When lawmakers passed the law creating the Northern Illinois Transit Authority nearly a year ago, they spoke about the new agency’s grand mission to transform Chicago-area public transit.
To make that happen, lawmakers concentrated power in NITA that its predecessor, the Regional Transportation Authority, never had. For the first time, the umbrella agency over the CTA, Metra and Pace could set fares, control construction projects and set rail and bus service.
But, tucked inside the thousand-page-plus law, they also granted NITA unprecedented power to buy and develop land near transit.
The technical term for this is transit-oriented development, or TOD. It’s the method for building on underused land near transit to boost ridership. The point is to make those areas more desirable places to walk, live, work and shop.
For years, transit agencies in other major American cities like Washington, D.C., have had powers to develop underused, transit-owned land.
The NITA Act catches Chicago up to its peers. But it goes further by granting power to buy and develop land for reasons unrelated to transit, says Yonah Freemark, an expert on the method at the Urban Institute, a DC-based think tank.
"There are some provisions that give NITA substantial power for undertaking transit-oriented development projects itself that virtually no other transit agency across the country has,” he says. "This could be a potentially massive change."
The law gives NITA sweeping powers to build on land near transit. It allows NITA to undertake public-private partnerships, called joint developments. The agency can take on debt, offer incentives for developers, and condemn land, so long as it has a municipality's approval.
NITA officials say they are committed to using these new powers. But there are challenges. The agency still has to create its own development office. Developing anything right now is difficult thanks to high loan and construction costs. And any NITA-led development could still be years away.
NITA’s new powers could accelerate development near transit, says Juan Sebastian Arias, who has been advocating for TOD for years as leader of downtown nonprofit Elevated Chicago.
“It’s such a huge opportunity,” Arias says. “NITA doesn't have to do this on their own. There's opportunities to partner with the city or municipalities who have their own vacant land near stations.”
There are many potential benefits. Households can potentially save up to $10,000 a year in transportation costs, according to the Chicago-based Metropolitan Planning Council. TOD increases access to jobs, especially among low-income families, and can also lead to higher home values, higher retail sales, lower obesity rates and less traffic congestion with fewer people driving, the council found.
Other cities have been pushing for developing land near transit for years.
The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority has built 10,800 new homes in the last five years. LA's Metro is working to build 10,000 homes on agency-owned land in the next five years. BART in the Bay Area has built more than 4,200 homes near transit.
The city of Chicago has been encouraging TOD since 2013, when City Council passed an ordinance removing some of the parking spot minimums for new buildings near train stations.
The city bolstered transit development again in 2021 when it passed an ETOD policy — for equitable transit-oriented development — that sought to push transit development while making sure low-income residents are not pushed out.
Since then, the city has made substantial progress developing city-owned land near transit, according to a May report from Elevated Chicago. More than 100 of those projects are underway.
But as the city pushed TOD-friendly policies, Chicago's transit agencies struggled to spur development themselves.
NITA's predecessor, the RTA, could help municipalities plan development but not lead it.
"We've been doing planning studies ... for nearly 30 years," says Heather Mullins, NITA's division manager for local planning. "But that's really all we could do."
The NITA Act changes that. Now, NITA is in the driver's seat.
NITA can now partner with developers to build on transit-owned land, "something we've wanted to be doing for quite some time," Mullins said.
But first, the agency must staff a new office to lead such projects. NITA is in the process of hiring a manager for that department, which will have about 10 employees, she said.
Mullins acknowledges that lawmakers have given NITA immense power to build up areas near transit, including the power to buy land. But first, Mullins says, NITA plans to build up unused land currently owned by transit agencies.
Under the law, NITA must inventory all underused transit-owned parcels and publish the list by June 2027. That list isn’t public yet. But Mullins said the agency has identified 3,000 underused parcels owned by transit agencies. She said 91 of them are ripe for development. Most of them are in the suburbs. That's enough land near transit to build 8,500 homes.
A screengrab of a DePaul University Institute for Housing map shows undeveloped land owned by the city and private entities.
Development will take time. The agency should start taking proposals from developers in 2028, Mullins said. Building could start in 2029. After that, NITA hopes to be doing four or five TOD projects a year.
NITA plans to put $10 million toward these projects, many of which will be affordable housing, she said.
These projects benefit everyone, Mullins says.
"It's beneficial to the transit agencies. We're making it easier for people to access transit. It builds our ridership,” she says. “It's also beneficial to the communities. We can bring housing. We can bring more walkable communities."
Mullins said they found there’s not much money to be made from development. But NITA aims first to increase needed housing, she says. Chicago ranks last among big cities for issuing new housing permits.
The NITA Act also overhauls a major obstacle to building cheaper, dense projects near transit: mandatory parking spot minimums.
Called People Over Parking, the new rule eliminates all municipal parking spot requirements within half a mile of a rail station, and within one city block of bus corridors.
That's key for spurring development, says Audrey Wennick, a senior director of transportation policy with the Metropolitan Planning Council.
"When [developers] get saddled for building more parking than is needed, it jacks up the price needlessly," Wennick says. The new rule does not prohibit parking spots, she notes. "This means you can't have an arbitrary requirement."
A NITA-created map of affected areas shows the parking-mandate prohibition applies to nearly all of Chicago.
A small sampling of developers told the Sun-Times they are excited about the new parking rule and NITA's development powers.
NITA has "a broad definition of transit-oriented development, and that's good; Chicago is well served by transit." says Joy Aruguete, CEO of Bickerdike Redevelopment Corporation. Her business is currently working on a TOD project, the Metropolitan L Apartments at 2525 N. Kedzie Ave. in Logan Square.
NITA "could open up a lot of opportunities" for developers facing higher borrowing costs, says Oji Eggleston, executive director at Renaissance Collaborative. The group is developing a TOD project in Washington Park near the Garfield Green Line station: the Abrams Intergenerational Village.
If NITA chose to own and lease buildings, it could create new revenue sources, according to Wennick.
Transit agencies in Asia have done this for years. In Tokyo, it’s common for transit-owned land at train stations to have shops, restaurants, and even multi-level malls.
Done right, transit-oriented development can create dense, walkable neighborhoods that are the "vibrant center of a community,” Wennick says. "There's an opportunity here [for NITA] to be a collaborator to help build things that everybody wants. This can help to supercharge development near transit."
