After two years of low sales and missed deadlines, the owner of two lots in the 1100 block of Bonnie Brae presented River Forest trustees with a new development plan at their meeting on July 22.
“It’s a pivot. When we say pivot it means a new [planned development] application. It doesn’t mean, ‘Let’s change and work off the old ones,'” said John Schiess, a River Forest-based architect who is representing the owner of 1101-1111 Bonnie Brae, Art Gurevich.
“This is marketing with a scope as opposed to a shotgun,” he added.
In November 2016, trustees approved Gurevich’s plan to build 15 condos at 1101-1107 Bonnie Brae Place, which is currently a parking lot, as well as convert a six-unit apartment building at 1111 Bonnie Brae Place into a three-unit condominium. Condos would have been priced between $850,000 to $1 million, Gurevich said at the meeting.
Over the years, trustees granted the developer two extensions to start building the project, but the Gurevich wasn’t able to sell enough units to receive the $11 million construction loan required to build the project.
“The development could not gain enough sales contracts to satisfy the bank for the loan,” Schiess said.
“The bank will say, ‘Sure we’d love to lend, but we want to see that you’re not just going to build it and it’ll stay vacant.”
Now, Gurevich is proposing a new project that will need to go through the village’s planned development process again.
The proposal now calls for building 20 three-story townhomes on the property, each with three bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms and a two-car garage. The townhomes will each have a rooftop area and be priced between $589,000 to $615,000.
In response to trustees asking how many of the recently built Promenade Townhomes had sold in 7800 block of Madison Street, Assistant Village Administrator Lisa Scheiner said 16 units are currently occupied and 29 units are constructed. Schiess said the Madison Street townhomes are priced between $489,000 and $530,000.
“Different part of town, different person,” Schiess said. “It’s more core downtown; this is more they’re looking for connectivity, folks that want to walk to Whole Foods. They’re not going to buy on Madison. So it’s a different demographic.”
Mariano Mollo, a broker for the Forest Park-based Avenue One, said that the real estate marketing and consultancy was developing this project based on buyer demands.
Avenue One most recently worked on selling a four-unit townhouse development at 233 Desplaines Ave. in Forest Park, and a 17-unit townhouse development on Van Buren Street just south of Madison Street in Forest Park. Mollo said both projects were sold out prior to completion.
“We have a target buyer based on the recent sales of what we’ve seen in those most recent developments that we worked on in Forest Park,” Mollo said, adding that the proposed townhomes would be marketed to Chicago buyers with roots to the area, empty nesters and young families.
Village Administrator Eric Palm said he wasn’t sure if the lot was large enough to accommodate such a large development, saying it could be “10 pounds of potatoes in a five pound bag.” Palm said he was also concerned about accommodating guest parking on the street.
“That’s going to be another challenge with this,” Palm said. “We’re selling these high-end units and we’re telling people — it’s the same conversation we had on the last development — we’re telling them to park on the street.”
Schiess said he “welcomed that conversation” with the village and predicted that, in a few years, there would be too many parking spaces in River Forest due to technology advances.
“Autonomous cars will hit in the next 18 years; we will be overparked,” Schiess said. “I’m not a soothsayer, I’m not out over my skis, but I gotta tell you, the world is going to shift. We’re going to have a lot of extra parking and we’re going to figure what we need to do.”
Village President Cathy Adduci said she worried about potential buyers who were unable to climb stairs in the three-story properties.
“Townhomes are great, but walking up three flights of stairs are awfully difficult. So I think we have to kind of think about an elevator and, of course, guest parking,” Adduci said. “We don’t want to build it and nobody comes because that wouldn’t be good for all of us.”
Mollo said he and the developer discussed installing elevators in the units but that he wasn’t sure there was enough demand.
As a next step, Gurevich’s team will present the plan to the River Forest Development Review Board, which will then make an official recommendation about the project to the village board, which will then approve or deny the final concept.
CONTACT: ntepper@wjinc.com