After years of heated Lincoln Park community debate, the City Council Zoning Committee quickly approved on Monday a $51 million plan to redevelop the former Children’s Memorial Hospital site, a proposal that includes two 21-story residential towers.

Committee members unanimously approved the plan following testimony from Lincoln Park Alderman Michele Smith (43rd) and community residents in support of the project. No witnesses at Monday’s meeting spoke against it. The plan’s advancement comes after a four-hour Plan Commission meeting last month and several Lincoln Park neighborhood hearings, at which residents called the project too ambitious and warned that it would cause traffic jams and hurt the neighborhood’s character.

“I guess it’s really up to them whether they choose to come or not,” Smith said of project opponents after the meeting. “Everything that we know says that the overwhelming majority of the community wants to move forward on this project.”

Smith said the redevelopment means an “economic re-blossoming” of “the entire Lincoln Park area.” Smith won her aldermanic seat in 2011 as a skeptic of the hospital site development project. She stressed Monday that the twin high-rises were the result of a “really difficult and good compromise on behalf of the entire community.” 

Under the proposal, McCaffrey Interests Inc. would purchase the $51 million parcel from Lurie Children’s Hospital, which moved the children’s hospital from the three-way intersection at Lincoln, Fullerton and Halsted avenues to Streeterville in 2012.

McCaffrey Interests plans to build 604 housing units, 544 apartment residencies and 60 condos, and also 156 senior housing rooms on the former site of the hospital. Sixty-four of the housing units will be affordable, which Smith said is the “first time in 35 years” that affluent Lincoln Park has had a development with affordable units.

The project will also add 97 parking spaces to a lot that currently has 850 spaces, and the redevelopment will include three public plaza areas, retail space, and a loading dock. And the developer made “an iron-clad commitment,” Smith said, to easing congestion through features like a bike lane and new traffic signals.

In response to traffic concerns, Smith argued that the children’s hospital departure actually created the opposite problem for Lincoln Park, an under-utilization of the Lincoln, Fullerton, and Halsted intersection. 

“The amount of population expected at the site is a quarter of what came in and out of the children’s memorial hospital every day for decades,” Smith said.

According to Smith and public witnesses, the hospital’s absence has been a drain on local retail revenue. Colin Cordwell, owner of Red Lion Pub at 2446 N. Lincoln Ave., said that the residential-focused project gave him reason to “jump for joy.”

The full City Council will likely give final approval to the plan at its April 5 meeting. A timeline has not been set for the project’s construction.

In other zoning matters, the committee advanced a 120-room boutique hotel at the commercially-saturated Milwaukee, North and Damen avenues intersection in Wicker Park. The development includes just seven parking spaces, and Alderman Tom Tunney (44th) called for a “more aggressive parking policy” to accommodate hotel patrons. Tunney, along with other aldermen, nonetheless made clear their overall support for the hotel.