No Go Aones, a Few Do's and Don'ts, New Zoning Laws

No-go zones: A few dos and don'ts Builders get set to live by new city rules that ban a host of eyesores October 18, 2004 By Alby Gallun Real estate developers beware: Armed with a new zoning code, Chicago and its famously picky mayor are out to ban building styles seen as a blight on the city. The new zoning codes, which take effect Nov. 1, update rules that were last rewritten when Eisenhower was president. continued below Advertisement The city is conferring endangered-species status on many features of the urban landscape that planners have come to hate, like street-facing garages in residential neighborhoods. Or billboards, which will be tougher to put up in some areas. More green space, more windows. Less concrete, less visual clutter. "There were a lot of people who said you'll never get (the zoning rewrite) done because of Chicago politics," says Edward J. Kus, former executive director of the mayor's Zoning Reform Commission. "I guess the biggest surprise is that we actually accomplished it." Yet what's already been done can't be undone. Here's a sampling of some design "features" that become don'ts under the new zoning rules. No more blank walls It could pass for a medium-security prison, but this building is actually part of the Dearborn Park residential development in the South Loop. Too much brick and not enough windows, say planning experts. "As a pedestrian, you have a great sense of isolation," says Peter Skosey, vice-president for external relations of the Chicago-based regional advisory group Metropolitan Planning Council. He cites studies showing that many pedestrians won't walk along blank walls of 100 feet or more. Under the new code, windows or doors must cover a minimum of 17.5% of a building's walls that face a sidewalk. Patio pits? The pits City officials have always had it in for sunken terraces like these. You see them all over Lincoln Park and Bucktown. Developers like them because they add more living space to ground-floor units, boosting bottom lines. Some pits are tastefully landscaped, but a lot of them are "just concrete boxes that became receptacles for trash," says Edward J. Kus, who helped rewrite the zoning code. The solution: You can still build them, but only behind a property's required front-yard setback. Blacktop isn't open space A building plunked down in a sea of pavement: a skateboarder's heaven, but an urban planner's hell. "That's a doozy," says planning consultant Kirk R. Bishop, of this property along the Kennedy Expressway near Augusta Boulevard on the Near North Side. It wouldn't make it under the new zoning code, which requires developers to include open space with their projects according to a sliding scale. A building the size of the one above, for instance, would need 65 square feet of open space per unit. Parking doesn't count; the open space must include greenery or patios. Parking eyesores City officials and architecture critics alike rail against huge, overbearing parking structures like this one at Illinois Street and Lake Shore Drive. To discourage the "tower on a podium" style, the new zoning code caps the number of parking spaces a condo developer can build: for instance, only 1.1 parking spaces for every unit smaller than 1,600 square feet. Anything more than that and the developer must take space off the top of the building, a restriction city officials hope will cause developers to think twice about putting up 10-story-plus parking structures.>