Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration broke a City Hall taboo Thursday, advancing a massive development despite opposition from the local alderman.
The Chicago Plan Commission, dominated by Johnson appointees, voted 11-1 to recommend a 615-unit Lincoln Park housing complex near the stalled Lincoln Yards megadevelopment.
The decision came even as Ald. Scott Waguespack, 32nd, called on the commission to vote down the proposal because neighborhood residents believe it is too large. Meanwhile, Johnson’s handpicked Planning and Development Commissioner Ciere Boatright praised the plan as a “case study.”
Boatright said the administration’s support for the project does not set a precedent on so-called aldermanic prerogative.
And Johnson downplayed the rare breach of the council tradition earlier Thursday as simply a “conversation.”
“I need people to calm down and relax, just relax. We’re having conversations,” Johnson said. “This is not some contentious, fake spat or rift between my presentation and others. This is about having a real conversation about how we have the vibrancy in this city so that we can recover.”
The City Council has long given aldermen nearly complete control over development in their wards thanks to the deference of their colleagues. The last major rupture of the custom occurred in 2021 under Mayor Lori Lightfoot, when the council approved a Far Northwest Side development with affordable units over the alderman’s objections. Johnson criticized Lightfoot’s crusade against aldermanic prerogative on the campaign trail.
The Thursday vote moves the Lincoln Park development to the council’s Zoning Committee. It will face a full council vote if it passes there. The project, near the Chicago River’s North Branch, would replace a vacant building and include 124 affordable housing units as required by a 2021 ordinance in its 15-story and 25-story towers.
When asked before the meeting about his backing of the project from powerful developer Sterling Bay, Johnson said it shows his administration “is committed to bringing real economic development” and painted it as a move toward equity.
“The anti-business, quite frankly, the anti-Black and -brown policies that have created so much harm in this city, that day is over,” he said. “That’s why we’re working hard to bring real economic development to the people.”
Waguespack told the Tribune before the vote that the developer “maxed out” on potential size and has been unwilling to compromise on density, height and cutting some of the 275 parking spots planned for the site, he said.
“The community is saying: If you do this one, and you allow these towers to start going in there, you just basically destroy the fabric of the community,” Waguespack said. “This whole thing just kind of boils down to whether you follow good planning principles or not.”
During the commission’s meeting, Waguespack criticized the “top-down” approach taken by the developer and supported by Johnson. Community feedback on the project was “summarily ignored” and there is a “clear signal that there is no concern about the character in the context of these neighborhoods,” he said.
The proposal is impossible to separate from the bigger Lincoln Yards development nearby, Waguespack said. While Sterling Bay is not entirely at fault for the near total lack of progress there, the developer had promised infrastructure improvements in the area that have not materialized, he said.
“We have not seen that,” he said. “And yet, what we are doing here is saying ‘Hey, let’s go full speed ahead on another project’ that basically ignores the issues.”
Ald. Daniel La Spata, the only alderman who cast a vote Thursday, voted against the project. However, his issue was with the design, and not an effort to maintain aldermanic prerogative, he said. He criticized the tradition of aldermanic prerogative as a source of segregation.
“I think it is unwise,” La Spata said, “for one individual to have unilateral power over the housing and economic development opportunities for entire communities,”
But Boatright had only praise for Sterling Bay and its plan. The proposal, which has been workshopped for three years, “has been a long time coming,” she said.
“This is just one project, but it is an intentional step forward for the plan by Lincoln Park and the entire city of Chicago,” she said in an apparent nod to Lincoln Yards.
One of the city’s most prolific developers, Sterling Bay won approval for the Lincoln Yards development in 2019 and broke ground in 2021. They proposed a complete reinvigoration of roughly 50 acres of land nestled between Bucktown, Wicker Park and Lincoln Park, adding thousands of square feet of office, retail, residential and entertainment space.
The developer’s proposal won City Council approval for up to $1.3 billion in tax increment financing assistance to reimburse the company for road, bridge and river wall improvements necessary to make the site workable, as well as fresh investment in transit and expansion of the popular The 606 trail.
The hope was for thousands of jobs and millions in property tax revenue to follow. But to date, the site is host to a handful of soccer and pickleball fields, basketball courts and outdoor space and just one building — a life sciences office. Sterling Bay CEO Andy Gloor blamed Lightfoot’s administration for delays, and moved to find fresh investors, including unsuccessfully pitching the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund.
The company also listed several properties near the site for sale in recent months.
Many progressives opposed the Lincoln Yards development when it landed its massive cache of government support during former Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s last days in office.
In 2019, nine Chicago Teachers Union members were even arrested for sitting in at Sterling Bay’s headquarters in an effort to call attention to taxpayer money going to “clouted developers” instead of “common good needs” like smaller classroom sizes and school librarians.
But now in office, Johnson, a former CTU organizer, has at times embraced the megadeveloper. He tapped one of Sterling Bay’s executives to serve as his pick on the Democratic National Convention’s host committee.
Keiana Barrett, the company’s chief of diversity and engagement, also served on Johnson’s mayoral transition committee last spring after a runoff election that saw company CEO Gloor and other executives back his more conservative opponent, Paul Vallas.
On the campaign trail last year, Johnson seemed to reject Lightfoot’s intense focus on aldermanic prerogative, suggesting power shouldn’t be overly concentrated at City Hall.
“Not one person alone can transform this city,” he said in reply to a question about the entrenched tradition. “I’m a collaborator, and alderpersons who have been elected by their community have a rich understanding of the nuances and the variances that exist in their communities.”
Johnson had so far backed up that stance in office. Over a year into his first term, he still has not implemented changes made in a last-second Lightfoot executive order aimed at curtailing aldermanic prerogative.
Chicago Tribune’s Alice Yin contributed.
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