to another operator, as well as close Columbus Hospital, concentrating on St. Anthony's Hospital on the West Side. “This is not a typical case of someone selling the property and moving away,” says Neuman, explaining nuns will remain in a house across the street from the hospital.

Although 325 parking spaces are required, American Invsco agreed to provide 700, including 50 set aside for residents of neighboring buildings.

In addition to the three towers, which department of planning and development officials say fit in with similar high-rise condominium buildings on Lakeview Avenue, American Invsco plans 14 four-story townhouses on St. James and Deming places, which border the site.

Instant Insights /

$500M Columbus Hospital Redevelopment Advances

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