Old Town is being ambushed by sneak development. In 1978 the city designated the Old Town Triangle a Chicago Landmark District. But home owners and developers are still lifting up one- or two-story homes and tucking a garage or basement underneath. Whole floors are being added to the tops of buildings, and newly constructed rooms bulge from the sides and backs of homes. Rooftop patios abound. Front yards are being converted to parking lots. Only the facades remain the same. Sometimes.
While the obvious reason for a building’s owner to grant an easement is to retain the property’s historic features in perpetuity, some owners may also gain a tax advantage. If the easement results in a reduction in the property’s value, the IRS considers the reduction a charitable donation to the organization receiving the easement. For instance, the Chicago Theatre owners received a tax break of around $10 million when they donated a preservation easement, because the theater owners showed that the property would have been more valuable if they had torn the building down and constructed a high rise.
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When a building permit is now requested for construction in a landmark district, the Department of Inspectional Services refers the permit to the Landmarks Commission for a hearing. The commission then refers the permit to its Building Permit Review Committee. According to Michael and Richter, under the commission’s current interpretation of the ordinance construction is allowed if it does not visibly change the front facade of a building as viewed from a height of five feet from across the street. This limited interpretation, along with Old Town’s skyrocketing property values, may be partly responsible for the wave of applications for building permits for additions to the sides, backs, tops, and bottoms of homes in Old Town.
Preservationists are also trying to fight development in Old Town by asking the city to down-zone the district. Most of Old Town is zoned R-5, with a floor-area ratio of 2.2–which means that for every square foot of their lots home owners can build 2.2 square feet of floor space. Since most of Old Town’s buildings are nowhere near that limit, most of the area’s two- and three-story homes could technically be torn down and replaced with larger buildings. If the zoning were reduced to R-4 or R-3, the zoning would match the existing homes–and would completely cut off future development. “This would make the area much less desirable for outside developers who put up spec houses and leave,” says John Craib-Cox, chairman of the Old Town Triangle Association’s Historic District Committee.
Old Town got its European look when German workmen rebuilt the neighborhood after the 1871 fire, which burned all of the area except for the walls of Saint Michael’s Church. After the fire the city and charity organizations built small frame cottages, dubbed “fire cottages,” to provide housing for the homeless. Few of these cottages survive today, but at 216 W. Menomonee a small wood house that may well be a fire cottage is for sale–for $298,000. Craib-Cox says one developer proposed building a three-story addition to the rear of the house. “If you buy that house for $300,000, you will have a hard time finding someone to sell it to for that. But if you put four bedrooms in it–” he says, pausing. “It’s almost a reverse of the Potemkin Village idea.”
His example of this is Hudson Mews, a fortresslike town-house development at Hudson and North Avenue. While the architecture echoes the houses across the street, the high brick walls surrounding the patios ruin the view for neighboring houses, destroy the streetscape. “If you restrict the chances for people to get onto the sidewalk, you might as well be living in a high rise,” he says. “Here you’re able to have Winnetka in the city–your car is safe, you’ve got parking for it, you’ve got security. You don’t have to get on the street at all.
