For those of us in the condo building adjoining the site, the Lake-Lathrop project, a major embarrassment to the village of River Forest, is providing endless stories and laughs. Some of us overlook the site from five stories up and can see daily what goes on at the site — and what does not.
Progress reports from the village would make one think that the project is humming along. Here’s a very recent update: “March 3, 2023 – Detention system construction remains on the previously stated timeline. The next phase is the upper parking deck.”
On April 3, all construction equipment and the portable toilets were removed from the property, reminiscent of the long hiatus in demolition of the prior building when the developers ran out of money and weren’t paying the demolition company.
In that episode one piece of demolition equipment languished on the site for months until it was finally removed. The site was an eyesore, with stacks (and non-stacks — jumbled piles) of lumber from the old buildings. Over the past few months, one by one and two by two, one-story columns were poured. On many days, a crew of two was on site “moving dirt,” as we observed it: sometimes filling depressions in the soil, then digging it up again and moving it back, among the lonely columns.
At one point just a couple of days before the 2021 River Forest Village President election, a large construction machine appeared on the empty site. The day after the election it was gone, apparently back to the site from which it was borrowed for show (we suspect that this move was requested by a village personage). It never started up.
The site plan was approved by the village of River Forest in 2016. Here we are seven years later.
Meanwhile, in Oak Park the following has happened:
• Albion Residential, Oak Park: 2018-19 – 19 stories
• Emerson, Oak Park: 2016-18 – 20 stories
• Eleven33, Oak Park: 2017-19 – 12 stories
• District House, Oak Park: 2016-2018 (28 three-bedroom condos)
• Porter, new apartment complex, former Drechsler, Brown & Williams site: 2022-23 (expected finish) – 7 stories
• American House Oak Park, senior living: 7 stories, recently opened
• Maeve on Madison (435 Madison): 5 stories, 42 units, begun 2022, near completion
• Maeve on Lake, new construction east of Unity Temple: begun 2022
Vantage Oak Park, completed 2016, is not part of this list though it did take under two years to complete that 21-story building, instructive by itself.
District House is a fine comparative property. It started, as you can see, in the same year as Lake-Lathrop. It has 28 condo units and a coffee shop at street level. It is, by the way, architecturally striking.
With the exception of Eleven33, which many of us refer to as “the Soviet Building,” the structures listed here all have architectural interest. Lake-Lathrop is woefully uninspired — an amazing thought, given that it is a village “statement” building, the only such open property in the middle of the village. One would think that the village’s planners would have insisted on eye-catching architecture for such a building opportunity. They didn’t. And don’t get me started on the local developer they chose. That’s a story all by itself.
The architects for the listed buildings in Oak Park include some real Chicago heavy hitters, Hartshorne Plunkard (Albion), Fitzgerald Associates (Emerson), and Gensler (Vantage) among them.
So will we see that “upper parking deck”? Do we have to wait for a new tranche of funding to show up? Or will this 7-year project (which, for those of us in the know, is really 10 years) come a-cropper and close down, its columns forlorn, its dirt no longer moved around?
It will be interesting, though maddening (despite the humor), to watch.
