Several days ago Shawne FitzGerald asked a number of questions regarding the buildings on the northeast corner of Chicago and Lake, where a new Footlocker store is going in, and it's taken me a while to find the time to respond. He asked:
"First, I am curious as to whether there are any public funds in this redevelopment. Secondly, do Mr. or Ms. Boosalis, or their family members, have an interest in any of the four redevelopment proposals being considered for the Sears complex? Do any or all of the Sears proposals consider keeping this early 20th century building or do the proposals call for it's removal?"
When I became active in the Chicago-Lake Business Association in 1984, Elsie Boosalis had been active in the Association for quite some time. The buildings were reasonably well maintained and usually rented to businesses that sold stuff at lower prices for lower income people. Then Sears moved out, and things continued about the same for several years. But when Ray Harris was named developer for the Sears site, the city talked Ray into fencing off the former Sears parking lot, and things went downhill.
[Before the fence went up, drug dealers would drive into the lot, park under the trees across from Kentucky Fried Chicken, and spend th whole day dealing drugs and throwing their empty booze bottles and their chicken bones out the windows of their cars, making a huge mess. The drug buyers knew where to come to make a purchase, and the cops knew where to come when they wanted to make some arrests. But the dealers tended to leave the customers of the legitimate businesses alone, so the other 90% of the lot was available and relatively safe for customers and employees of the surrounding businesses to use. The city decided that if the parking lot was fenced off so that nobody could use it, the drug problem would just go away, and they pressured Ray to put up the fence. The drug problem simply moved to the Kentucky Fried lot, the alley behind Kentucky Fried, and all around the Chicago-Lake intersection. But the legitimate businesses were very badly hurt by the loss of parking. The Chicago-Lake Business Association has been trying to for years to get access to at least some of the fenced-off parking, and MCDA keeps saying that something can probably be worked out, but it never gets worked out.]
After the fence went up, the Boosalis properties started losing tenants because there was no longer anyplace for either customers or employees to park. They kept trying to rent the spaces, but the new tenants wouldn't stay long before the lack of parking would drive them out. Elsie and her son Peter donated the space for the Chicago-Lake Safety Center for several years, and Elsie continued to be active in the Association during this period, but eventually Elsie's age cause her to turn management over to Peter. Peter could not get a straight answer out of anybody about whether or not his buildings would be taken as part of the Sears redevelopment project, but Walgreens made a very good offer for the property, if the city would allow them to build a 24-hour drugstore on the site. But Walgreens insisted on a design and concessions from the city that were unacceptable to the city. For several years, Peter let the buildings run down while waiting to see if they were going to be torn down, either by the city or by Walgreens. After the Walgreens deal fell through, he decided to redevelop the property himself rather than wait any longer for somebody else to decide the fate of his property. My understanding is that he has spent $1.4 million of his own money so far, with much more scheduled to be spent. He has put new heating/airconditioning into the buildings, is doing substantial interior work, and is putting new fronts on all the buildings. He has also become active once again in the Association, coming to meetings and keeping us well-informed about what is happening with the property. (He told us last Tuesday that the inventory was going into Footlocker that day and that they would be open for business within a week. He also said that the former Butler Drug would be moving into newly renovated space so that he could put a new storefront on their current location.) To the best of my knowledge, there is no public money involved in the redevelopment of his property.
The Boosalis family does not have any interest in any of the four redevelopment proposals for the Sears site. Three of the four proposals call for the property to remain. Only Basim Sabri's proposal calls for the demolition of the buildings. At the August meeting of the Association, we heard the last 2 of the 4 development proposals, which included Sabri's proposal. After Basim Sabri and Ed Felien finished their presentation (which included a painting of the area with all the buildings on the northeast corner of Chicago-Lake demolished and converted to fenced-in park space) and left the meeting, Peter was asked how he felt about the 4 proposals. He said that he had met with all four groups, that all four groups agreed that his buildings would stay, and that he could work with any of the four. It was pointed out that he had just sat through Sabri's presentation, in which Sabri said he was going to demolish all of Peter's buildings. Peter nodded and said something along the lines of, "That's what he told you, but he and I know the buildings are going to stay."
Since there has been no discussion on this list of the four proposals, I'm going to copy what I published in the Neighborhood Update section of the store newsletter a little over a month ago, followed by some comments to bring things up to date:
About the time that the last issue of the newsletter went out, the city sent out Requests For Proposal for the old Sears site. The city only received 4 proposals, all from local developers. I'll give my summation {and comments} of the presentations of the 4 proposals, in the order they were presented to the Project Review Committee.
Fine Associates is a major developer of housing, and they propose to primarily put housing into the old Sears site. They would convert the building over the former railroad tracks into a 110-unit hotel to primarily serve the hospital market. They would put retail and offices into the first 2 floors of the main Sears building, and housing would take up the 3rd floor on up, with a combination of rental at market rate and condos. They would also put in a pool and fitness center for the use of the residential tenants. Because the floors of the Sears building are a block wide, and zoning code requires that all the apartments have windows, the apartments will be BIG (900 to 2000 square feet each). The primary market will be employees of the local hospitals and Wells Fargo Mortgage. They plan to put in a total of 291 apartments and condos, and they figure they can put 280 parking spaces into the basement, which they think will be adequate parking for the residents. {When they did a presentation to the Chicago-Lake Business Association, they were strongly criticized for making a tight parking situation even worse. Nobody thought they were providing enough parking for the needs of the employees and customers of the retail and office tenants on the first 2 floors. Nobody thought that 280 parking spaces in the basement were enough for the 291 apartments and condos, which would be large, expensive, and probably need two incomes to afford to live there. The presenters insisted that they had provided adequate parking for their needs, and besides surface parking is tacky. They probably could come up with the financing to do the development, and they might be able to make money by putting a yuppie fortress into the site, but I don't think their proposal would help the rest of the neighborhood.}
The second proposal is from Ryan Companies, another major developer with lots of experience and the financial strength to get the job done. They've also put together a top-notch team of people with expertise to handle the various aspects of the plan. They plan to put a medical research lab in one part of the basement, with Re-Use Center having the rest of the basement and a small part of the first floor. A large piece of the first floor would be used for an international market, with the primary emphasis being food, both cooked on-site and uncooked for people to take home to cook, with a total of 70-80 different small businesses including sit-down restaurants, ethnic delis, bakeries, and fish markets. This space would be managed by people with experience helping small business start-ups and a person with experience from the Pike Place Market in Seattle. Part of the first and second floor would be taken by Hennepin County. Much of the rest of the first floor would be restaurants and the lobby area for the Sheraton Hotel (135-150 sleeping rooms, plus lots of function space to handle wedding receptions, educational conferences, etc.). Upper floors would include 176 units of "active senior" rental housing (managed by a local company with lots of experience developing and managing such housing in older buildings nation-wide), 109 units of "artist loft" rental housing (managed by a different local company with lots of experience developing and managing such housing in older buildings nation-wide), plus more office space. They plan on having about 450 surface parking spaces on the west side of the building plus 1100 parking spaces in a ramp on the east side of the building. {The only aspect of their plan I'm significantly unhappy about is their plan to tear down the building over the former railroad tracks, which I understand they think they have to do to provide windows for the Sheraton Hotel overlooking the Greenway, since every hotel room must have windows to comply with the building code.}
The third proposal came from Basim Sabri, a small local developer who said some neighborhood activists talked him into putting in a proposal at the last minute. He had no team assembled, he didn't seem to have much of an idea what he wanted to do, and what he did discuss was often strange and self-contradictory. {I can't imagine the city giving the project to him, and I can't imagine him being able to get financing for a $100 million development.}
The fourth proposal seemed to come from a bunch of local people that had each had some experience with some aspect of re-development. So, they decided to pool their experiences to put together a proposal. They seemed to want to start by putting up a bunch of new buildings on the open spaces where the Sears parking lots had been, and then get around to the actual redevelopment of the Sears complex only after they've started making a profit from the new buildings. {But they propose to put a hotel and parking ramp directly across the street from Uncle Hugo's, on a smaller foot print than would be taken for just the 110-unit four-story hotel proposed by Fine Associates, but new buildings on that site are limited to a single story in order to maintain sunlight into the Greenway during the winter.} They would plan to use the first floor of the main building for retail, and residential for the upper floors. {Some parts of their plans for the main building seem a little strange (like using the 2nd and 3rd floors of the old Sear building for parking), and other parts seem very strange (like converting the most valuable piece of the old building, the frontage on Lake Street, into a huge four-story atrium looking down into an indoor soccer field in the basement, in order to draw people further into the building to visit the shops located farther away from Lake St.)}
There was discussion of the four proposals at the August meeting of the Association, followed by a decision to have a mail survey of all members of the Association instead of limiting voting to just the members who attended the August meeting. During the discussion, one of our officers commented that he disliked the idea of tearing down the building over the track so much that he was going to place Ryan Companies very far down his list of choices, and then assume that whatever developer was picked would just steal all the good ideas from all the other developers. After the meeting, I e-mailed to Rick Collins at Ryan Companies that both the president of the Association and I felt that his group's proposal was the best, but that we were both bothered by the proposal to tear down the building over the tracks, and that many people were so upset over that aspect of the plan that they were planning to vote against the Ryan Company proposal. I made some suggestions for changing plans for usage of the older building that would reduce the desire to tear down the building over the track. He sent back a long response, which I will briefly summarize.
1) There was considerable debate within the group about whether or not to propose demolition of the building, and that debate continues. They were (as of August 21) negotiating with a possible corporate user that would require them to keep the building over the track in place in order to meet the space needs of the corporate user. However, under the rules of the MCDA process, all of the developers have to stick with the plan submitted on June 10 until a winner is selected. Once a winner is selected, then the winner can make major changes in the proposal, but not until then.
2) The building over the tracks could be used without major changes as a space for lots of high-tech equipment with just a few people to watch over the equipment, but that wouldn't provide the large number of job the neighborhood groups say they want to see on the site. But to adapt the building for lots of jobs, it would be necessary to make major changes in the building (including windows), plus providing parking (at $10,000 per parking space in the parking ramp) for the employees. That gets pretty expensive to do on speculation that they might find somebody willing to use the space, but could be done if they have a tenant lined up in advance.
The person who counted the votes by the Association members on which developer to support decided that a first place vote for a developer counted for 5 points, a second place vote counted for 4 points, and third place or below didn't get any points. (If it had been my decision, I might have given 5 points for first place, 3 points for second place, 1 point for third place, but it wasn't my decision.) Using this procedure, Ryan Companies got 46 points, Fine Associates got 45 points, Comote Team (the fourth group in my newsletter article) got 41 points, and Sabri got 24 points.
There was a meeting scheduled for September 16 for the Project Review Committee to vote on the various proposals, which was cancelled a few days before it was to take place. My understanding of the cancellation involved the fact that the proposals came in 2 parts. The first part, with a June 10 deadline, was sort of a pie-in-the-sky proposal for what the developer would like to do. The second part was a very detailed financial plan to show that the developer could actually raise enough money and make the numbers work to give the proposal a chance to succeed. The last of the financial plans had just come in, and MCDA wanted to give their money people a chance to review the financial plans and pass their analysis along to the Project Review Committee before asking the Committee which proposal they wanted to support.
Don Blyly
Central
Uncle Hugo's Science Fiction Bookstore
Phillip
