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Originally Posted by Via Chicago
well its going to take billions and billions of dollars to actually execute this vision as currently laid out, not sure how else they conceivably plan on making their money back
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The Barcelona company is based on a new, partially manufactured housing construction methodology. It cuts costs considerably, and dramatically reduces timelines.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Via Chicago
i dont understand this at all.
who are these theoretical 20,000 additional people clamoring to live off 85th street at presumably luxury prices? is everyone just getting drunk off the Obama library?
didnt they originally propose 12k housing units? hell, since we're going through the trouble might as well just double it!
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There's no hard number on the sales price of the land, but the high estimate was $80 million. With 20,000 units, that's only $4,000 per unit. In a lot of smaller developments around the city the land-cost per unit is closer to $40,000, so if it really is $80 million and $4,000 per unit, that's a big cost savings right there. For a development in the U.K., Barcelona Housing Systems is part of a venture
reportedly budgeted at £1.1 billion for 8,000 homes. If that's accurate reporting, that's $187,500 per home at today's exchange rate. Even at exchange rates closer to pre-Brexit numbers that's about $200,000 per home, which a developer could add a profit to and it could still be considered affordable. I would think that construction costs in the U.K. and in the U.S. can't be that far apart, so hopefully that's a reasonable comparison. Adding to the affordability of the technique is that the homes are designed to be highly energy efficient, making them less expensive to live in.
In the press release it also mentions different a £2.5 billion, 25,000 unit plan in the U.K., which yields an average per-unit cost of under $150,000. They seem to know what they're doing. Guarded optimism is what I have.
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Originally Posted by the urban politician
^ There is no downside, you're right. It's already vacant.
If you want a new meaning for the term "Second City" it should be the south side. Chicago has a veritable second city just waiting to be built. We could easily add 1 million people to the tax rolls if more people were willing to move there.
The one hope I do have is this Barcelona company. They and perhaps their financing partners may not come to the table with the same biases that an American company would. Maybe they will try something new, take some risks? Build some affordable housing en masse, could perhaps attract buyers?
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I like
everything I read about the Barcelona company. Previous reports also indicated that they are planning to build some of their manufacturing capacity for the homes here in Chicago, presumably on or near the US Steel site. If they do that and it creates enough jobs, this could fall into the "if you build it, they will come" category. Especially if they start doing more of these types of developments and can keep the Chicago part of the manufacturing going long-term.