Developers with a new vision for the northern part of the stalled Lincoln Yards megadevelopment on Chicago’s North Side are seeking zoning approval to build more than 3,700 residential units, with towers on the riverside site reaching as high as 520 feet.
With a zoning application formally introduced to the City Council on Wednesday, JDL Development and Kayne Anderson Real Estate are looking to formally redraw zoning that another developer, Sterling Bay, secured in 2019 for one of the most ambitious real estate projects ever proposed in the nation’s third-largest city.
The new plan is smaller in scale and in one surprise, Sterling Bay could remain part of the project now branded as Foundry Park — albeit in a dramatically reduced role.
Newly unveiled details for the closely watched project include building heights up to 520 feet in the tallest structure. The new developers for the site also seek zoning for two towers as tall as 450 feet and another rising as high as 300 feet.
The revised design also includes as much as 350,000 square feet of medical office and traditional office space, 420,000 square feet of retail, 200,000 square feet of hotel space, several parks and a central plaza.
JDL and Kayne Anderson plan a mix of apartments, condominiums, townhouses and single-family homes on the riverfront site that runs along the Lincoln Park and Bucktown neighborhoods.
Chicago-based JDL Development and Boca Raton, Florida-based Kayne Anderson Real Estate recently took control of about 34 acres of the Lincoln Yards land after lender Bank OZK seized it from Sterling Bay and Lone Star Funds.
Plans by the Foundry Park developers to develop about 3,300 residences first became known in August, before JDL and Kayne Anderson completed a nearly $84 million purchase of the land from the lender in October.
It wasn’t previously known that Sterling Bay still could develop apartments on a parcel at the far northern end of the site that wasn’t part of the land seized by Bank OZK.
For its part of the project, Sterling Bay is seeking a maximum height of 320 feet.
Sterling Bay declined to comment. JDL and Kayne Anderson did not respond to requests for comment from CoStar News.
The new zoning application, previously reported by Crain’s Chicago Business, calls for as many as 3,737 dwelling units in the area along Courtland and Kingsbury streets and Southport Avenue.
That includes the 400 to be developed by Sterling Bay.
Revised zoning would be less dense than the Sterling Bay plan to develop 14.5 million square feet across the full, approximately 55-acre Lincoln Yards site. It also is more focused on residential development than Sterling Bay’s previous mixed-use plan.
One of the biggest hurdles Sterling Bay faced was an obligation to fund nearly $500 million in infrastructure projects such as roads and bridges, with the agreement that the developer would be reimbursed later by tax-increment funds created by the new complex.
JDL and Kayne Anderson still need to negotiate a revised set of obligations for contributions to infrastructure in the traffic-choked area of the city.
The sprawling site once was home to gritty uses such as a now-demolished A. Finkl & Sons steel plant. Widespread changes to city land-use policies under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel cleared the way for major changes in an area surrounded by some of the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods.