Two long-vacant lots on the 3000 block of West Lexington Street in East Garfield Park are getting new three-story, three-unit buildings, after the City of Chicago issued permits for the first pair of a planned trio of three-flats this week. A third permit, covering 3011 West Lexington, remains pending.
According to Chicago YIMBY, all three permit applications share a start date of July 2, 2026. The first permit, covering 3009 West Lexington, was issued August 13 with a reported construction cost of $640,000, while the second, for 3015 West Lexington, was issued August 14 with a reported cost of $725,000. Together, the two approved buildings and the still-pending third structure are expected to bring nine residential units to a stretch of the block that has sat empty for years.
The 3009 West Lexington building will rise three stories with three residential apartment units, front open decks on both the second and third levels, and rear egress stairs, but no rooftop deck and no mentioned basement, the outlet reports. Three parking spaces will be added on a concrete slab at the back of the lot, and the rear yard will be enclosed by privacy fencing. The site plans for 3015 West Lexington mirror those specifications exactly, per the same account.
Who's Behind the Project
Made Group LLC is listed as the developer, with IW Capital LLC serving as general contractor; the two firms share the same physical address, the report notes. Michael Cox & Associates is the architect of record, a firm that has handled several other recent multi-family infill projects around the city, including a pair of permitted three-flats on South Kedvale Avenue in North Lawndale in March 2026 and a 32-unit residential proposal in West Ridge in 2025, according to Urbanize Chicago.
The three lots on Lexington Street are currently vacant, and the article notes there are no other pending construction permits on this particular portion of the block, though additional empty parcels sit immediately east at the corner with South Sacramento Boulevard. That corner has its own history: the city ordered a two-story brick mixed-use building at 734 South Sacramento Boulevard demolished in July 2015, a razing documented by Gabriel X. Michael.
A Transit-Connected Corner of the West Side
New residents will land within three blocks of several CTA bus routes. Route 7 runs to the north at West Harrison Street, Route 94 has stops to the east at South California Avenue, Route 52 runs west at South Kedzie Avenue, and Route 12 runs along Sacramento Boulevard itself. The nearest rail access is the Kedzie Blue Line platform, located about four blocks northwest at the Eisenhower Expressway.
That proximity to transit is not incidental to the pace of construction here. In July 2022, the Chicago City Council passed the Connected Communities Ordinance, expanding transit-oriented development incentives to a half-mile radius around CTA rail stations and a quarter-mile along CTA bus corridors specifically to encourage multi-family infill housing on the South and West Sides. The measure was crafted by city departments alongside more than 80 civic organizations aiming to address historic disinvestment without triggering displacement.
Part of a Broader Mid-August Permit Wave
The Lexington Street approvals land amid a notable cluster of three-flat activity across East Garfield Park this month. Just days earlier, the city issued permits for two three-flats at 3330 and 3332 West Walnut Street representing a combined $900,000 in reported construction cost, as Hoodline previously reported. Earlier in the summer, city records showed a permit granted for a three-story, three-unit building at 2850 West Adams Street, on a lot that had sat unimproved since at least 2011 before its April 2026 purchase.
These smaller projects are unfolding alongside a much larger public investment nearby. On August 10, the city approved $11.5 million in Tax Increment Financing for Harvest Homes II, a 50-unit affordable housing development and food hall in East Garfield Park that combines multi-family units with commercial food retail. The private permits and the public subsidy both trace back to the same municipal push: in January 2026, officials advanced a third round of “Missing Middle” developer initiatives targeting South and West Side neighborhoods, including East Garfield Park and West Garfield Park, aimed at expanding housing types between single-family homes and large apartment complexes.
The Numbers Behind the Push
The scale of what's being rebuilt matters. Chicago lost 11,775 housing units in two- to four-unit properties between 2013 and 2019, according to research from DePaul University's Institute for Housing Studies reported by DEI Realty LLC, as two-to-four-flat buildings have traditionally formed the backbone of the city's naturally occurring affordable rental stock. East Garfield Park itself lost roughly 40% of its total population between 1980 and 2017, a decline that has pushed the city to look at thousands of vacant parcels for new construction, per Dwell.
The neighborhood's economic baseline underscores what's at stake in how these new units get filled. East Garfield Park recorded a median household income of $23,067 in 2020, according to the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning's Community Data Snapshot cited by Wikipedia, well below the citywide median of $62,097. NeighborhoodScout data for 2026 also shows the neighborhood carrying a housing vacancy rate of 10.8%, higher than 67.3% of U.S. neighborhoods nationally. Whether the new Lexington Street units, and others like them, end up as market-rate rentals, subsidized affordable housing, or for-sale condos remains an open question as the third permit for 3011 West Lexington awaits approval.
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