Stylish new affordable housing improved a once hard-luck corner in Auburn Gresham

It's been almost 15 years since the corner of 79th and Halsted streets experienced a big bang, architecturally. And it wasn't a good one.

That was when a once-beautiful three-story brick-and terra cotta commercial building — rotted through by time and neglect — just up and collapsed back in 2012.

Four people were injured. And the South Side — the Auburn Gresham neighborhood in particular — got another vacant lot.

But the intersection is looking a lot better these days, courtesy of Auburn Gresham Apartments, a new $47 million affordable housing development built where the vacant 1926 retail building fell in.

Designed by Ross Barney Architects, the 60-unit complex is made up of two buidlings: One at 838 W. 79th St. and a second about a block east at 757 W. 79th St., that is essentially two structures connected by a glassy enclosed bridge.

Auburn Gresham Apartments is part of a notable come-up for that stretch of the Seven-Nine, bringing color, life — even open balconies and green space — to a corridor that had been a commercial stronghold before hitting hard times starting in the 1970s.

Other recent improvements include the 2022 conversion of a vacant furniture store at 839 E. 79th St. into a community health and education center.

"That was the town center for Auburn Gresham," architect Carol Ross Barney said of the intersection. "So [the apartment project] gave us a chance to put something new in what was the heart of Auburn Gresham."

West 79th can be a pretty tough and occasionally loud street. The temptation would be to design a complex that's either set back from the action or orients entrances and main elevations away from it.

But Auburn Gresham Apartments sidles right up 79th. The 838 building has open balconies that overlook the thoroughfare. The 737 building allows residents and passersby to walk right off the sidewalk, beneath the glass connection, and straight into green space behind the apartments.

This is a very nice touch, especially for an affordable housing project.

"It makes a good transition from the arterial street, from 79th, to the neighborhoods behind and around it," Barney said. "We divide the middle of the block up so that it just feels like you're entering a courtyard. I think those were important moves to make."

Auburn Gresham community members worked with the architect and developers to shape the buildings' size, height and look.

And in a neighborhood where few buildings are taller than three stories, Auburn Gresham Apartments, particularly the portion along Halsted Street is almost a skyscraper. You can clearly make out the downtown skyline from the rooftop spaces and upper floor laundry room.

To keep project costs down, there is generous use of fiber cement panel cladding. But Barney's design makes deft use of the material, most notably at one of the 737 buildings where undulating bays of windows give the skin more visual interest than it otherwise might have had.

Auburn Gresham Apartments is among the 10 projects initiated by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot under her innovative Invest South/West program. The initiative aimed to leverage $750 million in public and private capital into new mixed-use developments built along disinvested retail strips on the South and West sides.

Invest South/West projects that are under development are continuing under Mayor Brandon Johnson. But rather than finish projects he inherited, Johnson and his administration should expand Invest South/West to more sites. Auburn Gresham Apartment is part of the reason why.

The cost of doing that, however, has been frightfully expensive. Auburn Gresham Apartments for instance delivers 60 rental residences for $47 million or about $780,000 per unit.

In the Irving Park neighborhood, Jigzibik, a 45-unit $34 million affordable rental building under construction in the Irving Park neighborhood with a nicely-done design shaped by the city's Native American leaders and community members — not an Invest South/West project, however — pencils in at just over a $750,000 per domicile.

You can buy a house (or two) with that kind of money.

Chicago taxpayers don't pay the entirety of these costs. Still, at those prices, plus the months if not years that it takes a developer to amass the capital stack needed to get one of these endeavors through the city approval processes — the old "time equals money" adage applies here — you can see one of the reasons why there is an affordable rental backlog in Chicago.

Former Chicago Department of Housing Commissioner Marisa Novara, vice president of Community Impact at The Chicago Community Trust, said the city would do well to revisit ordinances, practices and policies that help drive up the cost of affordable housing. She also said building larger buildings could be helpful as well.

"I think part of the lesson is you've got to work through the issues to get a comfort level ... on the appropriate amount of density," she said.

Not a bad idea. The very fine, four-year-old, all-affordable Lucy Gonzalez Parsons Apartments, at 2614 N. Emmett St., in Logan Square came in at about $400,000 per residence. But the building has 100 units.

It's time to get this sorted out. Especially projects like Auburn Gresham Apartments are leagues above the dreary, least-common-denominator affordable housing we used to get.

And good design costs. But doesn't have to always cost so much.