[CPEO-MEF] Ft. Sheridan redevelopment

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

Family-owned Red Seal Homes never shies away from challenge

By Edward Welsch 
Medill News Service/Chicago Daily Herald
February 16, 2005 

Turning cornfields into tract housing is pretty easy. Just ask any large
real estate development company.

It's harder to build in an area already disfigured by design mistakes,
sprawl and environmental disasters. Of the companies that try, not all
know how to cope with local residents and government agencies that may
resist change.

...

Built in the 1880s, Fort Sheridan was a military post designed to quell
the labor upheavals of the period. When the base closed in 1993,
developers attracted to the huge, potentially lucrative lakefront
property were put off by the burden of preserving the 90 historical
buildings and cleaning up a landfill that marred the property.

In 1995, Red Seal rose to the challenge in a partnership with three
Chicago-based companies - Mesirow Stein Real Estate, LR Development and
Project Management Advisors. Red Seal's portion of the partnership was
to develop 176 new homes around the historic buildings.

Red Seal supervised the restoration of the landfill into a natural
meadowland and replaced 100-year-old sewers and roads. It also used the
bureaucratic wrangling skills of Fishbein and others to broker a
tax-revenue sharing agreement between the governments of Highland Park
and Highwood, which each had about half of the territory.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.dailyherald.com/business/business_story.asp?intid=38399157

-- 


Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org
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