Milwaukee Avenue’s transformative development boom, mapped

While many cities across the country are witnessing construction booms, the development activity currently underway in Chicago cannot be overstated. Last year, Chicago witnessed a post-recession record number of operating tower cranes, suggesting that the economic deep freeze of the recession is all but a memory. Perhaps surprisingly, the only US city to have more construction cranes operating last year was Seattle.

But Chicago’s construction boom has spread out of the Loop and into the city’s neighborhoods, not only seeing the transformation of other downtown areas like the West Loop and the South Loop, but also neighborhoods along Milwaukee Avenue and the Blue Line.

Hundreds of new apartment units have been delivered along the busy Milwaukee Avenue artery over the last couple of years, and hundreds more are on the way. When including all of the proposed, under construction, and completed units that have been highlighted on this map, the stretch of Milwaukee Avenue between the Grand Blue Line station and the Logan Square station will eventually see the delivery of nearly 3,000 apartments.