After these two announcements, solar installation in Chicago will increase

The newsletter is back! I was on holiday in Asia for three weeks, including five days in Singapore — read about that here.

There are a couple of site updates this week before the regular neighborhood news:

1. Subscribing and unsubscribing from Address Snapshot notifications now works correctly. For a while you could subscribe but not unsubscribe. These notifications send you an email when there’s a new building permit, violation, business licenses, or violation court date for any Chicago address. Manage your notifications on your profile.
2. We are testing an upgrade to Property Finder that several members have asked for. Property Finder is a map that finds potentially developable land using open data sets that the commercial websites don’t have. Test it and tell us what you think.

Neighborhood news

• All City of Chicago and sister agency buildings — excluding the CTA — will be powered by renewable energy by 2025. (WTTW)
• Cook County is using $1.2 million in federal funds to analyze the suitability for 20 sites to host community solar power.
• Large vacant site in Pilsen/Heart of Chicago will soon have 34 townhomes, across from upcoming El Paseo trail. Our zoning change monitoring, a service for Pro members, caught this for Crain’s.
• A small office building on Avondale Ave. at Addison St. has a proposal to repurpose it as 14 apartments (with 14 car parking spaces, despite being one block from the Addison Blue Line station).
• Marz Community Brewing (related to Maria’s and Kimski’s in Bridgeport) plans to open a taproom near Bubbly Creek, behind the ComEd training facility on 35th St (in the McKinley Park community area). It will be designed by Norsman Architects, who also designed Kimski’s. (Eater Chicago)
• Eviction cases are much more likely to result in the landlord’s favor, according to a new analysis by the Chicago Reader.
• The downtown office vacancy rate has increased, and there are still two office towers under construction (151 N Franklin, 635 W Adams) with one more just approved (110 N Wacker).
• The Chicago Housing Authority has been trying to build mixed-income communities long before the Plan for Transformation in 200o — but is hasn’t been successful, at all. (Chicago Mag)
• City officially puts up its Goose Island fleet facility for sale, with 737 feet of Chicago River frontage; the fleet will move to the former Kennedy-King college site in Greater Grand Crossing/Englewood. (Curbed)
• The city’s first and former legislative inspector general analyzed the bad deals that the Chicago Infrastructure Trust made to make city buildings more efficient. (Project Six)