BRONZEVILLE — Developers unveiled their plans Thursday night for redeveloping the former CHA Ickes Homes.
It’s been eight years since the CHA started demolishing Ickes, with the last families moving out of the development’s 1,006 units in 2010.
A partnership led by McCaffery Interests with Community Builders and Antunovich Associates told a crowd at a 3rd Ward meeting Thursday night at Liberty Baptist Church in Bronzeville that it was planning a four-phase development with a mix of town homes, walk-ups and mid-rise apartments from 22nd Street to 25th Street on State Street on the Near South Side.
The group plans to build 867 units, with 204 devoted to CHA residents, according to Will Woodley of Community Builders.
But former Ickes residents said that is half the number of units they were promised.
Roderick Wilson, executive director of the Lugenia Burns Hope Center, and former residents asked when the other units would be built to hit the 400 units promised for CHA residents when demolition started in 2007.
Maya Hodari, a project manager for CHA, and 3rd Ward Ald. Pat Dowell both claimed the promise always has been 200 units.
“Two hundred was the number I was aware of when I came into office" in 2007, Dowell said.
The CHA’s 2007 Moving to Work plan for Ickes when demolition started pegged the number of replacement units at 402. By 2009, CHA plans had lowered the number to 312. It’s unclear when the number of units was lowered again to 204.
The CHA has set the number of units for the development team, but not many of the other parameters, as planning starts.
Woodley said there is no firm budget or timeline on the project.
“We’re really just getting started,” he said.
Joe Antunovich, the architect, said the group imagined a mid-size grocery store somewhere in the development and small stores lining the 66,000 square feet of retail area on the first floor on the State Street Side of the development.
The back end of the development was imagined as sports fields and a running track in sketches the developers used to sell the proposal to CHA, which signed off on it on June 10.
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