This rendering shows one of the designs proposed for the development of 12 houses at 72nd Street and Vincennes Avenue.

A development team is pitching the first Chicago-area development of multiple homes built from shipping containers, for a site in Greater Grand Crossing on the South Side.

Individual homes have been built from shipping containers in St. Charles, Westmont and a few other places. The new pitch is for a first phase of a dozen houses, with a possible second phase of eight.

If built, the houses, each made from five shipping containers, will be three or four bedrooms in 1,800 square feet built on a standard Chicago lot and priced at about $300,000, according to Darryl Burton, the project manager for the proposed Vincennes Village. He is developing the homes with Anthony Casboni, whose family has owned part of the site for decades.

In the past year, 26 houses in Greater Grand Crossing have sold for between $270,000 and $325,000, according to Midwest Real Estate Data. That's the approximate price range at Vincennes Village.

The Vincennes Village houses “will have that same aesthetic as the shipping container house in St. Charles,” Burton said. “Colorful, with industrial materials and a lot of light.”

Both the St. Charles house and the one in Westmont sold quickly.

Building with shipping containers is about cost savings as well as aesthetics. Burton said that with the shell arriving on-site pre-built, the houses can be completed in about six weeks, compared to up to six months for conventional home construction. The time savings, he said, “goes into what we price them at.”

Right now, the inventory of homes for sale is tight. “We can get these out fast,” Burton said, “and they’re going to look better than an old vintage house that got fixed up” by a flipper.

The developers held a ceremonial groundbreaking in June and are waiting on final approvals from the city’s Department of Planning & Development, Burton said. Work began on the foundations in early August, with city approval for that aspect of the work in hand.

The project is proposed for a site at 72nd Street and Vincennes Avenue, part of which Casboni's family has owned since about 1939. The family had a retail operation, Vincennes Discount Center, there for decades, and over time bought more lots, Casboni said.

The store closed in 2000, and in the early 2000s, Casboni and his brother developed eight conventional homes on part of the land. They sold for prices between $175,000 and $225,000. The development ground to a halt in the housing bust of 2006, Casboni said.

Complementing the existing houses with a new round of container houses, Casboni said, “would be innovative. It would look good.”

While the notion of building with shipping containers has gotten a lot of buzz in recent years, projects often don’t achieve liftoff. Architects and others have sometimes found the concept doesn’t play out well. Among other reasons, they say residential reuse of a shipping container does not make the highest use of its steel and is difficult to insulate adequately.

Burton said work on the first phase of 12 houses will begin as soon as city approval comes in. If sales go well, a second phase of eight houses would be built on an adjacent parcel if the developer acquires it.

Prototype designs for Vincennes Village show houses with a mix of exterior container walls and added-on siding, rooftop decks above breezeways and attached garages.

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