A vacant lot in Roseland is the site for a proposed $48.3 million mixed-use project. The proposal features a four-story building with affordable housing units that will replace the longtime vacant land at 115th and Michigan on Chicago’s Far South Side.
Last week, the city announced 1Fifteen at Michigan Station as the winning proposal for the site. Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives, a real estate and community development financial institute, is the lead on the project. Completed projects in their portfolio include the Pullman Monument and the North Austin Community Center.
The project coincides with the upcoming development of the Michigan Ave. Red Line Extension station at 111th and Michigan. City leaders are calling the land at 115th and Michigan the “catalyst site” in the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) and Department of Planning and Development (DPD)’s Red Line Extension Transit Supportive Development Plan.
“This is a site that we’ve been looking at for probably a decade and really what kind of brought it all together was the extension of the Red Line.” David Doig, president of Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives, told The TRiiBE.
Along with 58 apartment units, plans for the 23,000-square-foot ground floor of the building include a grocery store, a market hall for small businesses and a restaurant. Of the 58 apartment units, 27 will be listed as affordable for tenants earning 80% of the Area Median Income (AMI) or $76,750 for a two-person household; 30 units for residents at 60% of AMI or $57,600 for a two-person household; and one unit at 30% AMI or $28,000 for a household of two.
Co-developers on the project with CNI are community-building nonprofit Far South CDC and Roseland-based nonprofit Hope Center Foundation; both are Black-led organizations. The design team includes Gensler, a global architecture firm, and Beehyyve, the Englewood-based architecture and engineering design collaborative. The collaborative refers to itself as the Roseland Rising Collaborative.
The Chicago City Council could vote on rezoning for the project as early as this fall, with construction potentially starting as early as 2027.
The Roseland community has a rich history and includes homes that were stops on the Underground Railroad, according to Preservation Chicago. The area went into decline due beginning in the 1970s due to factors such as industrial decline and lack of investment.
With this initiative, CNI and Far South CDC hope to bring pride back to the Michigan commercial corridor, an area once bustling and an epicenter for the surrounding areas of Pullman and Altgeld Gardens. The proposed 1Fifteen at Michigan Station project is blocks away from neighborhood staples Old Fashion Donut and Ware Ranch Steakhouse.
Abraham Lacy, president of Far South CDC, says the project is the perfect example of what he envisions for the Far South Side. He added that the project is what those from the area have been rallying for.
“Everybody on the team is located within the area. It’s not just a project that we are sort of skipping to different locations to try to bid on. Everybody in this area is invested in this area,” Lacy said. “We hire from this area, most of my staff live in the area. I still have family in the area, and so there’s a great sentiment of people who believe in this location, because we have a track record of investing in the neighborhood.”
According to city officials, Chicago acquired the various parcels on 1Fifteen at Michigan Station project site in phases following the 2005 demolition of the Roseland Plaza shopping center, which the DPD says was active from the 1950s. In 2022, the city issued its Request for Qualifications (RFQs) to evaluate developers for the project.
Doig, who worked in the Richard M. Daley administration from 1994 to 1999 as deputy commissioner in both DPD and the housing department, remembers when he and Daley visited the site over 25 years ago. Back then, he said, there was a grocery store there. Doig described the former grocery as filthy and in deplorable condition.
“We put one foot in that store, and the mayor started turning red and blue and green. He kind of went through the roof, because the place just reeked. It was filthy. There were rat droppings, you had expired food. The meat was rancid,” Doig said.
Doig said the grocery store was closed soon after a visit from the health department. For Doig, the possibility of bringing a grocer to the site is full circle. “Our vision is really to bring a high-quality grocer back to that site, one that will represent the community, serve the community, provide both healthy food options and also jobs,” he said.
According to Lacy, past plans to develop on the site have failed because of how unsustainable it is to build standalone developments. Developer Musa Tadros, who once proposed an Aldi for the site as part of a shopping center, said he was unable to get tax-increment financing from the city, reported the Sun-Times.
With the mixed-use design, Lacy said the goal is to create density in the area and solve the issue of a lack of housing options.
“We’re losing population out of the area. So there’s not a lot of homeowners [like] it was 50 years ago,” he said. “The second challenge that you have is that you don’t have a mixture of housing typologies, which is you have two options: either you can buy a home or rent one. And in this area, you can’t do either.”
According to a Roseland Medical District Master Plan document from the city, the neighborhood’s population has been decreasing since the 1970s and 80s with the demise of manufacturing plants. Roseland’s population declined by 5,324 between 2010 and 2020, according to the document.
The 1Fifteen at Michigan Station project could potentially be funded through Mayor Brandon Johnson’s $1.25 billion affordable housing and economic development bond as well as tax increment financing.
