Has nothing to do with density, but how developers in general don't capitalize on the idea that many people want units close to the CBD or in the CBD, without paying an extraordinary amount. A project like this could cater to millennials, couples, your everyday office worker who is in the area. Essentially a great location for affordable housing.

I believe the demand is there to make a project in the range of 3.7k + feasible, and one that caters to people who live outside of the CBD (who would love to live there but can't afford the rent/unit.

For the time table that this project has (isn't it 2023-25 tentatively), a much larger project could work, in which, the phases would absorb "X" amount of units sold, and move on to the next phase.

Its great project, don't get me wrong, but I just think its another example of developers in America not catering enough to make a dent in the housing crisis and/or making our cities accessible to people who would like to live there. Aggressive marketing and sales is the key.

A project like this wouldn't really be a burden on the infrastructure assuming it has limited parking and caters to those who walk or take the bus.

If you build it, they will come. Developers don't need to sell 100% of the units right away. They often take the risk of waiting; in some cases, towers can take years to fill up.

I'm not saying short term, but over a decade. Essentially the time line of the project and a little after. The demand is there. If they price these units at a reasonable price that caters to your people or couples making 60-120k, they will sell units easily.

^ You can't apply a New York lens to Chicago. It's a very different market, there is not a bottomless well of demand for highrise living with zero lake views. CMK has been operating here for decades, and in the South Loop specifically.

Let's compare two previous mega-developments in Chicago, Lakeshore East and Central Station. Both are on the lakefront, both are similar size, and both are Loop-adjacent. Central Station embraced a mix of housing types, with highrises alongside townhouse developments and a few midrises thrown in. Lakeshore East went all-in on highrises.

Today, Central Station is pretty much complete while Lakeshore East will not be finished for another decade or two. Each project that Magellan does at Lakeshore East is a whole new battle with community groups, lenders, investors, etc. If a recession hits, you're not gonna build more highrises, period. On the other hand, if your master plan includes some lower-density phases, you might be able to get those off the ground even during lean times and keep your company in business.

Let's say in Chicago there are X number of people looking to buy a highrise condo, Y number of people looking to rent an apartment, and Z people looking to buy a townhouse. If you build only highrises, then your pool of customers is limited to only X+Y. If you mix up the housing types and include townhouses, your pool of customers just increased to include Z as well. Diversifying the housing types (and lowering overall density somewhat) raises your total pool of customers and, to some extent, insulates you against various kinds of risk.

The tracts in UES vary a bit - most of them are over 100,000 ppsm, but a few are under. There's a few around 90,000 ppsm which would be almost the densest in downtown Chicago and there's a few around 60,000 ppsm which would be equivalent to downtown Chicago. However, there's numerous UES tracts at 125,000 - 200,000 ppsm.

The difference between UES and this is the amount of commercial, business, and retail though. Riverline doesn't have THAT much planned - at least compared to pretty much any avenue in UES. No comparison really at that point. Population density is nice, but if you have density and not a lot of retail, commercial, etc then it's kind of lost. People live in dense areas for a reason - sure one reason is for the proximity to work but also the ability to have a lot of mercantile options right around.

I mean quite honestly - if I had the choice of living in a place that was 15,000 ppsm with a lot of restaurants, bars, etc right around versus a place with 125,000 ppsm with not that much in the way of restaurants, bars, etc I'd take the 15,000 ppsm area in a heart beat with no hesitation.

^ Just because Riverline doesn't have much retail doesn't mean there isn't enough retail (or potential retail) easily within walking distance.

Also, I'm not understanding the complaints about lack of density. This project is plenty dense. It has lots of highrises on a small sliver of land, and of course it has townhomes. I like that. Townhomes break up the density, create sightlines, and humanize the space. They add to the variety of housing types, and create eyes on the street in the way that towers with podia don't. This mix creates a civilized atmosphere, and I like that Chicago has this instead of those Chinese cities with their cut and paste rows of highrises.

Yeah, there is some commercial/retail within walking distance. I never said that - just saying you can't compare an immediate area (i.e. walk downstairs and have options right away) with a lack of retail/commercial to an area like Upper East Side no matter how dense it is.

Anyway, if the math on that is correct and it would be around 275,000 ppsm, then that's very dense by any first world standard.

The article still mentions that Phase 1 will be the 29 story apartment building, 18 story condo building, and 62 townhomes.

Also looks like the Riverline website has some actual content on it now: http://www.riverlinechicago.com/

https://s17.postimg.org/63f33f0ov/co...background.jpg
https://s18.postimg.org/9yvxqfdop/image1.jpghttps://s18.postimg.org/pt1ytjstl/riverwalk.png

Looks like the article also give some bits of information for Related's plot of land:

There is plenty of retail already by Riverline that desperately needs demand to fill up. There is 500,000 sf of it in the River City mall that has sat vacant for decades. It's owned by Marc realty and they will be quick to capitalize on it once the demand is there.

^ Plus I'm betting ground level retail will start humming across the street on Wells St once the demand is there

I have a small handful of friends who live across from the Riverline site, so I'm aware of that. The thing that bothers me though is the immediate retail/commercial planned for the site - even if there's some nearby - when you're putting a few thousand units nearby, you should do that. Luckily it's maybe a little better positioned than Lakeshore East.

On another note, what do you guys think about the Water Taxi adding another stop at Riverline in a few years? Not only are there a few thousand people near there already, but there will be thousands more with Riverline, 801 S Financial, etc. Would be pretty cool to add another stop between Union Station and Chinatown for the Water Taxi.

They're planning it! I spoke to someone at CMK a few weeks ago who mentioned it – I love the water taxi so it's great news.

On another note – agree that this hopefully builds retail in the area, and the good street level kind, not the Roosevelt/Canal kind. I think Printers Row from Wabash/Clark could be the city's fashionable retail district that it doesn't really have. (Some of this is opening in the West Loop but it's so dominated by restaurants I don't see it really becoming its primary uses.)

Stores like COS, Opening Ceremony, Acne, etc. don't have an obvious place in Chicago, but the potential's there with the mix of art schools, young professionals, vintage building stock, and relative proximity to tourist dollars (moving from State Street down to Museum Campus).

Yeah, definitely. A friend and I attempted to go to Chinatown using the water taxi at the Wrigley Building only to find that the frequent service to the Northwestern Station dock evaporates if you want to go further south.

We waited for the Chinatown transfer until hunger drove us to Little Goat instead of dim sum. More frequent service south of Madison buoyed by this project would completely rock.

Because I want some dim sum.

where did you get the 13 acres from? i got 15 acres for the site when i measured in google earth (and i left out the parcel at harrison/wells).

it doesn't change the math much, but 15 acres equals .023 sq. miles, so with 3700 units x 1.5 residents, that would equal 241,000 ppsm.

anyone who thinks that 241,000 ppsm isn't dense enough for this parcel simply has no idea what they're talking about.

Funny, but you do know you guys could have just walked a few blocks to the Red Line and gotten to Chinatown faster/just as easily right?

Adding together the two PDs (225 + 1298), I get 14.74 acres.

This very developer did a project (235 W Van Buren) much closer to the financial district that gave him a lot of sleepless nights about whether he was ever going to sell enough units to get out from under his construction loan.

He's out on a long limb here (though Lend Lease is holding a net nearby), but you think he should climb out on thin air. On a site that has no transit access of any kind, and is served by only one 66-foot-wide street. Once the Great Recession's backlog in new household formation has cleared, where do you think this endless procession of millennial purchasers will come from?

Stay away from the comment section there, pretty nasty.

I agree, they need to build very tall towers here for lake views. Not lowrises 2 blocks from one of the tallest towers in the world.

235 has shitty layouts and lots of "2 bedrooms" or "1 bedrooms" with those fake fraud half wall bedrooms.

If he wanted to sell better, he should have spent more.

Of course. That was how we intended to come back up north because the late evening water taxi schedule was even worse than the early evening schedule. We had wanted to do the water taxi because of how cool it would have been to have gone to Chinatown on the river.

And to keep this on topic, all of the activity on the river helps explain why this project is so river focused and isn't so much worried about views way over there of the Lake.