City warned on Cabrini housing

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Updated: November 16, 2011 1:24AM

A federal judge this week put the city on notice that it has to speed up efforts to acquire the former Near North high school site for redevelopment into replacement housing for former Cabrini-Green residents — or stand in violation of a 2000 consent decree.

Under the agreement reached with tenants a decade ago as the Chicago Housing Authority began its historic Plan for Transformation — tearing down high-rise public housing throughout Chicago — the city was to acquire the site owned by the Chicago Public Schools at Clybourn and Larrabee for new housing.

Other residents of the decree have seen progress, according to a motion filed in May in federal court by tenants who were supposed to occupy the CPS site.

Residents asked a judge to declare the city in violation. And in his ruling issued Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Edmond Chang said while the city was “at least not yet” in violation, after 11 years, it was a “close question” as to whether “the city has not been reasonably diligent in obtaining control over Parcel 11 and putting it on the path to redevelopment.”

“There might come a time soon when the city’s failure to take even the preliminary step of obtaining control of the site from CPS will result in a breach of the consent decree,” Chang wrote.