Proposal for 18 apartments on Narragansett in Portage/Dunning area appears to be moving forward 

by BRIAN NADIG

A proposal to build an 18-unit apartment building on the site of an existing home at 4125 N. Narragansett Ave. in Portage Park appears to be moving forward.

Alderman Nicholas Sposato (38th) held a community meeting on the proposal on Aug. 3, and he said afterwards there does not appear to be significant opposition to the project and he plans to support it. 

About a dozen residents attended the meeting at the Merrimac Park fieldhouse, and concerns were raised that  the three-story building would attract more traffic to the  already congested area.

“You know about the amount of traffic we have now on Narragansett. We can’t even get in and out of the (nearby) Jewel,” one man said.

“I know it creates (some) traffic, but I don’t want to stop economic development,” Sposato said of the proposal.

Project officials said that the apartments would cater to younger people who increasingly are choosing not to have a car.

Sposato said that the “expense”‘ of owning a car is a deterrent for many, especially younger couples, or they chose to have one car instead of two.

Sposato said that existing house on the lot, which measures about 60 feet wide by 300 feet deep, is one of the ”worse” looking ones in the ward and should be replaced with a new development.

The property has been for sale for two years, and it’s unlikely that anything other than apartments would be built there, Sposato said. “People don’t want to buy condos or houses anymore,” he said, adding that his generation wanted to own homes.

The proposal, which includes 18 on-site parking spaces, calls for the approximately 18,000-square-foot property to be rezoned from RS-2 to the less restrictive RT-4. The block includes other RT-4-zoned properties,

“It’s a very deep lot … 300 feet, (and) there’s RT-4 on both sides,” Sposato said before the meeting.

Monthly rents  would be about $2,250 for the 950-square-foot units, which would include two bedrooms and two bathrooms, project attorney Paul Kolpak said.

Four of the units would be designated as affordable in accordance with city housing rules and intended for families earning 60 percent of the area’s median income, Reduced rents for the affordable units would be around $1,400 to $1,500, project officials estimated.

The project would include an underground stormwater management system.

One resident said that she would prefer a less dense development, given the community’s overall single-family character.

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