Chicago Council Approves Lathrop Homes Redevelopment Funding

The Chicago City Council voted Wednesday to approve a major financing package for Phase 1C of the Lathrop Homes redevelopment, unlocking construction on the long-vacant southern portion of the Lincoln Park site that’s sat shuttered for years.

Phase 1C calls for 309 mixed-income housing units across seven rehabilitated buildings plus a new five-story structure south of Diversey Parkway. The historic powerhouse building on site will also be restored. Work is expected to finish in the third quarter of 2028.

The southern stretch of Lathrop, bounded by Diversey Avenue and Hoyne Avenue, has been fenced off with Boarded-up structures for years. It became one of Lincoln Park’s most visible reminders of a stalled public housing overhaul, a stretch of empty buildings while financing gaps and rising construction costs kept any real progress from happening.

Resident Nivea Sandoval put it plainly during public comment at the city’s Committee on Finance on Monday. “This has been so long,” said Sandoval. “We need those houses.”

She wasn’t alone in that feeling. Residents who’d been displaced when the Chicago Housing Authority began transforming the site have been waiting on word about a path back. Now they’ve got one, at least on paper, and the construction clock is running.

Anna Booth, a financial planning analyst with the Department of Housing, laid out the full financing picture for alderpeople during the Monday Committee on Finance session. It’s a stacked structure: up to $100 million in city-issued multifamily housing revenue bonds, a $40 million tax increment financing agreement tied to the Diversey/Chicago River TIF district, and a 43-year interest-free loan of $41 million from the Chicago Housing Authority. Tax credit financing from multiple streams is expected to pull in tens of millions more in private equity. That’s city, state, and private money all finally pointed the same direction.

The Chicago Housing Authority selected developers Related Midwest and Bickerdike Redevelopment Corporation back in 2010 to lead the full Lathrop redevelopment. Getting to Phase 1C has taken more than 15 years, through shifting funding environments, stalled timelines, and what the 32nd Ward alderman described as a difficult road.

Ald. Scott Waguespack, whose ward covers the Lathrop site, voted for the package. “It’s been a long saga, with a lot of iterations to get here,” Waguespack said, as Block Club Chicago reported. “But this is important for the community, including residents who were moved more than a decade ago and will now have the chance to come back and make this their home again.”

That’s not a small thing. Lathrop residents who were displaced when the redevelopment process started didn’t get a timetable. They got promises. What Wednesday’s vote represents is the city finally putting real money behind those promises, with a construction timeline pointed at 2028 and a full buildout expected to stretch to 2029.

The site sits between Diversey Parkway and Hoyne Avenue in Lincoln Park, and this phase covers the southern end of it. Phase 1C is the piece that’s been hardest to fund, the part of Lathrop that’s been Boarded up the longest while negotiations over dollars dragged on.

The 2026 vote doesn’t erase the wait. It doesn’t give back the years those families spent in limbo since the Chicago Housing Authority began the transformation process in 2010. What it does is set a construction start date for this summer, with a target finish in 2028 and the broader redevelopment running through 2029.

For Sandoval and the other residents who showed up Monday to the Committee on Finance hearing, that’s what they came to hear. The Council voted. Construction is next.