Construction Begins This Week at Diplomat Hotel

Construction is slated to begin this week at Lake View’s Diplomat Hotel, a single-room occupancy housing facility closed two years ago after a multitude of building violations.

Officials with the Hawthorne Neighbors Association discussed the building’s transformation into a more modern, updated SRO facility during their Nov. 27 meeting. The group’s treasurer Lee Berenbaum said there will be about a year of construction before it's completed.

“Construction work is going to be beginning sometime next week,” Berenbaum said. “The scaffolding that’s currently there is going to disappear and other barriers will be put up. The sidewalk will jut into the street and be blocked off by those big cement barriers.”

A construction worker at the site at 3208 N. Sheffield Ave. told Patch that his team recently removed the existing scaffolding in front of the Diplomat. He said they would erect new scaffolding this week.

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Construction comes after the city acquired the 85-year-old hotel in 2010 after a series building code violations. Ald. Tom Tunney’s (44th) Chief of Staff Bennett Lawson said the property was sold for only a dollar to ensure the vacant building with a sordid past was developed as quickly as possible.

“The Diplomat Hotel here on Sheffield just north of Belmont was a residence hotel, but we had a lot of issues with crime, drugs and prostitution,” Lawson said. “The building itself became unsafe to the point where the city vacated it. The owner transferred it to the city in lieu of millions in fines that he had accumulated. We put a request for proposals for development out, and now Threshold, which is a mental health services provider is going to do 51 units of supportive housing there.”

Joined by Brinshore Development LLC, Thresholds is planning to open the building to at-risk individuals with mental illness. Seven developers made proposals for the site before the city selected this plan. The $13.1 million rehabilitation of the Diplomat is slated to begin this year and will be completed in the winter of 2013.

“The Diplomat Hotel here on Sheffield just north of Belmont was a residence hotel, but we had a lot of issues with crime, drugs and prostitution.”

Along with selling the land for $1, additional city support will provide roughly $10.7 million in federal low-income housing tax credits and Illinois Affordable Housing tax credits, among others.

“Through this public-private partnership, the building will provide an affordable and secure place for residents to establish a foundation for their futures,” Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in a statement.

The finished building will have a rooftop garden and 1,800-square-feet of retail space, anchored by UrbanMeadows, a flower shop that will employ up to 15 of the building’s residents. UrbanMeadows is Chicago’s only nonprofit florist currently operating in the Loop.

More importantly, the building will be a space for people with mental illnesses to grow. Thresholds will provide resources such as a six-person case management team, around-the-clock clinical services, job training and socialization programs. The social service agency services more than 6,000 Chicagoans annually.

The newly developed building will have other sustainable building features, in addition to the green roof. Between solar thermal hot water and energy efficient systems and appliances, it will garner three stars with the Chicago Green Homes Program.

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