Museum Towers II has been a long time coming. It was way back in January of 2012 that we first told you that the surface parking lot between 18th & 19th, Buttonwood Street & Mattias Baldwin Park would be replaced by an apartment tower and some town homes. At that point, developers Forest City were still in the process of meeting with the Logan Square Neighborhood Association regarding the project. It finally went to Civic Design Review at the beginning of 2014, but the lot remained in use for many months afterward. Passing by over the weekend, we discovered it's now a construction site and probably has been for a couple months.

Construction site

On 18th Street, looking north

The project will include a sixteen-story apartment building with 270 units and a four level parking garage with 439 parking spaces. That's roughly an additional 150 spaces over the surface lot that's getting replaced. Wrapping around the parking garage, look for sixteen townhomes which we'd imagine will be offered for sale. Eh, rentals could work too. Here, check out the site plan to see how the new buildings will interact with each other and with the existing buildings.

Project site plan

Ooh, and check out some renderings:

Rendering looking north from 18th Street

Project rendering from 19th Street

We understand that the existing Museum Towers building is a perfectly fine place to live, but it has a real 1990s look to it. As you can see, the new building will take a much more contemporary approach. This is a bit of a relief; with a name like Museum Towers II we thought there was a real chance the developers would recreate the first building. Also, we give them credit for including town homes in the project which look like they'll do a decent enough job hiding the parking garage from the line of sight on 19th Street. Figure, if there's gonna be a parking garage, at least pedestrians won't have to stare at it every day.

With construction just getting moving, look for this project to take shape over the next year and a half or so. Unfortunately, it's tough to get a good view of the construction from the street. If anyone out there lives in one of the buildings next door and wants to send us some construction photos as the project moves along, we certainly wouldn't complain.