No Back Porch Blues

Building offers good views and tax breaks

While converting the 103-year-old apartment house at 4715-4721 South Greenwood Avenue into condos, the developer Robert Angevin, of Starbuck Capital, rebuilt the wood porches and stairs at the back of the building. Wanting to maximize the natural light inside the building—a 17-condo structure known today as The Residences at The Abbey—he cantilevered the porches out from the stairways, eliminating the vertical beams that diminish so many of the city’s back-porch views.

Angevin’s conscientious rehab, which preserved many of the building’s vintage charms, has a payoff that extends beyond light and sight. Because of the building’s landmark status, new owners will enjoy a property-tax freeze for the first eight years, and a graduated adjustment to the market rate for four years after that. (According to Angevin’s calculations, the biggest unit in the building will have an initial tax bill of about $1,700 instead of the approximately $13,400 standard for comparable properties.) Condos start at $159,000 for a 900-square-foot one-bedroom unit on the garden level and go to $669,000 for a four-bedroom, three-bath unit with 2,700 square feet of space.

Photography: Courtesy of MetroPro Corp

This article appears in the March 2008 issue of Chicago magazine.

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