Chicago City Council adopted new zoning standards for sports betting facilities and Chicago Cityscape has already integrated the rules. The ordinance is O2021-3243.
There are two rules we're showing: Zoning districts that permit the sports betting facilities and the distance to the nearest eligible stadium.
Look up an Address Snapshot and the report will identify if that location's zoning district allows sports betting. Additionally, in the expanded Zoning Assessment section, click on "Find nearest stadium" and Cityscape will tell you the distance to the nearest eligible stadium.
Eligible stadiums are Wrigley Field, Guaranteed Rate Field, Wintrust Arena, Soldier Field, and United Center. Sports betting locations must be within "five blocks" of one of these stadiums. Chicago Cityscape doesn't know the definition of "five blocks" so we show the direct line distance in feet.
If you have a question about how to use this, or you have a suggestion for how it could be more useful to you, contact us.
Both screenshots below are from an Address Snapshot's Zoning Assessment section for a location near the White Sox stadium.
After talking to World Business Chicago and a cannabis policy manager for the City of Chicago, we made a tweak to Site Selector to make it easier to locate the cannabis-eligible zoning districts. Enter "Cannabis Mode".
Site Selector is our Chicago zoning map that starts by asking users to search for a keyword representing their business. Words like "toy shop" and "strip mall" work. We convert these keywords to their "use names" in the Chicago zoning code and then show the zoning districts that allow those uses.
It works for all of the Cannabis Business Establishments, too. That means dispensaries, processors, infusers, craft growers, and cultivation centers.
Chicago Cityscape's Building Permits Browser, the map and table that shows all building permits issued in Chicago since 2006, has new filters and new statistics.
New filters
The Quick Filters section has been updated to more readily show which filter is active, and there's a new filter for Accessory Dwelling Units (there are currently 10 ADU permits!).
By request, we added a building permit # filter, to quickly find specific permit applications.
New stats
To prepare our blog post about hotspots and trends we wanted to know how many building permits have been issued this year (so far) compared to last year. To make it easy for us and our members, we added stats to show the quantity of each building permit type issued two years ago, last year, and the current year.
This year is about 13 percent "behind" last year (so far), meaning that the number of permits issued this year needs to increase by about 13 percent to meet last year's level.
We update the Chicago zoning map frequently throughout the year. The most recent zoning changes are now in Chicago Cityscape, including all of those zoning changes passed by City Council at their October 14, 2021, meeting.
Additionally, we have updated the names of 10 new Planned Developments, to make it easier to identify and search for these special zoning areas. You can see all 1,390 PDs in Place Snapshot Explorer.
The map below shows 37 new and amended Planned Developments adopted between June and October, inclusive. The largest PD is #30, the Illinois Medical District, which was amended to change internal zoning requirements for density and minimum parking (mentioned in our latest blog post).
