A 26-story apartment tower is ready to break ground in Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood after receiving its first construction permit on Monday. The South Side development will replace a former parking lot at the corner of 53rd Street and Cornell Avenue with 246 rental units, roughly 10,000 square feet of retail space, and a parking garage containing up to 173 spaces.

Designed by Chicago-based architect Solomon Cordwell Buenz, the tower at 1600 E. 53rd Street made its public debut in late 2016 and passed the Chicago Plan Commission last spring.

The project comes from prominent Hyde Park developer MAC Properties. The same group is also wrapping up final work on Solstice on the Park, a 26-story Jeanne Gang-designed rental tower at the northern edge of Jackson Park.

This newest high-rise is expected to bring even more energy to the vibrant 53rd Street corridor which has emerged as one of Hyde Park’s main hubs to work, shop, eat, and live.

Other nearby projects of note include the modern, Jenga-like Vue53 apartments, a proposed 280,000-square-foot expansion of the U of C’s Polsky Center business incubator, and an upcoming 98-room boutique hotel known as Sophy Hyde Park. The latter is expected to open later this year.