Chicago's Plan Commission gave the green light Thursday to a 14-unit expansion of the RiverWard townhome development in North Center, adding roughly $10 million in new construction to a riverfront project that's already reshaping a long-vacant industrial stretch of the Chicago River's North Branch. The expansion will fill in the remainder of the site's vacant riverfront lot at 2259 West Oakdale Avenue, extending the development west to North Oakley Avenue.
The commission's approval came during its official hearing at Chicago City Hall, according to the City of Chicago Department of Planning & Development. Developer ZSD Riverward LLC's proposal now heads to the Chicago City Council Committee on Zoning and then the full City Council, since the site must first be reclassified from Planned Development 1127 and M1-2 Limited Manufacturing/Business Park District into a unified RM-5 Residential Multi-Unit District before returning to Planned Development status, as detailed by Chicago Construction News.
As Chicago YIMBY reports, the expansion was designed by SGW Architecture & Design and will comprise two buildings arranged around a central private drive. Five riverfront townhomes will continue the riverwalk expansion that was part of the project's initial phases, while nine more units will rise in a single linear building along Oakley. The riverfront homes will each include three bedrooms, a two-car garage, and a front yard, according to the same report.
Two Distinct Building Types, One Riverfront Community
The Oakley building's units, meanwhile, will feature four bedrooms, a small backyard, and a detached rear garage topped with a rooftop deck, per Chicago YIMBY's account of the plans. Both expansion buildings will rise three stories. The publication notes RiverWard was introduced a few years before this latest approval and is now completing construction on the original 35 townhomes that made up the project's first phases.
Those initial phases were spread across five clusters of buildings and already included a riverwalk expansion and a row of riverfront homes, laying the groundwork for the public river access now being extended through the new buildings. That riverwalk requirement isn't optional window dressing — under Section 17-8-0912 of the Chicago Zoning Ordinance, developments along the river's North Branch within a Waterway Planned Development district must provide a continuous landscaped riverwalk extension and public river setback.
From $33 Million to $43 Million in Just Over a Year
The original 35-townhome phase of RiverWard was approved by the Plan Commission in May 2025 across 1.8 acres, carrying an estimated construction value of $33 million, according to Chicago YIMBY's earlier coverage. With the new $10 million expansion added on top, the project's overall value climbs to roughly $43 million. ZSD Corp acquired the 80,000-square-foot riverfront parcel for $5.96 million in August 2025, a purchase that followed a year-long process of securing initial zoning approvals and coordinating river access with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, according to Chicago Agent Magazine.
Foundation permits for the original 35 townhomes were issued in August 2025, with per-unit permit valuations for the building clusters ranging between $57,866 and $66,675, according to a report from the same outlet that broke the expansion news. Those for-sale townhomes have been listed between $1.2 million and $2 million, with some extra-wide floorplans stretching to 4,700 square feet of combined indoor and outdoor space, per data from Redfin. The new expansion will also include three affordable units, though no construction timeline has been announced, even as Chicago YIMBY reports work on the expansion is likely to begin soon.
Neighbor to a Major Public Housing Overhaul
RiverWard sits next to the historic 32-acre Julia C. Lathrop Homes campus, where the Chicago City Council and Chicago Housing Authority approved a $203 million Phase 1C package in April to rehabilitate seven historic 1930s buildings and add 309 mixed-income units, as CBS News reported at the time — a project Hoodline covered in our own look at the Lathrop turnaround. Together, the two projects are converting a formerly vacant industrial corridor along the river into a mix of luxury for-sale housing and renovated public housing within blocks of each other.
During the initial Phase 1 approvals in 2025, ZSD Corp satisfied the city's Affordable Requirements Ordinance by committing to build four-bedroom affordable units off-site, a few blocks away within 32nd Ward Alderman Scott Waguespack's ward, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. ZSD Corp is also currently building a nine-story, 149-unit rental tower at 310 W. Huron St. in River North, which received its top-floor building permits in December, a project Hoodline reported on in January.
For now, RiverWard's expansion still needs sign-off from the City Council Committee on Zoning and the full City Council before construction can formally begin, following the path laid out by Chicago Construction News. Once cleared, the 14 new townhomes will complete the transformation of a site that sat vacant for years along one of the city's most closely watched riverfront corridors.
