Will new development return bloom to Roseland’s Michigan Avenue?

If there's a Chicago retail corridor that deserves a proper reversal of fortune — a "glow up," in the current parlance — it's Michigan Avenue in the Roseland neighborhood.

For most of the 20th century, Michigan Avenue between 115th and 107th streets was a vibrant mile of retail that was magnificent in its own right, with department stores, banks, car dealerships, housing — virtually everything.

But for the last 40 or so years, Michigan has been a rough-looking strip plagued by vacancies, run-down buildings and occasional fires such as the big February blaze that claimed a furniture business, or the 2019 three-alarm conflagration that destroyed the former Gately's department store at 112th Street.

The street deserves better. And so do the residents of Roseland and the Far South Side.

But perhaps there are better days ahead for the street locals called the Avenue.

Last month, the city picked two developer finalists who'll vie to build a $40 million to $50 million market rate residential rental and retail complex on a 6-acre vacant lot on the southwest corner of 115th Street and Michigan Avenue.

The development will bring put some very necessary density and commercial activity to the near-desolate intersection — and to Roseland itself. The community's population has dropped from 64,000 in 1970 to about 38,000 today.

And once the Red Line extension gets built, the development and its two planned subsequent phases would be just footsteps from the Michigan Avenue stop.

But if completed as planned and not scaled back because of drama at City Hall, or the economic recklessness coming out of Washington, the new building would be the most expensive and ambitious single project Roseland's Michigan Avenue has seen since non-Native settlers started building homes and stores on the street 170 years ago.

Make 115th and Michigan inviting again

The two competing projects are Mosaic on Michigan, developed by The Michaels Organization and P3 Markets, and 1Fifteen at Michigan Station, built by Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives, and the Far South Chicago Community Development Corp.

Both concepts are long, horizontal midrise buildings with retail and community space on the ground floor and rental apartments stacked above. The five-story Mosaic would have 46 residences. The four-story 1Fifteen features 58 units.

Each team brings some architectural firepower to project — a very welcome thing, particularly in a disinvested neighborhood.

The Mosaic design team includes Studio Gang — a firm led by the celebrated Chicago architect and MacArthur fellow Jeanne Gang. Mosaic also includes the respected Brook Architecture, helmed by RaMona Westbrook, and landscape architect Ernest Wong's Site Design Group, designers of Ping Tom Park in Chinatown.

1Fifteen's architects are the Chicago office of architectural giant Gensler, and Beehyyve, a South Side firm tasked with turning an old Leon's Bar-B-Que into a business hub called The Re-Up on 59th and Racine for the community group Resident Association of Greater Englewood.

Renderings depict Mosaic as bright and colorful with a cleverly done sawtooth facade of concrete cubelike apartments.

"It's just to really make that corner inviting again," P3 Markets Managing Partner Phillip L. Beckham said of Mosaic's design approach. "We want to make it accessible and inviting."

1Fifteen's design has an undulating facade of brick —a prevalent construction material in Roseland — which, along with large rectangular apartments windows, gives the building a good read from the street.

"I think [the architects] did a wonderful job of integrating kind of a modern look but using more common and more familiar Chicago textual elements like the brick," said Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives President David Doig. "I think it's an interesting kind of mix."

An important first step

The city's Department of Planning will likely select the winning team sometime this spring, with construction starting early next year.

The winning project faces a slate of city approvals, of course, and no doubt there will be the developer's customary ask for city subsidy. Mosaic's total price tag is $39 million, while 1Fifteen would come in at $48 million.

Looming above all this is the construction of the $5.7 billion Red Line extension that's scheduled to start next year. The added service would run from 95th Street right through Roseland on its way to 130th.

Planned in the name of creating transit equity for the Far South Side, the extended line would nonetheless make its way through some of the most hollowed-out parts of the city.

What will help keep the trains full and prevent the extension from being a well-intentioned 10-figure boondoggle? Transit oriented redevelopment that brings new residents, commerce and cultural attractions to the areas around the four new stations.

The development at 115th — if done right — has the potential to be a solid first step.