CITY HALL — A seven-story, 252-unit apartment building on the site of the last horse stable in the city was approved unanimously Thursday by the Plan Commission.
The Old Town building, set for the address of 1415 N. Sedgwick Ave., will cover the block between Sedgwick and Orleans Street with a south face along Schiller Street.
It passed unanimously over worries about parking and possible congestion.
"The number of parking spaces are a cause for concern," said local resident Angela Williams.
According to Fernando Espinoza, of the Department of Planning and Development, a 250-unit building would usually have to account for about 190 parking spaces. But because of its proximity to the Sedgwick stop on the CTA Brown and Purple lines, it qualified as a transit-oriented development and was allowed to set aside just 89.
The building, Espinoza testified, would also have a communal bicycle room with spaces for 132 bikes.
That failed to mollify local resident Thomas Kiser, who said in his condominium "we all have bikes, and it has not reduced our car ownership."
Ald. Tom Tunney (44th), a member of the Plan Commission, added, "It does seem to be a tremendous amount of units for a residential street."
Espinoza, however, said it was consistent with multi-story apartment buildings and condominiums in the immediate area.
It had the support of Ald. Walter Burnett Jr. (27th) after it was scaled down from an earlier nine-story proposal.
Burnett has been a big defender of affordable housing, but 1415 N. Sedgwick will have less than half of the required 10 percent of affordable units on site. According to Espinoza, it will pay $1.625 million in so-called in-lieu payments for off-site affordable housing.
Williams also raised concerns about the capacity of the ComEd electrical grid in the area, which she said was already prone to outages.
Brian Goldberg of LG Development Group, which is handling the project, said the firm had already received assurances from ComEd for upgrades.
"We believe this would actually be an improvement for the community," Goldberg said.
The building will also have a green roof and a 3,200-square-foot courtyard on the first-floor deck for additional green space.It passed without opposition on the commission and heads to the City Council for final zoning approval.
The development, in the 1400 blocks of Orleans Street and Sedgwick Avenue, united by Schiller Avenue, is on the site of what had been stables for Downtown carriage horses and the Noble Horse Theatre. The development has forced the removal of horses for the city's carriage industry.
Some have found a home in a nearby warehouse, while others are being brought in daily by trailer.
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