Teardown Post

Kenilworth, Illinois is a lovely suburb on the North Shore of Chicago with the world’s largest collection of George Maher Prairie houses and a cornucopia of other architectural and planning delights. It also made the National Trust’s Most Endangered List because of teardowns. That is rare notoriety in a nation beset with teardowns. You gotta have something goin’ on to be one of the eleven most endangered sites in the United States.

So, the village came up with a clever plan: list the town on the National Register of Historic Places. This adds NO regulation to homeowners and provides NO protection against teardowns, but addresses the media embarassment. It also would allow ONLY THOSE HOMEOWNERS WHO WANT TO to take advantage of the Illinois Property Tax Assessment Freeze program. Upside without a downside.

A clever political solution, but it still encountered some of the most vociferous opposition ever. Why? Apparently they see the National Register as a first step toward local designation. While that could be true in Oak Park, it isn’t true on the North Shore. Wilmette listed two districts on the National Register and passed a law requiring a super majority of 75% of homeowners should Wilmette dare to try for local designation. Kenilworth has passed a similar law barring itself from pursuing local designation. Besides, it is a completely separate action requiring a completely separate political process. National Register designation offers NO SHORTCUTS to local designation. Getting local designation would still require the SAME political process it would without National Register designation.

But that wasn’t enough for the Kenilworth opposition who can see a slippery slope even on flat dry ground. (By the way, they need a cute name - when Winnetka went through this a generation ago, the opposition — funded by a major real estate developer — was called WHOA - Winnetka Homeowners Association, I think. Maybe they could be Kenilworth Opposition (KO), or Tenacious Kenilworth Opposition (TKO), or Kenilworth Protests Against Conservation (KPAC) or even Kenilworth Teardowns Embrace Liberty (K-Tel).)

So there was a League of Women Voters Forum with Wilmette preservation chair Kevin Kirkpatrick, architectural historian Susan Benjamin, myself, Village Clerk Bob Hastings and National Park Service jefe Paul Loethar to explain this. Kirkpatrick did the best, explaining that there is NO prohibition against demolition or alteration caused by National Register designation and NO cause-and-effect with local designation. He had a good analogy: Just because you go to high school doesn’t mean you need to go to college. And just because you want to avoid college, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t graduate from high school.

When I was asked why we didn’t talk about the downside of National Register designation I offered the only downside I could think of: “It would make it more difficult for the federal government to put an airport in the middle of town.” And that is true - it wouldn’t be impossible, but more difficult (and expensive). Upon reflection, I thought of some more examples. Remember, ONLY FEDERAL GOVERNMENT PROJECTS can be reviewed under National Register listing.

National Register designation will make it more difficult for the Federal Government to put any of the following uses in the Kenilworth Historic District:

Public housing project
Urban renewal (requires slum and blighted designation)
New subsidized housing projects
Interstate highway
Federal prison
Military base or munitions plant
Harbor or canal project
FBI training facility/shooting range
Federal office building
Construction of FEMA trailer encampment for flood victims

Is KPAC pursuing any of these for their homes? If so, that would explain their opposition. Otherwise, their logic is whack.

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High-end buyers looking for quality, not quantity, in square footage.

by MARY ELLEN PODMOLIK  chicagotribune.com

McMansions epitomized the excesses of the housing market, but don’t think that just because the market is in the dumps, the desire for overbuilt homes has dried up.

The people who can afford to be in the upper brackets of residential real estate are the least affected by the housing sector meltdown and they are still thinking big. Or almost as big.

“We’re still seeing large homes maximize the floor area ratio of the lots,” said Brian Hickey, who launched Teardowns.com in 2001. “I would think that size would come down a little, but we haven’t [seen that] yet.”

A case in point: An 11,605-square-foot home by King’s Court Builders in Naperville, complete with his-and-her libraries and listed for $4.95 million, sold before it was able to participate in the Chicago Luxury Home Tour that ends Sunday.

Meanwhile, earlier this month in Hinsdale, builder Dominic O’Neill already had a few potential clients for a spec house he planned to build on a teardown lot even before he closed on the purchase and bulldozed the house. The house’s footprint will be as big as the village will allow, he said, because that’s what clients want. 

Read on…

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A recent article “Arlington Heights satisfies divergent tastes” by Sherry Giewald is an other example of a close-in community revitalization with inflow of younger buyers. In addition to an easy access to Chicago via. the train, Arlington Height as a community managed to create a vibrant downtown. That attracts even more buyers. The changes in housing stock reflect this process….

With little vacant land in town, many residents are remodeling or tearing down older homes and replacing them with new construction, Brucks said.

“We have a lot of tear downs, and a new home going up as we speak. There are probably close to 70 homes for sale right now - plenty of homes for people to buy.”

Many single-family homes sit along tree-lined streets near neighborhood parks, and often residents remain in their homes for decades.

Arlington Heights is comprised of three areas, said Susan Duchek, broker with Picket Fence Realty. There is the northern section with a little newer real estate; the downtown district; and the southern section, she said.

“Each area has its own personality,” Duchek said. “You can have an address in any town, but in Arlington Heights, you have a sense of neighborhood. People are passionate about this town.”

It speaks to so many different demographics - young people coming in, longtime residents choosing to stay in the community and older folks who have raised their families and want to stay near their children and grandchildren, Duchek said.

“It really is a tapestry as far as what is available. Not everyone wants the same thing, but at the end of the day we’re all standing together. Personally, I just love that Arlington Heights offers a warm place to be family.”

Although most of the early settlers were farmers, Arlington Heights was known as the earliest commuter suburb because many of its residents worked in Chicago. Today, with two Metra stops, the village continues to offer an easy commute for those who work downtown.

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In recent years, Lincoln Park has become a prime address for super-luxury single-family houses.

In 2007, Forbes magazine named the block between Armitage, Willow, Orchard and Burling Streets as the most expensive in Chicago.

While its housing skews upscale, Lincoln Park has some modestly priced real estate, and values are solid at all price ranges.

Most of the housing is on serene, tree-lined side streets with a mix of vintage, renovated, teardown and newly-built houses.

From North Avenue to West Deming Place, there are historic sections that often require major renovation. From North Lincoln Avenue to North Halsted Street, a great deal of new housing has been built on teardown sites and west of Halsted to the Chicago River there is a mix of teardowns and new construction.

While sales volume is down and property sits on the market longer, values are still rising, said Jim Kinney, president of Rubloff Residential Properties.

Units on the market are priced from $149,500 for a studio to about $15 million for a 5-bedroom condominium at Lincoln Park 2520, a 40-story high rise overlooking Lincoln Park and Lake Michigan that’s in development.

“More rentals are being put on the market by owners who can’t sell, but demand is high among people who aren’t buying now,” said Robin Miner, a Lincoln Park broker for @properties. The average two-bedroom, two-bath leases for about $2,600 a month, up about 15 percent from two years ago, she estimated.

Exert from Chicago Tribune

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New York Times - United States

The downturn in the real estate market has slowed but by no means halted the number of teardowns. Teardowns is the practice of buying an older home to demolish it and replace it with a house that dwarfs structures nearby and covers most of its own lot.

Read on

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