09.07.2007 Beitler, church talk high-rise at LSD end
Beitler, church talk high-rise at LSD end
September 7, 2007
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
BY DAVID ROEDER AND FRAN SPIELMAN
J. Paul Beitler, known for building downtown office towers during the boom years of the 1980s, has teamed with a North Side church to propose a 45-story residential building for the north end of Lake Shore Drive.
It would be built next to St. Andrew s Greek Orthodox Church at 5649 N. Sheridan. The site is a parking lot that the church owns.
A zoning application Beitler filed with the city said the building would contain 288 units and parking for 613 cars. The large parking set-aside indicates that some of the spaces would be available to the church.
Beitler and church officials could not be reached Thursday.
The location is in Edgewater, part of the 48th Ward represented by Ald. Mary Ann Smith. Doug Fraser, an aide to Smith, said Beitler and the church are showing the plans to community groups.
Input from those meetings will help the alderman decide whether to support a new high-rise in an area that s already densely populated, Fraser said.
In Chicago, a local alderman s opposition to a zoning change usually kills the deal.
The church s lot is where Lake Shore Drive ends at Hollywood. It uses the property each year in July for a Greek festival.
Beitler is president of Beitler Real Estate Corp., which has attracted retail tenants as part of a makeover of Metra s Millennium Station on Michigan Avenue. But Beitler has struggled in recent years in attempts to build downtown high-rises.
His most recent project was the 37-story Citadel Center at 131 S. Dearborn, completed in 2003 in a partnership with Prime Group Realty Trust.
Beitler has shopped around plans for a tower containing digital transmission equipment for the TV stations, but it has not drawn support.
