City Council approves $201.6 million for roads, parks and a 606 bridge at Foundry Park in Lincoln Park

The City Council approved $201.6 million in tax increment financing on September 23, 2026 for roads, parks, a riverwalk and a bridge for the Bloomingdale Trail at Foundry Park, the housing-heavy development planned for the north half of the former Lincoln Yards site in Lincoln Park. The vote came a day after the council’s Finance Committee advanced the deal on September 22.

The 31-acre site sits along the north branch of the Chicago River between Cortland Street and the river, on land that was the A. Finkl & Sons steel plant for more than a century. Developers JDL Development and Kayne Anderson Real Estate plan up to 3,737 homes there plus a hotel, offices, shops and restaurants, a project they have priced at about $3 billion, WTTW News reported. The site is in the 32nd Ward, represented by Ald. Scott Waguespack, and borders the 2nd Ward of Ald. Brian Hopkins.

The infrastructure money is the piece that lets construction start. Here is where the public dollars go, based on city records cited by WTTW and Block Club Chicago.

• About $71 million pays for new roads, sewers and utilities, including an extension of Southport Avenue south to the river as the development’s main commercial street.
• About $69 million goes to new public parks inside the development.
• About $33.5 million extends the city’s riverwalk along the site and re-naturalizes the river’s edge with plants and trees.
• About $21.5 million pays for a bridge carrying the 606’s Bloomingdale Trail over the Chicago River.
• About $7 million prepares the former industrial land for residential use.

The developers are putting in roughly $33 million of their own money on top of the TIF, bringing total infrastructure costs under the agreement to about $235 million, according to a planning department staff report cited by Block Club.

How this deal differs from Lincoln Yards

Alderpeople approved a much larger public commitment for the same land in 2019, when Sterling Bay’s Lincoln Yards plan won up to $1.3 billion in TIF support amid a bitter council fight. That project stalled during the pandemic. Sterling Bay built one building, a life sciences center at 1229 W. Concord Place that never signed a tenant, and eventually split the 53 acres, selling the north half to JDL, WTTW reported.

Waguespack, who opposed the original Lincoln Yards subsidy, backed this one. He told the Finance Committee on September 22 that the money is limited to basic infrastructure, meaning roads, sewers, parks, the riverfront and the trail bridge, and not legal fees or marketing, which he said the earlier agreement had covered, according to Block Club. The Sun-Times reported the committee passed the measure by voice vote, and that the subsidy covers a bit more than a quarter of the roughly $800 million in infrastructure the original Lincoln Yards plan called for.

Hopkins had argued earlier this year that surrounding neighborhoods were being short-changed because the agreement drops several projects from the 2019 plan, including a rebuild of the Ashland, Armitage and Elston intersection and multiple new river bridges. He told Block Club on September 23 that he now supports the deal because the transportation and planning departments committed to a study of the area’s larger infrastructure needs as plans for the southern half of the site take shape. He called it a minimum 10-year project.

What gets built first

JDL CEO Jim Letchinger told the committee the firm is still assembling financing for the first phase but expects to start construction before the end of 2026, per Block Club and the Sun-Times. The first phase is a triangle bounded by Southport Avenue, Kingsbury Street and Cortland Street, and it includes four buildings.

• A 39-story tower at Kingsbury and Cortland with offices, apartments and ground-floor retail, the tallest building in the plan.
• A boutique hotel of about 200,000 square feet, which has become a labor flashpoint.
• Two residential buildings.
• A central square between them designed to host farmers markets, winter ice skating and other events.

Plans also call for a 777-space underground parking garage, according to city records cited by WTTW. The larger site plan runs to 3,737 dwelling units across apartments, condos and a small number of townhouses and single-family homes.

Affordable housing and jobs

Because the project takes a city subsidy, Chicago’s affordable requirements ordinance applies to 20 percent of the units, or 709 homes, WTTW reported. The developers plan 95 affordable units on site and five more nearby, and will pay about $7 million into the city’s Affordable Housing Opportunity Fund to cover the rest, as the ordinance allows. The mayor’s office projects the property will generate $30.5 million in property taxes in 2031, when the first phase is scheduled to finish, and $68 million a year by 2036 when the full build-out is done, along with about 700 construction jobs a year for a decade and 2,500 permanent jobs.

The hotel drew the only organized pushback at the committee. Unite Here Local 1 asked alderpeople to hold the subsidy until the developer guaranteed union jobs at the hotel. Letchinger said he is a supporter of Chicago unions but cannot make commitments until a hotel operator is chosen, the Sun-Times reported. Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd) pressed the point, calling Chicago a union town.

What happens next

Several pieces of the larger picture are still open, and the timeline below reflects what the developers and city officials have said publicly.

1. Late 2026: JDL says first-phase construction starts once financing closes.
2. 2031: The first phase is scheduled to be complete, per the mayor’s office projection.
3. 2036: Full build-out target for the 31 acres.
4. Unscheduled: The 606 river bridge, which depends on design and permitting work the trail’s extension has not yet gone through.
5. Unknown: Plans for the southern half of the old Lincoln Yards site, which Novak Construction bought and has not announced anything for.

For anyone who wants to see the site, the closest L stop is the Armitage Brown and Purple Line station, about a 15-minute walk west along Armitage Avenue and Cortland Street. Street parking on Cortland and Kingsbury near the site is metered and thin on weekends. The Lincoln Park page has more on the neighborhood.

Have a tip about this story or another one we should cover? Send it to the editors.