click on photo for additional images:

click here for Chicago Tribune Opinion Column

UNITED STATES STEEL (USX) SOUTH WORKS PROPERTY / Chicago, Illinois / Fall 1996

Andrews University 5^th Year Thesis Studio

This exercise was prompted by the April 1992 closing of the US Steel Company's South Works manufacturing plant, which occupied nearly 600 acres of lakefront land on Chicago's southeast side. For nearly four years, US Steel's real estate department had been clearing the site for future development; and numerous community group, editorial, and governmental voices were calling for the development of the South Works site as a new mixed-use neighborhood that takes advantage of the site's unique history and location. This project represents a formal design proposal for just such development on the U.S. Steel property, for some 15,000 new residents. It was premised on the assumptions that such development should benefit both its immediate neighborhoods and the city of Chicago at large; and that it was desirable for all concerned parties to explore the highest and best use of this property.

The site consists of approximately 575 acres, and extends roughly from 79th Street on the north, to the mouth of the Calumet River on the south (just less than one and one-half miles in length); and from Lake Michigan on the east, to Brandon Street north of 83rd Street and Green Bay Street and Avenue O south of 83rd Street on the west (a little more than one-half mile in width). The site is flat, and has an east-west slip almost a half-mile long that divides it approximately in half. Most of the old steel plant buildings have been demolished; and we assumed that neither buildings nor rail tracks would remain on the site (though we proposed to retain the existing Piranesi-like iron ore bins and adapt them for commercial and residential use). South Shore Drive is the major vehicular connector from the site to downtown Chicago, and begins near the far northwest corner of the site. The Illinois Central Railroad is the major commuter connection to downtown; and has stations just west of the site at 79th, 83rd, 87th, and 91st streets. Connections to major expressways are poor; the closest is at 75th and Stoney Island, and Indianapolis near 111th, both about one to one and one-half miles from the site.

The design model proposed for this project was "traditional Chicago neighborhood urban," improved: low-rise, high-density, mixed-use (i.e., a variety of residential, commercial, light industrial, retail, institutional, and recreational uses), pedestrian-friendly, and more-or-less hierarchically ordered, in a network of streets and blocks. Within the parameters afforded by this basic formal model were three other primary concerns:

1) the development of the lakefront in the context of Chicago’s historic public lakefront use;

2) the integration of the US Steel property into the adjacent neighborhood fabric of streets and blocks; and

3) the integration into the overall site design of one or more of several types of commercial and industrial developments desired by the City of Chicago: e.g., office buildings, hotels, light industry, etc.