News articles on CCLBA

By Sam Cholke, Curbed Chicago | January 31, 2018 (Click here for the original article) The Cook County Land Bank Authority is racing into large-scale mixed-use developments, and as its first project will take on a crumbling bank that’s loomed vacant over the Cottage Grove Green Line stop in Woodlawn for 20 years. The Washington Park National Bank, 6300 S. Cottage Grove Avenue, is the Land Bank’s chance to prove it can take on substantial developments, and Executive Director Rob Rose’s wants to go into the first project at a sprint. At a Tuesday night meeting to discuss options for the four-story building with [...]

By Craig Dellimore, CBS Chicago | November 20th, 2017 (Click here for the original article) CHICAGO (CBS) — The Cook County Land Bank Authority celebrated Monday the 200th home that’s been rehabilitated under the innovative program. Cook County Commissioner Bridget Gainer helped create the Land Bank after the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis. WBBM’s Political Editor Craig Dellimore reports. She said most people did not have the expertise or ability to buy the homes vacated during the debacle. “We built this thing called a land bank. We went into communities where homes were sitting vacant, we bought them up, cleared the titles…and then put them out on a [...]

By Dennis Rodkin, Crain's Business Chicago | November 20th, 2017  (Click here for the original article) A stylishly rehabbed Chicago Lawn bungalow is the 200th formerly derelict home revitalized through the Cook County Land Bank, officials are announcing today, as the agency hits the benchmark a few months ahead of schedule. "When we started, that goal of 200 homes seemed like a hairy, scary goal because nothing like this had been done in Chicago before," said Rob Rose, executive director of the land bank, launched by the Cook County Board in 2013 to speed up the process of turning around the county's huge inventory of [...]

By Corilyn Shropshire, Chicago Tribune | September 29th, 2017 A vacant brick bungalow on South Luella Avenue in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood requires some work — in fact, quite a bit of work. The orange kitchen, despite having a coveted island, needs updated appliances, new cabinetry and flooring. The toilet in the main floor bathroom is broken and the peach carpet smells of cats. But for a prospective homebuyer looking for a house with good bones, the home has potential. It’s just one of the 30 to 40 homes the Cook County Land Bank Authority is putting up for sale as [...]

By Rooted In Chicago, Chicago Now | August 13th, 2017   Ever notice a nice-looking house or building which has been vacant for years and no one seems to know why?  You might assume that even though the outside of the structure is attractive, surely the inside must be a wreck (busted pipes, moldy walls, nests of raccoons and possums swapping stories about the good old days, etc).  Surprisingly, this is often not the case.  If structure has been winterized and properly sealed up to keep out the elements, it can sometimes sit vacant for years while experiencing only an insignificant amount of interior damage. [...]

By Brett Widness, Urban Land Institute | August 9th, 2017   For more than a decade, the brick “two-flat” on the 900 block of North Drake Avenue on Chicago’s West Side had been vacant. During the housing boom, a contractor began converting the building, a two-story detached home with two separate apartments and a basement, into a three-unit condominium, with plans to develop the basement level into a garden unit. But the job was never finished, the property was abandoned, and the condo units fell into foreclosure. Neighbors said the property became a hangout for heroin addicts, evidenced by the [...]

By Gail MarksJarvis, Chicago Tribune | July 21st, 2017   A decade after the housing crash destroyed the American Dream for millions of homeowners, black homeownership rates have dropped to levels not seen since the 1960s, hobbling African-Americans' efforts to build their wealth. Nationally, only 42.2 percent of blacks owned homes in 2016, compared with 71.9 percent of whites, according to a new report by Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. And in Chicago, the gap between black and white homeownership rates is even more extreme. Only 38.9 percent of African-Americans owned homes in the Chicago area in 2015, compared with [...]

By Corilyn Shropshire, Chicago Tribune | February 2nd, 2017 Aiming to curb Chicago's vacant lot epidemic, the Cook County Land Bank Authority has made more than 4,000 once tax-delinquent vacant lots available for sale. The 4,437 properties are available in 22 community areas, primarily on Chicago's West and South sides and in 12 west and south suburbs, for $3,000 to $5,000. Many of the lots have sat vacant for a decade or more, and are among 8,000 tax-delinquent properties the land bank aims to sell to local developers, not-for-profits, block clubs and community organizations to help revive neighborhoods hit by the [...]

By Dennis Rodkin, Crain's Chicago Business | January 30th, 2017 More than 4,400 vacant lots in Chicago and the suburbs are going up for sale in an effort to attract development to areas that need it. With the new offering of vacant lots to be announced today, "we're trying to speed up the process of empty land being put back to use," said Bridget Gainer, a Cook County commissioner who chairs the four-year-old Cook County Land Bank. Until now, the land bank had been selling only vacant homes, to rehabbers or families who fix them up for their own use. [...]

Chicago Tribune Editorial Board | December 23rd, 2016 Outsiders like to define Chicago with convenient, obvious imagery. Obama and Capone. The Cubs and Ditka. The Daleys and the Blues Brothers. We know, however, what the genome of our city is. Belmont Cragin and Bronzeville. Avondale and Avalon Park. Roscoe Village and Roseland. The patchwork of bungalows, graystones and two-flats, its schools and corner grocery stores, gives the city its defining contours. So, to fix a Chicago that's deteriorating in some places and emptying out in others, you've got to fix its neighborhoods. Block by block, house by house. That's how you [...]