Allen Richards' Blog: Another New Building to Line the Ike Expressway

Diagram of 411 South Peoria

One of the long-term urban development goals for Chicago is to line its motorized arteries with tall and tallish buildings in order to isolate the highways from the neighborhoods they serve. The buildings deflect noise, exhaust, and the general unpleasantness that our 70-year-long obsession with the automobile has brought to our front doorsteps.

Another one of the gaps along a downtown highway is about to be filled in. There’s a proposal for a new high rise at 411 South Peoria Street. That’s currently a surface parking lot adjacent to both I-290 and the pedestrian bridge that links Greektown with the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The location is a transit dream. The CTA Blue Line’s UIC-Halsted Station is just feet away. The #126 bus runs right outside your door. The #8 bus is at the end of the block. The #7, #20, #60, #125, #156 and #157 are a few blocks away. Union station is just beyond.

However, the developers of the property aren’t taking advantage of the city’s newly improved Transit Oriented Development rules and turning valuable car space into people space. The project includes 110 parking spaces for just 90 apartments. It’s the salmon among recent Chicago development proposals, swimming upstream.

The project is also going to help turn the dead-end of Peoria Street into a nicer cul-de-sac, with a good amount of what appears to be brick paving, a parkway, and a few trees in front of the building where currently there is just asphalt and concrete. There will also be room for a small retail store.

Nothing better on a hot summer day than a firehose: