FitzGerald has been hard at work this month on several new commissions.
FitzGerald Associates Architects has designed a program to convert the three-story, 500’ long heavy timber industrial building at 26th& Kostner on the west edge of Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood into The Storkline, a 148-unit loft apartment community.
Previously the Storkline Furniture company, one of the largest manufacturers of infant and child furniture, the 218,000 square foot building sat vacant for several years before Mercy Housing Lakefront began an ambitious program to convert the building into 148 loft apartments in one-, two-, three-, and four-bedroom formats to provide high quality, affordable housing and services to support working or retired individuals and their families.
The design takes advantage of a long 400’ courtyard to create a passive landscaped area that will be visible from half of the residences as well as the building’s large lobby and amenity spaces. At the west end of the building, a modern glass and steel lobby will stand as a welcoming area for guests and residents to enter the property and access amenities. On-site security and management spaces will be accommodated nearby, as well as a community room with kitchen, a fitness room, and a computer lab. Outside, the property will include terraced green spaces, a play lot, and 1:1 surface parking for guests and residents.
FitzGerald is working to maintain the historic character and integrity of the building; significant efforts are planned to maintain and restore the original brick and terra cotta facades, and the building will be placed on the National Register of Historic Places. In pursuit of a 3-Star rating from the Chicago Green Homes program, FitzGerald has implemented a system of insulating the brick walls from the inside, which will allow for a more sustainable building envelope than a typical historic loft conversion.
The 8,000 square foot build out of an existing retail space in Orland Park is targeted to children aged six months to ten years old, and includes party rooms, retail area, reception and waiting spaces, and a pool with various engagement areas. This is the fourth Bear Paddle Swim Club designed for The Hemisphere Group, and FitzGerald is working closely with Hemisphere to expand and adapt the plan to even more markets.
FitzGerald is providing architectural services for the adaptive reuse of—and addition to—an existing single-story retail building at 123rdand Harlem in Palos Heights, Illinois. The completed three-story mixed-use building will contain 10 apartments, 12,000 square feet of retail space, and 12,000 square feet of medical office space.
FitzGerald has designed the 9,400 square foot tenant build out for Universal Gaming in Addison, Illinois. Located in an existing building, the mixed office and warehouse space will serve the electronic gaming distributor as it seeks to expand its business in light of favorable legislation. The project will be completed as part of a Design-Build team with Synergy Construction.
FitzGerald designed specifications and plans for a twoMegawatt solar panel installation on an existing shared warehouse building in Chicago’s North Austin neighborhood. The array will consist of 7,774 individual photo-voltaic panels, covering roughly 200,000 square feet of rooftop.
FitzGerald Associates has completed several projects as part of a design-build team to retrofit existing commercial structures with photo-voltaic arrays. In collaboration with building owners, engineers, contractors and financing entities, the team is able to provide a system for consistent, low-cost energy to supplement the traditional fossil fuel-based power grid to buildings of a scale previous thought unsuitable for such a system.
To date, FitzGerald’s team has completed three projects in the Chicagoland area, with several more progressing through early development. Free-standing commercial applications have been the focus thus far, ranging from a 10kW system a 6,000 square foot rooftop to systems as large as 6mW on a 350,000 square foot distribution center. The team is looking beyond larger-scale commercial applications, too, as they develop a 5-10kW standardized array suitable for residential single-family applications.
Utilizing experts in tax and finance, the team is able to provide a turnkey solution to building owners and operators at incredibly low cost (in some cases no cost) to the owner or operator through tax incentives, grants, and rebates including the Federal Energy Policy Act (EPAct) and state programs, including the Illinois Department of Commerce & Economic Opportunity’s clean energy grant programs.
