Auburn-Gresham retail center moves forward

This article from the Tribune is coming from YoChicago, a blog I haven't linked to in quite a while. Auburn-Gresham is located on the south side and you're basically going thru the neighborhood on 79th Street due west of the Dan Ryan expressway. A struggling neighborhood and it certainly doesn't help if this place is directly south of Englewood.

Anyway this is what's going on there...

Chicago is assisting developers building a long-awaited $5.3 million retail center in the Auburn-Gresham neighborhood on the South Side by selling them two parcels to complete the project.

A single-story, 21,596-square-foot, L-shaped retail building will go up at 7932-7956 S. Racine Ave., on the Hobby House Hotel site before the city condemned it in the late 1990s.

"It was a nuisance to the neighborhood, used for actions of ill-repute and gang/drug activity," said Jonathan Swain, executive director of Beloved Community Inc., the development arm of Faith Community of St. Sabina Church.

Beloved Community is the non-profit community member of Gresham Plaza Retail LLC that will build the retail center.

Other LLC members are Joseph Freed and Associates LLC and SIVIC Real Estate LLC, the lead developer. Bral Spight, who had been chief of staff on the Public Building Commission of Chicago, heads SIVIC.

The retail center is the second phase of a project begun earlier this decade. All Chicago LLC completed a Walgreen's Drug Store at 1213 W. 79th St. in 2002.

Gresham Plaza Retail bought the southern end of the 1.1-acre site -- 7952-7956 S. Racine -- from an All Chicago member.

Now with Gresham Plaza's purchase of the city-owned land, 38,589 square feet at 7932-7950 S. Racine, construction can be completed.

The Chicago Community Development Commission last month approved the land sale. Gresham Plaza Retail will pay $235,000 for the city-owned part of that site, discounted from the $475,000 appraised market-rate value of the land, a Chicago Department of Planning and Development project manager told commissioners.

Pending City Council approval, expected in fall, the developer hopes to close on the land by year-end, Spight said.

I wrote about driving thru the 79th Street corridor earlier this year. I'm really impressed with how the streetscape looks with new construction and even new sidewalks with pots for trees and plants. That is boxes with dirt and then some small iron-wrought fencing around it. That street is looking better these days. Some new construction certainly couldn't hurt either.