Wicker Park 13-Story Apartment Tower Gets Construction Permit
After seven years of delays, RDM Companies receives a construction permit for a 121-unit apartment tower at 1628 W. Division St. in Wicker Park.
A 13-story apartment tower at 1628 W. Division St. in Wicker Park got its construction permit last week, seven years after the project first entered the city’s approval process.
Developer RDM Companies picked up the permit Thursday for the surface parking lot just west of the Division and Ashland intersection. The company’s plan calls for 121 apartments on a site that’s sat dormant since at least 2019. RDM also filed for a tower crane permit last month, which city records show is still pending. Neighbors got a letter in recent weeks from an LLC tied to RDM CEO Robert Mosky, notifying them of a “30-day excavation notice” and suggesting ground could break soon.
Seven years. That’s a long time to wait for a parking lot to become something else.
RDM didn’t respond to requests for comment. A city planning spokesperson said the project is “moving toward construction,” without elaborating on specifics.
The property sits less than a block from the Division Street Blue Line station at Ashland and Division, making it exactly the kind of site that Chicago’s transit-oriented development policies were designed to encourage. The building’s address is on Division, but it’s slotted between existing structures and won’t front the street directly.
Getting here wasn’t simple.
In April 2019, then-1st Ward Ald. Proco Joe Moreno pushed a zoning change through City Council over neighborhood opposition. Moreno was wrapping up his final months in office. The vote cleared despite complaints from residents about building height, traffic, and development pressure in an already dense stretch of the neighborhood.
Moreno’s replacement didn’t share his view. Ald. Daniel La Spata (1st) came into office in 2019 looking to reverse course. In 2020, La Spata introduced an ordinance to downzone the property and cap future development at a smaller scale. That ordinance never got a vote. Four years later, La Spata changed direction entirely, sponsoring a “low affordability community” designation for the site. That designation is a mechanism aldermen can use to give developers access to tax incentives when they include affordable units in a project. The corner, through all of it, stayed a parking lot.
It’s not a record anyone’s going to brag about.
The original proposal was 16 stories. It got trimmed to 13. Some neighbors opposed both versions. According to Block Club Chicago, the project’s path through 2026 reflects a pattern that’s become familiar on contested transit-corridor sites: years of political back-and-forth, revised plans, and stalled ordinances, followed by a permit drop when the political environment shifted enough to let it move.
1st Ward chief of staff Nicholas Zettel confirmed the office is working with RDM to schedule a community meeting about construction logistics. He expects that meeting to happen later this month. Residents who’ve attended years of neighborhood association meetings about this corner will have a chance to ask about timelines, disruption, and what 121 apartments at Ashland and Division will actually look like during the build.
That’s what’s concrete right now. The permit exists. The crane application is pending. The excavation notice went out. RDM’s project at 1628 W. Division is as close to breaking ground in 2026 as it’s been at any point since Moreno’s City Council vote back in April 2019.
The site won’t stay a parking lot much longer.