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``The suburban lifestyle is okay. But you don't have to live it in the suburbs,'' says Laurence Booth, FAIA, who served as architect and as part of the development team for East Water Place, a speculative townhouse project in Chicago. Urban townhouses, despite their party walls and limited frontage, offer owners such suburban luxuries as a private entrance, a small yard all to themselves, and, that hallmark of life outside city-center, an attached garage.
Booth knows about this approach to urban living firsthand. He raised his own family in a historic townhouse in Chicago's Lincoln Park. ``It's the perfect compromise between urban and suburban,'' he says. He now resides in one of the East Water Place units.
The 2.2 acres of land on which the project sits are owned by the Chicago Dock and Canal Trust, established in 1857 by Chicago's first mayor. The site was leased from the trust for 99 years; each homeowner has a lease agreement with Chicago Dock. The cost of the leases now ranges from $500 to $650 a month and will be adjusted annually according to the Consumer Price Index. Because land costs are not included in the price of the townhouses, East Water Place units seem inexpensive. Prices range from $318,000 to $450,000, depending on the degree of customization. Square footage is from 2,175 to 3,450.
Bounded to the north by the Ogden Slip waterway, where the Chicago River joins Lake Michigan, and to the east by Lake Shore Drive, the townhouses are in eight buildings arranged...