WOODLAWN — An affordable apartment tower near the Obama Presidential Center site will soon receive a “long overdue” rehab, and residents will relocate as their units are renovated, the building’s owner said.
The Island Terrace high-rise, 6430 S. Stony Island Ave. in Woodlawn, will get repairs to its electrical and plumbing systems, windows, roof, boilers and façade.
All 240 apartments will receive kitchen, bath, flooring and other improvements, and the existing parking structure will be replaced with surface parking lots.
Preservation of Affordable Housing, a nonprofit with numerous properties in the neighborhood, bought the building in 2021 for $29.5 million and secured another $117 million to finance repairs in December. Construction is expected to take up to two years.
“While there have been repairs made over the years, there really hasn’t been a comprehensive rehab” since the property was built in 1970, said Bill Eager, the nonprofit’s senior vice president of Midwest operations. “This is long overdue, as the building’s systems are in rough shape. Almost all of those have to be replaced.”
The nonprofit aimed to make all units affordable for renters making 30-80 percent of the area median income, Eager said in 2021. As construction takes place, officials are “expanding the long-term affordability of the property” but will come up short of that goal, he said this month.
About 220 of the 240 units will have affordability restrictions, compared to 99 when Preservation of Affordable Housing took over at Island Terrace, Eager said. The remaining 20 will remain market-rate.
“Hopefully, when we’re done, it should be a much nicer place to live,” he said. “Certainly, it should be set up for better long-term operations and affordability.”
As unit repairs take place, residents will move out in stages starting in late May or early June. Tenants will be relocated two floors at a time for about eight weeks each, starting with the top floors, Eager said.
Plans are still being finalized, but officials expect to use the Jackson Park Terrace apartments — another Preservation of Affordable Housing complex a few blocks down Stony Island Avenue — to temporarily house Island Terrace residents, Eager said.
Tenants’ rent payments will be the same, while Preservation of Affordable Housing will “cover any difference” in utility costs and pay for moving expenses, he said.
If residents have any accessibility or transportation needs stemming from the move “that for whatever reason aren’t met, we’ll try to help them with that,” Eager said. But officials don’t foresee many such issues, as there’s only a short distance between the properties, he said.
“There’s no cost to any of this for the residents,” Eager said. “There’s the inconvenience of having to move for two months, which is hopefully offset by the fact that their apartments should be in much better shape when they return.”
The commitment to maintain affordable housing at Island Terrace comes as South Siders work to prevent displacement in the community ahead of the Obama Center’s planned construction in Jackson Park.
The effort led to the city’s approval of housing protections for Woodlawn in 2020 and to the introduction of a proposed South Shore housing ordinance to City Council in the fall with support from local alds. Desmon Yancy (5th) and Jeanette Taylor (20th).
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