GOLD COAST — A developer plans to replace a Gold Coast parking lot with apartments, a project that would fill in one of the last unbuilt sites along the Downtown lakefront.
Chicago-based Draper & Kramer recently posted renderings of a mid-rise, 60-unit apartment building it wants to build at 65 E. Banks St. to its website. The developer has owned the site, a parking lot just off Lake Shore Drive, since at least 1993, according to Cook County property records.
The parking lot, left, and a sketch of the proposed apartment building to the right. [Google; Draper & Kramer]
If built, the project would fill in the last undeveloped lakefront lot between the former Chicago Spire site, 400 N. Lake Shore Drive, and Diversey Avenue, notes the Chicago Architecture Blog, which first noticed the project last week.
Public records show the project has not yet received a building permit or construction loan. Ald. Michele Smith (43rd), whose ward includes the site, said she has not reviewed the proposal, and a neighborhood meeting has yet to be scheduled.
Draper & Kramer, which is also pursuing an expansion of the massive Lake Meadows development on the South Side and a hotel/apartment project near Cermak Road and Wabash Avenue in the South Loop, said through a spokesman it is working with Smith and neighbors on the project, declining to comment further.
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