| Extending Lakeshore Drive for two miles through the 600-acre Lakeside Development site is more than road work: It’s the key that'll unlock the enormous development potential
of the waterfront property where McCaffery Interests and partner US
Steel aim to build. (It's the most meaningful two miles since Daytona.) |
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| Of course,
there's no development without infrastructure. (Well, there is, but
then you can't wash your hands... which every employee must do.) Here's
master planner Skidmore, Owings & Merrill's managing partner Richard Tomlinson and McCaffery CEO Dan McCaffery at the site, where the city and state restarted roadwork last week. It stopped a few years ago, but Dan says Chicago and Illinois have bought into the South Side project, investing about $100M to get it started. Soon, Dan's team can start pre-leasing
retail in Lakeside’s $380M Phase I, designed to have up to 600k SF
of retail and 3,000 residences on 80 acres. Then it can seek equity and
debt financing. With road construction set to wrap in December, look
for Phase I construction to start by the end of ’13. Overall, Lakeside is planned for 17.5M SF of commercial space and 13,575 residences. |
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| The site, which is about two miles from the University of Chicago, is raw land with no utilities or services. SOM City design practice partner Phil Enquist (center standing) and his team have brought in next-gen infrastructure experts from the UK and Denmark
to envision the options for the streets, open space, water, sewers,
clean power, heating, cooling, telecom, and transportation. They see infrastructure as a catalyst for transforming how people live in a built-from-scratch community. More on that below. (Standing: Doug Voigt, Jayme Gately, Jennifer Skowlund, Phil, Richard Wilson, Jeannine Colaco, and Matt Stegmaier. Seated: Tien-Yun Lee, Allison McCulloh, Tom Hussey, Jason Stanley, and Maria Perez.) |
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| One option is to have one heating and cooling system for the entire district that relies on lake water
rather than have systems that use potable water atop every building.
Less power would be used in the daytime (when people are at work) to
heat and cool homes, and at night that power usage would shift from
offices to homes. Such a system can be low cost, resource efficient,
and flexible enough to adopt new technologies like
photovoltaic, wind, and biomass as they advance. To integrate Lakeside
with existing South Side neighborhoods (where car ownership isn’t as
prevalent as elsewhere in the city), SOM envisions a pedestrian-friendly
streetscape with wide sidewalks, cafes, and convenient public
transportation. We also might see streetcars, light rail, bikes, and
Segway-like vehicles. |
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| Dispersed through the site will be housing, commercial space, schools, retail, and community amenities. There may be next-gen grade schools and research enterprises that want to be near the University of Chicago in Hyde Park. Slips that US Steel once used to transport ore will be transformed into waterways for recreation and public parks. An efficient resource loop can
be created to recycle waste—an advance for Chicago, where 85% of the
waste now goes into landfills. McCaffery and SOM see Lakeside’s
infrastructure as more than pipes and ducts; it's a building block for a
new post-industrial life style. |
