Four vacant lots on the 300 block of East 56th Street in Washington Park are slated for new life, after a local developer using an LLC secured permits to build four two-unit residences — eight new homes in all — on parcels that have sat empty since 2009. Each of the two-story-plus-basement buildings is expected to cost $250,000, according to the permits, which cleared city review in just 17 days after applications were filed on August 24.
The addresses — 346, 350, 352 and 356 East 56th Street — sit less than a block from the western edge of Washington Park itself, and less than two blocks from the Garfield Green Line elevated platform, according to Chicago YIMBY, which reported the permits. Route 3 and Route 55 bus stops are also within two-block walks of the new units, and the Garfield Red Line platform is about a mile west at the Dan Ryan Expressway, with the Route 55 bus connecting riders there as well.
Monica Chadha is listed as architect of record on the permits, working through Civic Projects Architecture, a firm based on Chicago's South Side that specializes in social-impact design and served on the museum exhibition design team for the Obama Presidential Center in nearby Jackson Park, according to Civic Projects Architecture. Crown Construction Company, based in Oak Lawn, is the general contractor on the project, the outlet's report notes. The permitted buildings will include detached two-car garages, though the filings do not specify whether the units will ultimately be for-sale condos or rental apartments, whether each above-ground floor will hold a single unit, whether basement levels will be folded into duplex-down floor plans, or whether all four buildings will go up simultaneously.
Empty Lots Still Line the Block
Directly across the street sit five or six more empty lots, and the Chicago Data Portal shows no pending permits for that side of the block yet, per the same account. That leaves open whether the East 56th Street building spree will keep expanding, a question that echoes a similar pattern nearby, where Hoodline previously reported that Richton Park-based builder Kolossal Group won its fourth three-flat permit on a single block of South Prairie Avenue in March, a $500,000 project near the same Garfield Green Line corridor.
The four vacant parcels being built on now had sat idle for roughly 17 years, part of a wider pattern that housing researchers have tracked across Chicago's South and West Sides. Research from DePaul University's Institute for Housing Studies found the city lost nearly 12,000 housing units in two-to-four unit buildings between 2013 and 2019, with lower-cost neighborhoods losing properties mainly to demolition and vacant lots, according to the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership. Two-to-four unit buildings account for a quarter of Chicago's housing units and have historically provided unsubsidized affordable rental units, the group notes.
City and State Push to Rebuild Missing Middle Housing
City and state policy have both moved to make projects like the East 56th Street two-flats easier to build. In July 2022, the Chicago City Council passed the Connected Communities Ordinance, restricting conversions of two-to-four unit residential properties into single-family homes near transit corridors without specific zoning relief, a measure developed with Elevated Chicago after data showed rapid losses of multi-unit buildings near transit lines. More recently, the Chicago Department of Planning and Development made 486 city-owned properties available starting October 1, including vacant city buildings in Washington Park, according to the Chicago Department of Planning and Development.
At the state level, Governor JB Pritzker proposed the Building Up Illinois Developments plan in February, aiming to legalize duplexes, triplexes and four-flats by right on standard residential lots to address a statewide shortage of 142,000 housing units, per Chicago Agent Magazine. A University of Illinois study cited in that report estimated the state needs more than 225,000 new housing units over five years to keep pace with demand. Federal policy has moved in a similar direction: the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, enacted in July, established $200 million in annual competitive grants for municipalities that modernize zoning and speed up permitting, and was described as the first comprehensive federal housing legislation in decades.
A Neighborhood in the Midst of Investment
The East 56th Street permits land amid a broader wave of public and private investment in Washington Park. Earlier this month, Hoodline reported that Chicago officials proposed a $10.5 million Deeply Rooted Center for Black Dance grant for a $20.9 million cultural project built on two city-owned lots sold for $1 each, also within walking distance of the Garfield Red and Green Line stations. In April, Mayor Brandon Johnson and the Chicago Department of Housing announced a $300 million initiative aimed at creating or preserving 1,223 affordable rental homes across 15 projects citywide, underscoring the scale of the city's overall housing push.
Washington Park lies across from the 20th Ward, where Alderman Jeanette Taylor has promoted affordable-housing and anti-displacement positions, according to South Side Weekly. Whether the eight new units on East 56th Street end up as market-rate sales or rentals, and whether the empty lots across the street eventually see permits of their own, remains unresolved for now.
