Evanston's Tower - It's A Go.

Monday night (3/23/09) the Evanston City Council approved the plans for a controversial 35-story tower to be built at the site where Sherman and Orrington Avenues intersect Davis St. It will huge by local standards and this is a much smaller version than originally proposed two years ago.

My concern is that Evanston already has a number of condo projects stalled - the Eastwood, the Main Street development, the Sienna buildings 3 and 4 (now planned as a hotel and rental building), Grand Bend on Green Bay Road and the Kedzie. Also, 807 Sherman (Sherman Plaza) has a number of properties coming on the secondary market as the first buyers begin to sell. In an era of declining prices, few buyers who can secure financing and a real estate market already saturated with inventory, why would anyone want to build more condos? Oh yeah, we also have significant OVER-CAPACITY in the condo market. A quick search of the multiple listing service shows that there are over 550 attached, single family units available.

This is going to be a field day for buyers (give me a call, I'd love to work with you.) They only have to look at the Optima project at Orchard Woods - still mostly empty -where buyers can get almost any upgrade they want and still command significant price reductions. Orchard Woods is a really nice building, Optima has figured out how to build these places. But, the building is still mostly empty because the brutal reality is that there are fewer buyers than units available.

Despite the public outcry, the City Elders have approved the plan. The skyline of Evanston (Chicago North?) will change dramatically.

Here's a link to the planned building documents at City of Evanston.

Here's the link to the story and another at Pioneer Press.

DS