Housing or lakefront access? An Edgewater development sparks a fight over both.—Crains Chicago Business

By Dennis Rodkin | Aug. 31, 2026
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Two of the city’s significant needs — new housing and access to Chicago’s treasured lakefront — are bumping against one another in Edgewater, where neighborhood groups are divided over a plan to redevelop a synagogue’s lakefront acreage.

Since last year, the developer Fern Hill and the synagogue, Emanuel Congregation, have been sharpening a plan to replace the congregation’s aging, low-rise structure with a pair of buildings designed by the architecture firm Eckenhoff Saunders. A 25-story building would run north-south along Sheridan Road on the two-acre site’s west side, and a building on the east, lake-facing side would mostly be 12 stories, with a lower portion on the southeast corner of the site that would contain a new home for the congregation.

Combined with a third building on a parcel on the other side of Sheridan Road, they’d add 600 housing units.

But a community group called Edgewater Residents for Responsible Development (ERRD) is calling for expansion of public lakefront onto the site instead of dense development. Friends of the Parks is with them, issuing a statement last week that “elected officials need to do what’s right by the people of Chicago and help create more public park space for everyone that’s accessible to all.”

The image at the top of this story shows Emanuel Congregation’s rocky shoreline protection and parking lot east of the building, as seen from George Lane Park to its immediate south.

A separate neighbors group contends the project’s delivery of hundreds of new housing units in a high-demand neighborhood should be embraced. It says adding to the public lakefront should be managed for the whole stretch of lakefront north of the Drive, not piecemeal at this single site.

“We can do both housing and lakefront expansion,” said Neville Hemming, president and co-founder of Neighbors of Edgewater & Uptown, which supports the Fern Hill/Emanuel plan. “This city has 100 years of infilling on the lakefront, and (in the future) will complete it” from Ardmore Avenue north to the boundary with Evanston, “but not by setting aside this one parcel.”

Patricia Sharkey sees the one parcel as a crucial piece.

“This is a once-in-a-generation chance to move toward completing Daniel Burnham’s vision of a continuous lakefront,” said Patricia Sharkey, a retired environmental lawyer and Edgewater resident of four decades. She’s a leader of ERRD. “It’s the perfect spot for expanding the (public) lakefront in one of the densest neighborhoods in Chicago.”

Officials of Emanuel Congregation did not respond to a request for comment and Nick Anderson, principal at developer Fern Hill, declined to comment. The lakefront portion of the project would also reportedly include a parcel now occupied by a single house. It’s been owned since 2001 by Demetris Giannoulias, a brother of Illinois Secretary of State and mayoral candidate Alexi Giannoulias. Crain’s could not reach Demetris Giannoulias, and terms of the planned sale of that site have not been disclosed.

Emanuel’s existing building at 5959 N. Sheridan Road is a 1954 structure on a little over two acres, its 200 feet of shoreline packed with boulders. Immediately south is George Lane Park, about 3.1 acres with a sandy beach. South of Lane, the beach runs east of private buildings for about 600 feet before the northern end of the lakefront trail at Ardmore Avenue.

Some of that beach is seen in the photo below, looking south from George Lane Park toward the north end of the lakefront Lincoln Park.

Adding the Emanuel Congregation’s frontage would, according to Sharkey and ERRD, be a step toward completing what’s known as The Last Four Miles, the stretch of Chicago’s Lake Michigan frontage that is not public park.

In July, 48th Ward Ald. Lenni Manaa-Hoppenworth announced she supports the developers’ request for zoning approval, with stipulations including permanent public access to the lakefront side of the project. Under the Lakefront Prtotection Ordinance, the required setback would be 25 feet.

Sharkey and Mindy Turbov, a former housing and development officer in City Hall and HUD, told Crain’s they don’t believe 25 feet is enough. They’d like to see a 100-foot setback or a purchase of the site by the city and the park district. In their vision, the congregation would receive a sufficient purchase price to cover putting up a new building and would gain a long-term lease on a portion of the site, allowing the congregation to remain where it’s been for over seven decades.

A 100-foot setback would leave about 175 feet of space between the eastern edge of the building envelope and the sidewalk on the west, Crain’s estimated while walking the site.

Hemming said the group’s requests for a bigger setback or an outright conversion to park space “is another example of their anti-housing agenda for the neighborhood.” ERRD sued to stop the upzoning of a corridor along Broadway, a few blocks west of the lakefront. In July, a Cook County judge dismissed that suit.

Friends of the Parks also wants a larger setback. “We don’t think 25 feet is enough,” said Brian Gladstein, executive director of Friends of the Parks. “We know the best way to deal with erosion is to have a green setback, and what they’re proposing doesn’t have enough space to protect the (new) buildings from erosion.”

Gladstein also endorses the notion of park expansion onto at least some of Emanuel Congregation’s site. “The city has an obligation” to create more park space on the site, he said in prepared comments issued last week.

Speaking to Crain’s, he said, “we should take every opportunity to expand public park space on the lakefront, so that someday when we’re able to move on that last few miles on the north lakefront, this property would be set up for that.”

Sharkey and Turbov says the proposal as it stands violates the Lakefront Protection Ordinance, a foundational piece of city legislation passed in 1973.

In its first policy, “Complete the publicly owned and locally controlled park system along the entire Chicago lakefront,” they read a requirement that the city pick up any parcel with a pre-1973 use if it goes up for sale. But the ordinance differentiates between publicly- and privately-owned lakefront zones, and the official LPO map shows the Emanuel site in a privately-owned zone.

In an emailed statement, Manaa-Hoppenworth said, “I am open to discussion with Friends of the Parks over the Last Four Miles concept, which is something they have not brought up during the meetings we’ve had with them over the years. .As far as I know, they have not approached the dozens of private property owners along Sheridan Road who do not currently allow public lakefront access from their property, unlike Emanuel Congregation, who has so generously included this in their plans.”

The developer’s application will go before the city’s department of planning and development and, in particular because of the site’s location in an LPO zone, the Chicago Plan Commission. Hemming expressed confidence in the body’s “ability to make a determination about whether (the project) is in compliance.”