Rehab Underway on 75 Affordable Housing Units

ROSEMONT, IL-McShane Construction Co. launched an extensive rehabilitation effort on 75 affordable housing units among four multifamily properties under the auspices of the Housing Authority of the County of Cook (HACC). The $3.6 million project, which requires activities ranging from drywall removal and replacement, to extensive painting, caulking and baseboard replacement, is scheduled for a Sept. 30 completion.

The units are scattered among four affordable housing complexes: Daniel Bergen Homes, John Mackler Homes and Sunrise Apartments in Chicago Heights, IL; and the Vera Yates Homes in Ford Heights, IL. According to McShane Construction senior project manager David Rintz, this is the second time in about a year that HACC approached McShane to renovate out-of-order affordable multifamily property units.
"We renovated a group of about 29 units for HACC last fall and only had about a month to get those done," Rintz comments. "We did a light rehab on those to get them back into service and get them back into the housing stack." He says that McShane's assurances that 75 units could be turned around by late September helped the company land the contract.
Rintz tells GlobeSt.com that the second series of repairs require more than a light rehab, however.  "They all needed new drywall and all were in disrepair," he comments. "These units were built in the 1960s and they haven't seen a real significant update in  . . . ever."  

What, then, is the key to a quick, if extensive, rehabilitation? Much of it depends on project collaboration, Rintz says. Another key has been working with HACC's preferred vendors, which also speeds up the process. Furthermore, "we research products readily available that made sense for this product type; items that were prefinished that we didn't have to paint," Rintz adds.