UPTOWN — When FLATS No. 1020 opens next year it will offer a mix of hotel-like amenities including a 6,000-square-foot fitness center, a pool, a lobby bar and coffee house along with 350 modern apartments.
Monday night, representatives for the company presented plans for the building to the community in hopes of getting neighbors' approval since the bar would be in close proximity to houses of worship.
Amy Crawford, president of the Argyle-Winmore Block Club, which was recently revived, said the community supported the bar "given the small scale and the fact that there is going to be plenty of security."
But neighbors did make one stipulation: "The owners come back to us if they wanted [to open] another place that required a liquor license."
According to the presentation Monday, the coffee house, which will be owned by Heritage Outpost, will be similar to the cafe in Wilson Tower, 1325 W. Wilson Ave., except bigger. The menu will feature coffee, pastries and lunch options. The lobby bar will feature a limited but diverse collection of alcohol and finger foods.
Crawford, who said she lives across the street from the building, said most of the roughly 25 neighbors in the meeting were in agreement about the project.
"It's not likely to have any impact on neighboring residents. I think it's great we'll have additional rehab spaces on Lawrence and I think it's great the owners are concerned with getting residents' feedback," she said.
FLATS has said "nothing has been decided" at this point about what other businesses will be in the building besides Heritage Outpost, but the property is already proving to be a hot commodity.
This week, entrepreneur Eric Reid funded a Kickstarter for a craft cocktail Lounge, Apothecary, that he hopes can open in the development.
Reid, a pharmacist by day, said he would pitch his bar to the company's #FLATSProject, a business accelerator program and pitch competition in which business owners apply to win "more than $100,000 in benefits to their business from day one," according to its website. The contest kicks off in 2016. (The Public Barber in Uptown won the competition in 2014.)
The property at 1020 W. Lawrence Ave., which the company has called its "flagship property," will open in late 2016 in the former Lawrence House, a troubled and dilapidated building catering to low-income residents. In 2013, Cedar Street Co., the company behind FLATS, announced it had bought Lawrence House out of foreclosure for $7.5 million.
Previous photos of Lawrence House. [Cedar Street Co.]
According to a spokeswoman for FLATS, the building will undergo a total gut rehab and the company is working with officials "to complete the historic preservation of the building." Crain's previously reported the rehab would cost about $14 million.
After the purchase, Jay Michael, Cedar's co-founder, said via a news release that, “No. 1020 is in the epicenter of Uptown’s re-emergence as an entertainment, arts and cultural district." But North Side activists and low-income residents have opposed FLATS Chicago's purchases of other low-income, distressed properties in Uptown, Edgewater and Rogers Park, accusing Michael of gentrifying the neighborhood and pricing out poor folks unlikely to afford apartments in the buildings once units are renovated.
Lawrence House, owned by the Menetti family since 2000, had been in foreclosure and tangled in court proceedings related to building code violations and unpaid utility bills.
"Are we gentrifying? I guess I don’t really know if there’s a real black-and-white to that word or whether we’re doing it. I can tell you that the neighborhood is changing, we’re a part of it and I think we’re being very compassionate and very careful," Michael said in an interview with DNAinfo Chicago in August.
After the purchase, Cedar Street said its in-house transitions team had successfully moved the building's 190 tenants, many of them elderly or disabled, to "better appropriate housing" bought by FLATS.
"Lawrence House is a great example, there was no affordable housing — ever — formally in that building. There was no project-based affordable housing once in that building, at least in the 10 years we’ve owned it. Most of the people that were moved out of that building are now actually in subsidized housing and in many cases they’re in supportive housing, which is really what the residents definitely needed," he said.
FLATS No.1020 Lawrence, also known as Lawrence House. [Cedar Street]
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