April 23–The Chicago Plan Commission approved project development and zoning on Wednesday for a McCormick Place entertainment district, which will include a basketball arena for DePaul University.
The project — a partnership between DePaul University, the city and the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority — includes a four-story basketball arena, a 1,200 room Marriott hotel, ground floor retail space and the rehabilitation of the American Book Co. building. It is meant to revitalize the historic Motor Row district, south of the Loop.
“When we started out with this process a year or so ago, there was a lot of opposition,” Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority CEO Jim Reilly said at a Wednesday morning board meeting. “But with a lot of work we’ve done with Ald. (Pat) Dowell (and) the neighborhood advisory committee, the outlook is very, very positive.”
The plan commission also approved zoning for a 12-story data center at Calumet Avenue and 21st Street, proposed by land owner CenterPoint Properties Trust, an Oak Brook-based industrial development firm.
At numerous community meetings during the proposal process, neighbors expressed concern about noise from generators at the proposed data center. This concern has in part been eased by the shifting of the Marriott hotel to next to the data center, because the hotel will serve as a good incentive for the data center to keep noise levels down.
CenterPoint also plans to use “sound absorbing noise barriers” to help diminish noise, general counsel Mara Georges said at the plan commission meeting.
Tina Feldstein, president of the Prairie District Neighborhood Alliance, said parking and traffic issues, during and after construction, are still of paramount concern. At the plan commission meeting she said neighbors are pleased that CenterPoint has pledged $5.5 million to develop a park at 21st Street and Prairie Avenue. Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, a state-city agency known as McPier, has agreed to maintain the park.
“Ald. (Pat) Dowell has really championed this and really is requiring that she won’t support these changes without there being a real open space component to the plan,” Feldstein said earlier this month. “It’s a result of the community’s outcry.”
McPier still needs to purchase remaining land from CenterPoint and select a design and build team or the arena and hotel. Reilly hopes to break ground on the $600 million, two-year project in early 2015.
The city is providing $55 million in tax increment financing, which will pay for the hotel land acquisition and part of the development.
The price for the CenterPoint land has not yet been determined, but a source familiar with the pending sale has said the land will likely go for about $40 million.
Also yet to be determined is the result of a lawsuit for land at Cermak Road and Indiana Avenue, originally the land slotted for the Marriott hotel. If that land can be acquired, the city and the agency hope a private developer can finance the cost of land acquisition, as well as the development of an additional boutique hotel.
Whether the area will lure developers, however, remains to be seen. Some analysts say the allure of a revitalized Motor Row — only renderings and drawings at this point — might not be enough pull on its own.
Ald. Tom Tunney left the plan commission meeting with a word of caution: “I hope our strategy is right,” he said. “Because if McCormick Place isn’t working, we’ve got a lot of empty hotel rooms.”
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