Lathrop Homes’ south campus clears City Council after years of delay

For years, the unfinished south campus at Lathrop has made the project’s delay easy to read from the street. North of Diversey Parkway, restored buildings, occupied apartments, and new public open space proved that the mixed-income redevelopment was real. South of Diversey, boarded brick buildings and fenced-off courts kept the unresolved part of the story in plain view.

City Council’s April 15 approval changes that balance. The action does not finish Lathrop, but it does move the south campus out of procedural uncertainty and back into a live construction timeline. For a 1938 public-housing landscape that has also become a preservation case, that is the difference between a stalled promise and a measurable next phase.

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Lathrop’s south campus is finally moving from fenced-off delay into an actual construction timetable.

What Happened This Week

CBS Chicago reported on April 16 that the Chicago City Council approved the financial package for Lathrop’s long-delayed south-campus phase on April 15, clearing the way for construction to start this summer.

That vote builds directly on CHA’s January 27 board action and February 2 development update, which described Phase 1C as 309 new and renovated mixed-income rental units spread across seven preserved buildings and one new construction building.

Why This Changes How The Site Should Be Read

Lathrop is not simply a redevelopment parcel. It is one of Chicago’s earliest public-housing campuses, a 1938 riverfront project whose low-rise buildings and landscape plan made it a very different housing experiment from the high-rise model that later dominated public memory. Because the campus was also listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2012, each redevelopment milestone doubles as a preservation milestone.

The latest approval matters because it narrows the gap between Lathrop’s restored north side and its still-vacant south side. CHA’s current property page says 488 redeveloped apartments are already in service. Once the next phase actually closes and starts construction, the campus becomes easier to read as an active preservation-and-housing project rather than as a partial success with one major half still waiting.

What To Watch Next

The next useful markers are financial closing, the actual summer 2026 construction start, and whether the rehabilitation pace on the south campus begins matching the public urgency around the site after so many years of delay.

It will also be worth watching how clearly the next phase preserves the historic buildings and landscape while adding the new structure. If the schedule holds, CHA says Lathrop should approach almost 800 rehabilitated apartments by the end of 2026, making this one of the city’s clearest real-time tests of preservation through redevelopment.