A developer is peeling about half off the site of an Avondale senior living community with a plan to put 22 townhouses on it.

The parcel, just under an acre and a half, is a long strip of land running south along Karlov Avenue from Belmont. It's empty at present and part of the three-acre campus of St. Joseph Village of Chicago, a home for senior citizens run by the Franciscan Sisters of Chicago.

In February, an entity headed by Jeff Benach, co-principal of Chicago-based Lexington Homes, paid a little more than $2 million for the piece, according to the Cook County Recorder of Deeds. "Most of it is an unused field of grass now," Benach said.

Representatives of St. Joseph Village did not respond to requests for comment.

Benach said pricing of the townhouses is not finalized, but that he expects it to be in the range of $535,000 to $575,000.

While it's common for Chicago townhouses to have their living floors stacked over a garage, the units at Lexington Village of Avondale will have detached garages on a newly built alley. With a private fenced back yard 35 feet deep between home and garage, "it's more like a single-family home than you usually get with an attached townhouse," Benach said.

Moving the garage out from under the living space frees up about 400 square feet of space in the home, Benach said. The units will be about 2,250 square feet to 2,500 square feet, he said.