Edgewater Synagogue Redevelopment Reduces Building Count In Latest Proposal

EDGEWATER — Plans to redevelop a lakefront synagogue campus in Edgewater have again been amended, with the latest proposal dropping one building after feedback from neighbors.

Developer Fern Hill on Wednesday released its third proposal for the redevelopment of Emanuel Congregation, 5959 N. Sheridan Road, and a property across the street into housing and a new home for the congregation. Fern Hill is now proposing to replace the synagogue campus with two buildings — down from three in a previous proposal — while building another apartment building at the lot across the street.

The new proposal includes a 25-story building and an adjacent 12-story building on the east side of Sheridan Road and a five-story building on the west side of Sheridan Road.

After incorporating feedback from neighbors, the developers eliminated plans for a north tower — the building closest to the neighboring Malibu East Condominium — and shifted those units to other parts of the site.

“We think this pulls down that shadow impact to the north quite a bit,” said Jacob Wahler, a principal at Eckenoff Saunders, the architecture firm working with Fern Hill on the project.

Plans for the apartment building on the west side of Sheridan Road have remained largely the same.

The development would include about 603 rental units, Fern Hill’s founder and managing principal, Nick Anderson, said at Wednesday’s community meeting. About half will be one-bedroom apartments, with the remaining units split between studios and two- and three-bedrooms.

Under the city’s Affordable Requirements Ordinance, 20 percent of the development’s units would be affordable at 60 percent of the area median income if the site receives a zoning change.

The 12-story building, which would abut the lakefront, would include a new home for Emanuel Congregation and a health club or “community hub,” which may add a basketball court, an indoor pool, tennis courts, workspaces and a cafe or restaurant. Renderings also show a new pedestrian walkway that cuts between the buildings and links Sheridan Road to the lakefront, a feature that was included in an earlier proposal.

“The community hub allows us to open up this site and these amenities to more than just the synagogue members and the people that live in the project,” Anderson said. “We want the broader community to enjoy these amenities.”

The building would have a total of 250 parking spaces, with 50 of them reserved for the synagogue.

The latest development proposal brings the development’s total building count to three, down from a plan with four buildings pitched in the spring. At a February community meeting, the development team put forth a proposal that included two buildings: a 12-story, U-shaped complex with a new synagogue and commercial space on the ground floor and housing above, and a five-story apartment building across the street at 5948 N. Sheridan Road.

Under the new design, two existing curb cuts on Sheridan Road would be vacated, and all traffic would be routed through the Thorndale Avenue intersection, the development team said.

The development has divided neighbors. Edgewater Residents for Responsible Development, which is fighting the rezoning of a nearby stretch of Broadway, has argued the development could violate’s city lakefront protection statues and has called on the Park District to buy the property.

Some neighbors have welcomed the proposal, believing the project will bring more housing to the neighborhood.

“We need more housing where people want to live, where we don’t need to drive,” neighbor Maiko Lehman said at the community meeting. “This is the perfect location for more housing. … This perfectly fits the character of the neighborhood as it exists.”

This project arose from Emanuel Congregation’s desire to take advantage of its lakefront setting and adjust the synagogue’s size for its current congregation, its leaders previously told Block Club. 

Emanuel Congregation’s existing synagogue opened in 1955, when officials were considering having DuSable Lake Shore Drive continue north past its current end point of Hollywood Avenue and into the north suburbs. That would’ve partitioned the synagogue from Lake Michigan.

The current synagogue was designed with the assumption that there would be a highway in its backyard. The entire east side of the building is soundproofed and doesn’t have windows or views of Lake Michigan, Andrew Degenholtz, a member of Emanuel Congregation’s executive committee, previously said.

But only a few years after the synagogue opened, officials decided against extending the drive to the suburbs and ended the highway at Hollywood Avenue. The synagogue also neighbors residential high-rises along Sheridan Road, which were not there when the campus was built.

The synagogue’s leaders announced plans to build a new home last year.

No formal zoning application has been filed. If Ald. Leni Manaa-Hoppenworth (48th) were to greenlight the project, it would need to go through review by the Chicago Plan Commission, the City Council’s zoning committee and a final vote by the full council.

The 48th ward office is accepting feedback at the48thward.org/zoning until July 9.

Madison Savedra contributed reporting.