“Investors” Love Olympic Housing Plan, Rest Of Us – Not So Much

Sun-Times “On The Home Front” real estate columnist Don DeBat wrote in Friday’s paper:

Chicago’s $4.8 billion Olympic Games bid features details about a new neighborhood that is planned to house some 16,000 athletes and officials on the current site of Michael Reese Hospital on the Near South Side. Preliminary Olympic Village plans, drafted by architects at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, call for 21 high-rises, each about 12 stories high built in rows on grid-style streets on the 37-acre site of the shuttered hospital near 31st Street and Cottage Grove Avenue. Some 2,000 to 3,500 housing units are planned across the giant 128-acre Olympic Village neighborhood just south of McCormick Place. Plans also call the village to become a mixed-income residential community after the Games. As the economy improves, it is likely that a good percentage of the housing units in this brand new neighborhood could be sold to investors, rented during and after the games, and later converted to condominium ownership, experts say.

So – are you an “investor”? If so, lthen this plan is for you. If you’re a South Sider looking to keep your home or a Chicago tax payer looking not to get soaked by another city-fueled Ponzi scheme and developer bail out – then this deal is NOT for you.