'Just mesmerized by it': Giant sinkhole in Lincoln Park has neighbors on edge
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Imagine coming back to your parked car to find the parking spot beneath it collapsed and your car still standing.
That's what happened to one woman in Lincoln Park. CBS 2's Sabrina Franza is always investigating and she's digging into who's responsible for fixing it.
The owner of the car came back to find it dangling between the pavement and the pit. A massive hole in the middle of a private parking lot in Lincoln Park.
She'd barely been gone from her leased spot for two hours. Now,the hole seems to be getting bigger.
"It's not surprising, but I think its definitely surprising for that car owner."
Cara Pattulo is the fifth generation in her family to live on North Marshfield. She said her mom used to play in the alley where this type of thing happened. It didn't use to be this lot. It used to be a garage with a basement beneath it.
"They would always go down there and there would be oil pooling in this basement and they would throw sticks down there. She just thought it was always so strange that there was a basement beneath a garage. She had never seen anything like it."
The building in front of the gaping hole is owned by Kass Management, a company that's responsible for managing more than 9,000 units and over 400 properties in the Chicago area.
CBS 2 tried calling Kass Management multiple times, but no one would answer.
"As a renter, you don't really know the history of the building," Pattulo said.
"The city said that this is a problem for the property owner. The problem is most of the people that live here are renters. Their biggest concern is that this isn't the only hole that might pop up on this block.
"I'm just shocked that a hole can even be that big to be honest. There's been no answers and no construction going on around it," said Brandon Vargas, who rents next door.
Caution tape and a fence now block off the space. CBS 2 saw the Chicago Department of Water Management on scene. Looking into the building's records, its last inspection before this was in 2019 and it passed. Its inspection a few days ago, failed. The city citing the collapsed concrete.
"I don't really know what went on back there but I'm just mesmerized by it."
CBS 2 reached out to the Chicago Department of Buildings for more context to see if this was the only building of concern with this problem, as well as Kass Management. Neither have returned our request for comment.