Chicago Blackhawks’ planned Fifth Third Arena expansion is likely just the first of Near West Side projects

The Chicago Blackhawks have received approval to expand their practice facility, Fifth Third Arena — and the $65 million project could be an appetizer for the franchise’s plans to develop on the Near West Side.

Team and city officials say they’ve discussed turning empty spaces and parking lots into offices, restaurants, homes or hotels.

But nothing is solidified or imminent at this stage.

“Right now we’re in deep with the development of Fifth Third,” said Jaime Faulkner, Hawks president of business operations. “It’s sort of the priority project right now.”

The expansion of Fifth Third Arena will add two new skating rinks to the two that exist now.

According to the proposal submitted to the city, the project also will include 200 parking spaces, locker rooms, a food-and-beverage space, multipurpose rooms, a “partial green roof,” bicycle parking and electric vehicle charging stations.

Fifth Third Arena sits at 1801 W. Jackson Blvd. and abuts Wood Street and Ogden Avenue to the east and Van Buren Street to the south.

The Hawks will acquire a 7-acre property just west of the rink from Rush University Medical Center, and 4.25 acres of that plot is where Fifth Third will be expanded.

“That empty land behind Fifth Third that now has a fence around it … we’re in the process of getting approvals from the city to buy the land and develop on the land,” Faulkner said. “We won’t develop the whole parcel of land (initially). What we will do is add on two additional sheets of ice and lots of multipurpose community spaces into the building.”

The City Council gave its final stamp for rezoning the parcel Thursday. A planning department official estimated the sale should close this fall.

“As soon as they get all of their permits, they can break ground,” Ald. Walter Burnett Jr., 27th, said. “But it takes a minute to get permits in the city, maybe about six to nine months.”

The Hawks don’t need four rinks for players to practice, but the construction will give them a chance to upgrade the rinks their players use and provide more skating surfaces for residents.

Hawks Chairman and CEO Danny Wirtz hopes the upgrades also will attract local and national tournaments.

The Hawks still are figuring out what to do with the rest of the Rush lot. The proposal to the city says “future phases may include residential, hotel and retail/commercial.”

“They’ve got future proposals that haven’t been vetted with the community yet,” Burnett said, so those talks have been tabled for now.

Faulkner said plans for the rest of the lot are up in the air, but it won’t sit idle for long.

“We’re going to wait and build the first two sheets of ice before we figure out what we’re going to do with the land behind there, which could be anything from residential to, who knows, maybe we put two more sheets (of ice) down,” she said.

“In the interim, it’s going to be a temporary parking lot. We don’t want it to be just broken concrete on the ground. … But hopefully we’re hosting the World Juniors or a farmers market for the community. Hopefully we’re able to generate enough programming to keep that area full as it is,” such as an overflow lot for the United Center.

Meanwhile, the United Center Joint Venture, the Hawks’ stadium partnership with the Bulls, also has explored options for the spaces the teams jointly own in the neighborhood — namely the parking lots.

Wirtz noted how much has changed since the Hawks and Bulls moved from Chicago Stadium to the United Center, then added the Bulls’ Advocate Center, Fifth Third Arena and the UC’s East Atrium and offices within the last 30 years.

“We’ve evolved quite a bit,” Wirtz said. “It went from a single building to what is now more of a campus.”

But as any Hawks or Bulls fan knows, once the game is over, the area can feel rather barren, bracketed on all sides by parking lots.

“We’re sitting on a lot of parking lots, right?” Wirtz said. “And we see parking has continued to decrease with other modes (of transportation) to get here. We’re absolutely thinking about what the future could look like.”

Burnett added: “Things have changed so much now that they had to take one of their parking lots and just make it an Uber stop. So it’s like the parking lots are becoming somewhat obsolete.”

Burnett said the Hawks’ plans align with his vision for the ward, which includes Malcolm X College, the University of Illinois at Chicago and the medical district.

“I see that area exploding,” he said, “to be a community where folks that work in all of these situations and go to school at those institutions will be living in our community, sort of like a college-work-live area, especially with us putting in the Damen L stop at Damen and Lake.”

The CTA Green Line station is under construction and set to open next year. Some of the UC parking lots run on either side of Damen between three and six blocks directly south of that station.

“The Blackhawks have a vision to do more with some of the land over there,” Burnett said. “All of those parking lots are primed for further development. And right before (late Hawks Chairman) Rocky (Wirtz) got ill (in July), he and I had a meeting … to talk about this (Fifth Third) project but also about other projects that he visualized for the future.

“Nothing specific, but definitely they want to do more with the land that they own around the United Center, and they want it to be a part of a community. They don’t want it to just be for their patrons. They want it to be for the neighborhood too.”

Burnett, 60, said Gen Z is pushing a lot of these cultural changes and demands on businesses, whether it’s the Hawks or the nearby medical district.

“Fulton Market is successful because they have a lot of amenities that attract young people,” he said. “So all of these developers are looking at these campus-style developments in order to get people to buy, live, work, play, people — a people haven.”

He said he has continued discussions with Danny Wirtz and Bulls President and CEO Michael Reinsdorf about ideas for the UC parking lots.

“They’re looking at entertainment options, food options … retail and above, offices and/or residential,” Burnett said. “They don’t want people just to have a hard time getting through traffic, then see the game and go home. They want people to have an experience.”

Wirtz was asked if he ever dreamed about building a Hawks-themed hotel nearby, like the Chicago Cubs owners, the Ricketts family, did when they built Hotel Zachary across the street from Wrigley Field.

“Absolutely,” Wirtz said. “It’s something of course we talk a lot about. It’s also something we have to be very mindful of. You’re building once, so you’ve really got to get it right.

“We’re not rushing to go do anything immediately. We want to make sure we think through, ‘What is this area of town going to look like in the next 20 years? And what does it need? And what does the city need?’”

And it’s not just Wirtz’s decision. He’s working closely with the Reinsdorfs within the Joint Venture.

“We work in partnership ... to think in master plan terms as to how things affect other parts of our campus property and the United Center itself,” he said. “We don’t want to do things that are sort of at odds. We want to do things that are complementary and that continue to build out this kind of campus and district.”

For now, though, both Wirtz and Burnett are focused on the rink expansion and the opportunity to fashion a deeper relationship with the community.

“The Wirtz family has been very excited about including the community in getting more African American young people introduced to hockey,” Burnett said. “They’ve been challenged (by us) to do more with people in the neighborhood.

“The challenge is getting people to know about it,” he said, referring to free skating and meeting space that Fifth Third offers the community.

Burnett has had relationships with three generations of the Wirtz family and said Danny “is going to take them to a whole other level.”

“Not to criticize Rocky, but Danny is in the neighborhood,” Burnett said. “He’s a young guy, he’s comfortable.”

Burnett said he was surprised to see Wirtz at the West Central Association’s festival earlier this month.

“He’s just walking around,” he said. “I had to tell people, they didn’t even know who he was. Like, ‘Man, that’s Danny Wirtz.’ They all started taking pictures. …

“That says to me that Danny would be a little more engaged with the neighborhood. He’s trying to build a neighborhood.”