DOUGLAS — Draper & Kramer is about to launch a massive expansion of the 70-acre Lake Meadows development, and neighbors already are making demands on the developer if it wants the community to go along.
Draper & Kramer is expected to go before the Chicago Plan Commission with a plan to add several small retail stores to the Lake Meadows Shopping Center, the first in a series of new buildings that are expected to add at least 200,000 square feet of retail space and 338 new residential units to the shopping center at 3357 S. King Drive.
Gordon Ziegenhagen, the project manager, said at a Tuesday night meeting of the Gap Community Organization that it wasn’t clear which of the 13 new retail shops would begin construction first and negotiations with possible tenants were happening now.
“It’s really going to be up to when we can do a deal with tenants,” Ziegenhagen said. “If we do a deal with Jewel or another retailer like that, that might be the next thing we do.”
To lure in more retailers, Draper & Kramer is negotiating with the Chicago Department of Transportation to get a new eastbound car lane cut through the manicured boulevard on King Drive at 33rd Place to make it easier to get into the shopping center.
The developer is quickly finding out that it will need to be giving something to the community to keep everything moving forward with the city.
Leonard McGee, president of the Gap Community Organization, said the developer would need to commit to supporting the construction of the new turf field at Dunbar Park if it wanted the group’s support.
“For years we’ve been fighting people cutting that boulevard,” McGee said. The new retail development "is going to be a great asset, but it’s going to be your profit, and we’ll tell that to the alderman if you don’t agree.
“If it seems like a hold up, it is,” McGee said. “It’s not a lot of money in lieu of your whole development.”
Andrew Scott, the developer’s attorney said negotiations with the city are ongoing.
Ziegenhagen committed to coming back to the group in three months to discuss progress on the development.
The expansion of Lake Meadows has been planned since 2010 and is only recently slowly starting with an $11.9 million renovation of the new L.A. Fitness location and other improvements for the shopping center.
The early plans called for the development to increase to nearly 8,000 condos and apartments from the current approximately 2,000 apartments currently along King Drive between 31st and 35th streets.
Ziegenhagen said the developer is now planning to invest in updating the existing four 22-story and five 12-story high rises, which many in the community feared would be demolished when the redevelopment plans were first released in 2010.
The plan could significantly change the skyline along the south lakefront, most notably with the construction of four high-rises that could reach up to 60-stories tall, which is the final phase of the plan that is expected to take 30 years to complete.
In the near term, major changes are expected to be made to the streets within the development as retail construction moves forward.
The developers plan to restore 33rd Street as a through street between King Drive and Cottage Grove Avenue and straighten out the jog in South Rhodes Avenue between 33rd Street and 33rd Place.
The developer declined to talk about budgets for any of the phases of the project, but numbers should become available when the developer presents to the Chicago Plan Commission on Feb. 18.
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