"We have a huge opportunity to turn the area's [Rust Belt] reputation on its head," Marilyn Engwall, a project manager from the Chicago Department of Planning and Development, said last week.
Engwall and other city planners have worked with residents and neighborhood leaders, including Ald. John Pope (10th), to plan a green neighborhood that includes streets, sidewalks, parks, housing, commercial districts and possibly a streetcar network to carry residents to the three major Metra stations that serve the area or to its retail and entertainment establishments.
That neighborhood will go up on 873 acres of vacant land that includes the 573-acre, former U.S. Steel Southworks, which has been cleaned of industrial debris over the last decade, and hundreds of parcels scattered amid existing houses.
Though it could take 23 years to complete the entire project, the green housing is scheduled to go up in the next year or two on 65 parcels. The city is preparing to sell the property to four green developers.
Aspen SCG LLC, which comprises local developers Martin Kim and James Corirossi, won approval for its purchase of 16 of the parcels from the Chicago Community Development Commission last week. The LLC will build 40 energy-efficient, green homes using geothermal technology expected to save up to 50 percent of electric heating and cooling costs and eliminate all gas heating costs.
Aspen's 16 parcels are on the 3300 block of 88th Street and on the 8800 block of Buffalo Avenue; the others are on the 8500 block of Baker Avenue, and on Burley and Buffalo Avenues between 84th and 86th Streets.
Land sales to two other developers -- Courtyard Flats LLC (Urban Works and DENCO) and Chicago Lakefront LLC (the Davis Group) -- also have been approved by the Community Development Commission. Non-profit developer Claretian Associates is still waiting for the OK.
"We expect that the city will close on the land sales with each of them by spring 2008," Engwall said, with two closings possible by the end of this year.
The South Chicago plan is part of the U.S. Green Building Council's pilot LEED Neighborhood initiative. The council has applied its LEED standard to commercial and institutional projects, then home building.
Now it's being extended to neighborhoods, with 238 in the U.S. and Canada participating in the pilot, said Doug Widener, executive director at the council's Chicago chapter.
South Chicago "is the only community in the city to participate in the pilot, and one of the largest," Widener said last week.
"To do that you have to have a pretty clean slate of area and in the 10th Ward we have that opportunity because that area was hit hard by the downturn of the mills," Engwall added.
LEED allows the city and developers to measure the greenness of projects. Points are awarded for green features such as water-management technologies, energy-efficiency technologies and indoor air-quality features, and well as how well a developer recycles building materials or re-uses brownfields.
To participate in the pilot, developers must receive at least silver certification (30 to 35 points). Aspen has secured gold certification (36 to 37 points), according to Kim. The other developers taking part also have been certified.
Aspen's plan to use efficient geothermal energy accounts for at least part of its gold rating.
Geothermal technology captures in-ground heat from about four feet down, which remains about 55 degrees regardless of ambient temperatures, said Nicholas Patinkin, president of AspenGreen, the Evanston-based energy consultant to the project. The system transfers that to a heat exchanger that boosts it to 72 degrees or more in the winter and brings it into the home. Geothermal systems reverse themselves in the summer, carrying heat from the home into the ground. "Essentially we are able to use the ground as an enormous heat sink to store heat energy from the house and for the house," Patinkin said.
Aspen has built housing with geothermal systems. "We did one in Lincoln Park and another in Long Grove," Kim said.
"Also, it is a chance to demonstrate that you can do green building and that it is not necessarily that much more expensive," Engwall said.
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source: chicagotribune.com
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