The Cortland Street Bridge has been closed to cars since September 22, 2025, for a restoration expected to run 18 to 24 months. On the east bank, at the foot of that bridge, sit 31 acres the A. Finkl & Sons steel company occupied until its buildings were razed in 2015. Today the land produces about $1.5 million a year in property taxes.
On September 23, City Council approved $201.6 million in tax increment financing for Foundry Park, the $3 billion plan by JDL Development and Kayne Anderson Real Estate for the northern half of the former Lincoln Yards site. The headline makes it sound like the money arrived. It didn't. The deal sets terms for money that pays out later, and almost all of it goes to work inside the site. For anyone weighing a home in west Lincoln Park or on the Bucktown side of the river, those two facts set the calendar.
The city pays after the work is done
The Department of Planning and Development's release says the funding "would be provided as reimbursements as each infrastructure component is completed by the development team." The order of events looks like this:
- The developers line up private financing for a phase.
- They build a road, a park or a stretch of riverwalk.
- The city repays the approved cost of that finished piece out of the Cortland and Chicago River TIF District.
The first step still isn't done. Chicago YIMBY reported on October 7 that the developers were still finalizing financing for phase one and aiming to break ground by the end of 2026. So public money follows construction. Every dollar of the $201.6 million depends on private capital going in first.
That setup is the main change from the last plan. Under Lincoln Yards, Sterling Bay's plan relied on a $900 million subsidy from a newly created TIF district plus $400 million in tax credits, according to WTTW. Sterling Bay built one building, a life sciences center at 1229 W. Concord Place that never found a tenant. DPD ended its $487.8 million infrastructure agreement in March 2026. Under the new terms, the city pays only for infrastructure that is already finished. That also means nothing gets built faster than the developers can build it.
What the money covers, line by line
Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd), whose ward includes the site, told colleagues the money would go to "the roadway, sewers, the new park spaces, the riverfront, the bridges and infrastructure for the extension of the 606," and "not to legal fees, not to marketing," as Block Club Chicago reported. The approved amounts:
| Item | TIF reimbursement |
|---|---|
| Roadways and utilities | $70.9 million |
| New parks | $69 million |
| River frontage improvements | $33.5 million |
| 606 Trail extension | $21.5 million |
| Site prep and general expenses | $6.9 million |
JDL and Kayne Anderson add about $33 million of their own, which brings total infrastructure costs to around $235 million. Almost every line pays for something inside the 31 acres. The exception is the 606 money, which includes a bridge over the river; Axios Chicago reported that the crossing and trail connection would be built in phases, with some of the work extending beyond Foundry Park. Southport Avenue gets extended south to the river as the site's main commercial street. Parks, a riverwalk and a replanted river edge line the water.
What sits outside the site, and isn't funded
The 2019 Lincoln Yards agreement called for new river bridges at Dominick Street, Armitage Avenue and Concord Place, along with a reconfigured Armitage and Elston intersection. The Dominick idea ran a new street nearly a mile from Webster Avenue to North Avenue, with an 80-foot-wide bridge for multiple modes of travel. The Foundry Park deal leaves out the Ashland, Armitage and Elston overhaul and several of the river bridges.
Those are the connections that decide how traffic from 3,737 new homes gets onto the city's street grid. Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd), whose ward borders the site, had argued that surrounding neighborhoods were being short-changed. He voted yes after the transportation and planning departments promised to study the area's wider infrastructure needs once plans for the southern parcel take shape. He explained his reasoning to Block Club Chicago:
"This is a minimum 10-year project. Realistically, it's probably more like 15. So we'll have ample opportunity to correct the infrastructure deficit."
That study has no published scope, schedule or funding. It also depends on a plan that doesn't exist yet. Novak Construction bought the southern half of the old Lincoln Yards site and hasn't made its plans public. Until Novak publishes a plan, the study lacks the plan it was tied to, and the bridges and the Ashland, Armitage and Elston intersection remain unfunded.
The calendar the funding creates
Because the money comes in phase by phase, the useful question for a nearby block is what happens when. Here is what's on record:
- Now through year-end 2026: groundbreaking is targeted. DPD says phase one opens with work on Kingsbury and Cortland streets and Southport Avenue, 600 feet of riverwalk and a central park.
- 2027: the Cortland Street Bridge restoration is expected to finish, based on the 18 to 24 month closure that began in September 2025.
- Q4 2027 to Q4 2028: construction of CDOT's Bloomingdale Trail extension east to Elston Avenue, crossing Ashland and passing under the expressway and railroad tracks. The trail's crossing over the river into Foundry Park's riverwalk has no published date.
- 2031: the city expects phase one to be finished, with the site generating an estimated $30.5 million in annual property taxes.
- 2036: full buildout, at an estimated $68 million a year.
Phase one sits in the triangle formed by Southport Avenue, Kingsbury Street and Cortland Street. Block Club describes four buildings there, with the tallest rising 39 stories at Kingsbury and Cortland around a central square that could host farmers markets and winter skating. DPD lists the first buildings as three residential towers with 709 mixed-income units, a 183-key hotel and a 777-space underground garage.
TIF districts capture all growth in the property tax base for 23 years, WTTW notes. The rising tax numbers above are the money that pays the developers back for the roads and parks. That's another reason the site finishes in stages.
Why 709 units is a big number here
Lincoln Park had the lowest apartment vacancy rate in the Chicago market in Q2 2026, at 3.1%, down 30 basis points from a year earlier, according to Northmarq's Q2 report. Cushman & Wakefield's data for the combined Lakeview, Lincoln Park and Roscoe Village submarket shows 153 units delivered in the first half of 2026 and 241 under construction, with 96.7% occupancy and average effective rent of $2,210, up 6.7% year over year.
Phase one alone is close to three times everything under construction across those three neighborhoods. The full plan allows up to 3,737 homes, mostly apartments and condos, plus a small number of single-family homes and townhouses. Because the city is putting in money, Chicago's affordable housing ordinance requires 20% of the new units to be affordable, WTTW reports. To meet it, the developers plan 95 units on site, five more nearby, and a $7 million payment into the city's Affordable Housing Opportunity Fund.
The sales market is tight citywide too. In August 2026, Illinois REALTORS counted 3,541 active listings in Chicago, down 23.3% from a year earlier, with a condo median of $369,950, up 8.2%. The Chicago Association of REALTORS put citywide supply at 2.0 months for August, down from 2.5. Its counts run on different definitions, so the two sets of figures don't match exactly.
For a buyer, this is a long, slow pipeline in a market with almost no slack. Whatever the new supply eventually does to rents and resale on nearby blocks, it starts around 2031 and arrives a phase at a time through the mid-2030s. The years before that bring cranes, street work on Cortland and Kingsbury, and road connections that still have no funding.
What this means for a block near the site
Location relative to the site matters more than distance. The extended Southport Avenue, the central square and the first stretch of riverwalk are all funded and all part of phase one, so they're the first amenities scheduled to open. The Bucktown side gets its most direct new link through the 606 extension, and only its eastern stretch to Elston has a construction window so far. Blocks that depend on Ashland, Armitage and Elston are waiting on a study with no date.
Activity along the Clybourn corridor has kept going without Foundry Park. The 1800 N. Clybourn site was being demolished by July 2026 for a retail plan of five buildings totaling 43,900 square feet, after a proposed 50-story apartment tower was dropped. In August, City Council approved a 24-unit residential project at 1720 N. Clybourn.
Quick answers
Will the 606 reach Lincoln Park? The plan is for it to cross the river and meet Foundry Park's riverwalk, and $21.5 million is set aside for that. CDOT's published construction window, Q4 2027 to Q4 2028, covers only the segment east to Elston Avenue.
When does the Cortland Street Bridge reopen to cars? Restoration began with the September 22, 2025 closure and was projected to take 18 to 24 months, which points to 2027.
Is anything planned for the southern half of the old Lincoln Yards site? Novak Construction owns it and hasn't released a plan. The citywide infrastructure study Hopkins secured is tied to that plan.
Does Foundry Park include homes for sale? The plan includes condos and a small number of single-family homes and townhouses alongside apartments. Phase one is described in terms of mixed-income units, a hotel and office space.
If you own near Cortland, Webster or the Clybourn corridor, or you're comparing blocks on either side of the North Branch, NiKo Collaborative can show you how comparable sales nearby have priced construction-period years and amenities still on the way. Request a home valuation, and we'll set your block against the Foundry Park calendar.
