Fitzhugh Stout, senior managing
director of the Charlotte, N.C., o;ce of
Integra Realty Resources, a real estate
valuation company, studied the e;ect of
a light rail line that opened in his area in
2007. He found properties had increased
in value from 5 percent to 73 percent
since then, and the most dramatic
increases came from changes in zoning
that permitted increased density. “Every-
where in the country, people talk about
reducing parking and getting higher den-
sity in development,” he says. “Transit
has allowed that to happen.”
Another factor critical to TOD’s growth
is Americans’ ever-increasing focus on
health. About 15 years ago, recalls Dixon,
Dr. Richard Jackson, then director of the
Centers for Disease Control’s National
Center for Environmental Health, started
talking about a link between auto depen-
dence and obesity. Today people con-
sider a walkable environment a healthier
environment. That’s a sea change, says
Dixon, from when people saw the lawns of
the suburbs and thought they translated
to a healthier life.
Community Pushes for TOD
It was local residents who clamored for
a high-density development at 1611 W.
Division in Chicago. The city passed an
ordinance in September 2013 permitting
higher density and less parking for developments near transit hubs. The 99-unit
apartment building sits atop the city’s
Blue Line “el” train stop at Division, an
intersection six bus lines traverse daily.
The project’s specs were heavily
shaped by a local community group. “It
wasn’t the developer saying, ‘We want
to build a TOD project,’” says Jamie McNally, an architect and project manager
for the project’s developer, Rob Buono.
“A community group had a master plan
before this project was created. [It]
wanted moderate to high density [and]
low parking, and the idea was to promote
pedestrian-friendly, walkable neighbor-
hoods.”
There’s no on-site or even authorized
street parking for residents. Leases
even prohibit residents from getting
street-parking passes from the city. That
hasn’t been a deterrent in leasing. Units
were fully leased when the property
opened in October 2013.
They range from 507-square-foot studios to 1,146-square-foot two-bedroom
two-bath apartments with rents ranging
from $1,495 to $3,450 per month. The
property includes a free second-floor bike
garage and a “train tracker” screen in the
lobby so residents can see where transit
vehicles are in real time. Across the street
is a station for Divvy, the city’s bike-sharing program launched in June 2013.
The property has 5,000 square feet
of commercial space and about 7,050
square feet of ground-floor retail space.
McNally says despite its growing popular-
ity, TOD doesn’t automatically translate
to a higher return for developers. “It
depends on the individual project,” says
McNally. “There are so many factors in
new construction.” While some lend-
ers have reservations about financing
projects without parking, it wasn’t the
case with this project, and that’s chang-
ing overall. “It’s partly because there’s
been a paradigm shift in urban planning
and lifestyles. Young professionals don’t
necessarily want or need a car and all the
expenses that go along with it,” he says.
Hotel? What a Great Idea!
Community input has also been critical
to a $100 million TOD in Huntington, N. Y.,
on Long Island, currently in the permitting and environmental review stage, by
Renaissance Downtowns, a developer
based in nearby Plainview, N. Y. In the
works is a 170-room hotel set to open in
spring 2017. It’ll be supplemented with a
100,000-square-foot o;ce building; two
mixed-use buildings, one with retail on
the ground level plus two stories above it
featuring 70 residential units; and a 48-
unit artists’ live-work building.
All those buildings will sit within a half-
mile of the Huntington Station rail stop,
which lands riders in Manhattan in about
an hour, taking the place of commuter
parking lots that currently exist. “Our
whole model is going to municipalities
near train stations with a lot of surface
parking that’s underutilized and replac-
ing the parking with new buildings that
include parking within the structures,”
says Sean McLean, the company’s vice
president of planning and development.
The project is being financed privately
through RXR Realty, says McLean. RXR,
which operates in New York, New Jersey,
and Connecticut, launched an “emerging
markets fund” to focus on rebuilding
downtowns in the area using input solic-
ited from community members.
To recruit local involvement, Renais-
sance Downtowns relies on “crowd-
sourced placemaking.” The company
opens an o;ce in the development zone
and sta;s it with local residents, ex-
plains McLean. Those sta;ers hold daily 1611 W. DIVISION / CHICAGO ©2015
