The City of Chicago has selected Austin United Alliance’s proposal for the redevelopment of the Austin-Laramie State Bank site, which includes the historic Art Deco Laramie State Bank.
The bank building was originally built in 1929 and has an elaborate terra cotta facade and is considered an example of Art Deco ornamentation in Chicago. The building has sat vacant for nearly a decade.
The design proposes restoring the bank building to house a bank, a cafe, and the Chicago Blues Museum on the first floor and a business incubator on the second floor. The remaining vacant lots will be turned into a six-story, 76-unit mixed-income apartment building with a courtyard open to the public. The apartment building will house 53 tenants who earn 60% of the area median income. The remaining 23 units will be rented at market rate.
The project is part of INVEST South/WEst, a community improvement initiative to invest more than &750 million in public funding to reactivate 12 key commercial corridors in Chicago’s South and West sides.
Related Stories
| Aug 11, 2010
CityCenter Takes Experience Design To New Heights
It's early June, in Las Vegas, which means it's very hot, and I am coming to the end of a hardhat tour of the $9.2 billion CityCenter development, a tour that began in the air-conditioned comfort of the project's immense sales center just off the famed Las Vegas Strip and ended on a rooftop overlooking the largest privately funded development in the U.
| Aug 11, 2010
Gold Award: Westin Book Cadillac Hotel & Condominiums Detroit, Mich.
“From eyesore to icon.” That's how Reconstruction Awards judge K. Nam Shiu so concisely described the restoration effort that turned the decimated Book Cadillac Hotel into a modern hotel and condo development. The tallest hotel in the world when it opened in 1924, the 32-story Renaissance Revival structure was revered as a jewel in the then-bustling Motor City.
| Aug 11, 2010
Silver Award: Palmer House Hilton Hotel & Shops Chicago, Ill.
Chicago's Palmer House Hilton holds the record for the longest continuously operated hotel in North America. It was originally built in 1871 by Potter Palmer, one of America's first millionaire developers. When it was rebuilt after the Great Chicago Fire it became the first hotel in the U.S. to put a telephone in every room.
| Aug 11, 2010
Gulf Coast Hotel's Stormy Road to Recovery
After his initial tour of the dilapidated 1850s-era Battle House Hotel, Ron Blount, construction manager with Retirement Systems of Alabama, said to his boss: “You need a priest more than you need a contractor.” Those words were more prescient to RSA's restoration of the historic Mobile landmark than he could have known at the time.
| Aug 11, 2010
Lifestyle Hotel Trends Around the World
When the Rocco Forte Collection opens the Verdura Golf & Spa Resort in Sicily in early 2009, the 200-room luxury property will be one of the world's newest lifestyle hotels. Lifestyle hotels cater to guests seeking a heightened travel experience, which they deliver by offering distinctive—some would say avant-garde, or even outrageous—architecture, room design, amenities, and en...
