More apartments added to 13-story Jefferson Park plan

by BRIAN NADIG

A plan to construct a 13-story building at Ainslie Street and Lipps Avenue has been revised to increase the number of apartments from 96 to 103 and to reduce the number of parking spaces from 265 to 250.

The proposed 168-foot building would be constructed on the former site of Cowhey Materials and Fuel Company, 5310 W. Ainslie St. The Site is next to the Jefferson Park CTA Terminal, 4917 N. Milwaukee Ave., across Lipps from the 10-story Veterans Square building, 4849 N. Milwaukee Ave.

The for the development, which is named Jefferson Place, calls for eight ground-floor storefronts, five levels of parking and seven floors of apartments.

Alderman John Arena’s chief of staff Owen Brugh said that the additional apartments were made possible when the city Department of Planning and Development recommended that a partial 13th floor be added to the original planned 12-story building to create a stepping-down effect along the top of the structure. In addition, the 12th floor was shortened with the removal of one apartment from the north end.

Brugh said that the change is intended to make the building more visually appealing because it would vary the shape of the building, which is to run 256 feet along Lipps.

Another revision calls for the removal of 15 parking spaces to allow the addition of a third stairwell and the relocation of elevator shafts, Brugh said. The building would have be elevator lobby on Lipps for users of the parking garage on the second through the sixth floors and another lobby on Ainslie for tenants of the apartments on the seventh through the 13th floors.

A brick wall which is part of the CTA terminal is on the north end of the 25,000-square-foot parcel, and there are no plans to remove the wall, which would block about 10 feet of the first floor at the north end of the building, Brugh said. A concrete barrier along a portion of the perimeter of the property would be demolished, he said.

Also in Jefferson Park, it was reported that zoning notification letters for a proposed four-story, mixed-use building at 5161-5221 W. Lawrence Ave. recently were mailed to nearby property owners. The letter states that the parcel would be rezoned from B3-2 to planned development, which creates a custom zoning ordinance for the site.

Last year city officials announced that the building would be constructed under the existing zoning, but they later acknowledged that a planned development would be required because Laramie Avenue separates the eastern and western portions of the site. The underlying zoning of the ordinance would be B3-2.

Plans call for 39 residential units and several storefronts at the southwest corner of Lawrence and Laramie avenues and a plaza and outdoor parking lot at the southeast corner of the intersection.

The Chicago Plan Commission is expected to hold hearings on both projects this spring.

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