Highways take up precious urban infill space, which we know is exactly where your investors want to build. Fifield CEO Steve Fifield may have the answer in Chicago's West Loop: He created a $120M plan to cap over three blocks of highway, opening up an area with sites for more multifamily andother development opportunities.

Steve (here with his wife Randy) and 20 other experts, will speak at our national Bisnow Multifamily Annual Conference West, April 11 in Beverly Hills. (Register here!) He says the Kennedy Expressway has split the neighborhood, isolating the western half. His plan would cap over (think platform, not dome) the highway, creating six acres of park/recreational area and opening up the area to development. (It's the first step to turning the world into a real life Jetsons.) Steve has built about $1B in West Loop residences and offices and says the neighborhood is rife with opportunity. He sees demand for cool techie offices, and the West Loop from Canal to Racine has vacant sites that could accommodate about 1,500 multifamily units;Steve expects half of those will be condos.

It's an expensive endeavor that has fizzled in other cities, but Steve tells us this project is more reasonably priced because the plazas won't have to support heavy high-rises, just parks and their amenities. Steve and smdp principal Scott Sarver will submit designs and budgets to the city in the next month and hunt for area anchor tenants whose real estate taxes would pay for bonds that would finance the project (cough, Google).

Steve also dropped some knowledge on the state of multifamily. Now that land prices have come back down from boom levels, rental development is feasible, happening, and barely scratching demand (350k new units expected in 2013). He sees a trend back into the city, led by young professionals looking to live/work/play in the same place (like his proposed multifamily/Jewel flagship project, above, in Chicago's Gold Coast neighborhood). On the design side, bike amenities are huge and package internet/TV/phone deals from the landlord are on the rise.