Skender, an established, family-owned builder in Chicago, is making a serious play in a sector associated with young startups: modular construction. The company is building steel-structured three-flats, a quintessential Chicago housing type that consists of three apartments stacked on top of each other in the footprint of a large house. It believes it can deliver them faster and at lower cost at its new factory than by using standard methods of construction.

Skender’s 100,000-square-foot factory on the Southwest Side, which began production in late May, contains four bays with hulking gantry cranes overhead, as well as welding jig tables that are dozens of feet long. But don’t look to be wowed by sci-fi feats of robotic automation—there’s not a robot in sight (yet). Instead, the technology is aimed at seamless coordination.1

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• 1. As gentrification continues apace in Chicago, with tasteful and modern modular three-flats filling in vacant lots, it’s easy to imagine the West Loop bleeding into East Garfield, increasing Sterling Bay’s desire to maximize its investment and raise rents. That would mean the value of Skender’s research and investment wouldn’t be flowing to the Chicagoans they’ve been designing for.

  Swanson is careful to couch discussions of this new housing model in terms of working with communities and developing neighborhoods in ways and locations they feel comfortable with. He says he understands that the ripple effects of housing are about much more than design and fabrication. “A factory-built three-flat is the easy thing,” he says. “Now we have to figure out what it means to put a three-flat in a neighborhood.”