A strategic plan creating a new downtown for North Chicago on currently vacant land connected to its Sheridan Road business district, and significantly changing the community’s housing mix in the next eight years, is designed to change the fabric of the community.
At age 69, North Chicago Mayor Leon Rockingham Jr. grew up in the city, and has served nearly 20 years as its chief executive and 12 more as an alderman. He said he has seen a lot, and believes the plan can change the vibe of his city.
“As we look at the city of North Chicago, we are looking to rejuvenate the city itself with business development, more family homes and better infrastructure making it a place with a more friendly atmosphere,” Rockingham said. “This will be transformative.”
Completed with the help of the Lakota Group as consultants and the city’s business, governmental and not-for-profit partners, the 2024 North Chicago Comprehensive Plan is also an award winner.
The Illinois Chapter of the American Planning Association gave the 2024 North Chicago Comprehensive Plan the Daniel Burnham Award on Sept. 25 in Champaign for its community outreach and strategy.
With a small group of offices and shops along Sheridan Road between 18th Street and Audry Nixon Boulevard., Greg Jackson, Rockingham’s chief of staff, said a centerpiece of the plan is creating a large, walkable downtown on the 40-acre Sheridan Crossing property to the south.
“We want to have a walkable downtown,” Jackson said. “The anchor of downtown is what Sheridan Crossing truly will be. It will connect to the 18th Street area.”
Approximately two-thirds of North Chicago’s residents are renters and a third are homeowners. Jackson said in the next eight years, the plan suggests methods to reverse that statistic with changes to the current housing stock creating more privately owned homes.
“When you have homeowners, you have people who have planted roots,” he said.
In giving North Chicago the award, the association said in a news release that the community outreach involved in getting ideas from a variety of segments of the community, and writing the plan in both English and Spanish were some of the impressive parts of the effort.
“There is much to accomplish in North Chicago, but the plan doesn’t flinch in the wake of what the community needs to do,” the association said.
Completed a few months ago, Jackson said the plan was submitted to the association and then reviewed by a jury of experts to determine the winner.
Just as the association credited North Chicago’s inclusion of a variety of community partners, Rockingham said companies like Abbott and AbbVie were included, as well as North Chicago School District 187, the Foss Park District, Rosalind Franklin University and others.
Developing Sheridan Crossing on the northwest corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and Sheridan Road is a longtime goal of the city. The site of demolished factories leaving contaminated soil, Rockingham said recently received federal funding makes the cleanup a reality.
“Now we have the opportunity to talk to developers and hear their ideas,” he said.
Jackson said the cleanup will start this spring and will be done by early fall of next year. Once it is done, the city will seek development proposals.
Taylor Wegrzyn, the city’s director of economic and community development, said the new downtown will contain multi-use buildings with commercial uses like retail stores or restaurants on the ground level and residences on the upper floors.
“These will be modern buildings with ample parking,” Wegrzyn said. “People who live there will be able to walk to the stores and restaurants. There will be good pedestrian flow.”
Among the other ideas for the downtown area are coffee shops, a microbrewery and a hotel. Jackson said with the property located near the entrance to Naval Station Great Lakes, the area will accommodate visitors traveling to the area for recruit graduation. Collaboration is already in the works,
“The Navy moved graduations to Thursday so the families have a longer time to hang out,” Jackson said. “This will give them a place to spend some of their time here.”
Another pillar of the plan is making a major change in the number of homeowners in North Chicago, and creating new or renovated construction to accommodate growing families ready to move from a first home to a larger place.
“Someone will come to work for AbbVie and get a starter home here,” Jackson said. “Then they start a family and want a three- or four-bedroom home. We don’t have as many of those, so they go somewhere else.
Working with partners to develop affordable housing people can purchase is another way Jackson said North Chicago hopes to make more of its residents homeowners, with fewer renters. Currently Navy housing, Halsey Village is another potential source of larger family homes.
