Name the na… er… developer

IrishPirate,

We can’t all just get along when Carter persists in saying this: “How can anyone argue that Cabrini Green didn’t stunt development in the nearby area, did April Fool’s Day get pushed back this year?”

Are you going to let him off the hook on that? I’m not. He’s trying to tell me that my experience as a developer biased my perception of the impact of Cabrini Green – when there wasn’t any impact on virtually any of Lincoln Park at least from the mid-70s on. Hell, not even the most conservative of lenders raised an issue. There was no issue. What conceivable reason could I have to distort the reality 20 years after the fact?

I agree with Carter more often than not – far more often than not. But he’s playing way too far above his pay grade on this question. He’s given us no relevant facts to support his thesis – and his experience as a 5th grader through teenager has less than zero relevance to the considerations that moved real estate developers and home buyers during those years.

I recommend we “all just get along” with Carter on this one the way the LAPD got along with Rodney King.

One further thought for Carter to chew on. What “stunted development” on the parcels of land in Lincoln Park nearest Cabrini Green was the fact that they were urban renewal parcels owned by the city. No one was making a move on those areas until the city clarified what was going to happen with those parcels. Is Carter even aware of that history and of how much of Lincoln Park was declared a “slum and blighted area” and cleared through urban renewal programs, and of the temeporary blighting effect of those programs?

IrishPirate,

In late 1986 I laboriously researched the tax status of every parcel in the area bounded by North Ave, Clybourn Ave, Sedgwick and Division.

I identified about 150 parcels where the taxes hadn’t sold at auction and were available for purchase over the counter. The numbers were too small on each parcel to interest the big tax speculators. Total cost of buying the taxes on those parcels would have been about $25k. I went down to the county with my printouts to buy the taxes only to find that someone had been there the day before and bought every last one of them!

At about the same time I was negotiating to buy a triple lot on the northeast corner of Blackhawk and Mohawk, planning to build a home for myself on it. The seller stood firm at $30k, which was way over the $20k I was willing to pay for it. Got lots of those sad stories. And guess what – I wasn’t concerned about the proximity to Cabrini Green. Sedgwick Gardens – the old Marshall Field Apartments – was a much more significant blighting force in that area than Cabrini.

At that time the two biggest landowners in the area – and each controlled many parcels – were 1) White Way Sign, and 2) Alison Davis of what was then Davis Miner and Barnhill – Barack’s old law firm.

“No one was making a move on those areas until the city clarified what was going to happen with those parcels”

That’s exactly my point, thank you. Once the Ogden Avenue bridge came down, once it was apparent that it was simply a matter of time before Cabrini was going to the way of the dodo, you saw all of that development explode around North & Clybourn.

Joe, you’re backtracking – you started off this silly argument (as it were) by claiming I was imagining the presence of street punks from Cabrini outside of the areas you originally mentioned. You conveniently sidestepped much of what I pointed out, which is indeed fact, and believe me, a little kid comes home having had some bad experience in the park with gangbangers and it can have a quite profound effect on the parents long term plans. Of course, one family leaves, another will usually move right in, I’m saying Lincoln Park in the 80s was a ghetto by any stretch.

Again, the determination of builders to build in an area that they knew had long term potential doesn’t in any way disprove hat the gargantuan looming towers of Cabrini had a major impact on the area.

And you know as well I do that community meetings, for better and for worse, hardly tell the whole tale of a neighborhood nor are they representative of it.

You seem to only respect data in your field as “proof,” but the fact is that there is a reason why eyewitness testimony is still usually the determining factor in a trial. Believe me, this isn’t some bizarro tale I’ve concocted, were they on your site there would be dozens and dozens of my fellow friends who would vouch for all of this.

Cabrini kids may have been poor, but they weren’t stupid – why wouldn’t they be hanging out in Oz Park en masse? They certainly were swarming the beaches from North all the way to Fullerton and Oak Street, I recall those silly ghetto blasters being lugged around on wagons they were so large (one can only imagine the cost of the batteries).

There were no cops out there bashing skulls during the day, although I have no doubt many might have jumped at the chance.

we seem to all agree more than we disagree, though I will say I would be interested in learning more of the urban renewal specifics if you might have a link.

I think we’re getting a bit fuzzy with our “Lincoln Park” border here… I know there’s always the whole neighborhood vs. “community area” thing, Sedgewick Gardens is entirerly south of North Avenue. The only area I would imagine being impacted by that in the Lincoln Park community area would be the little corner of the neighborhood from Armitage to North Avenue (but of course, I wasn’t around)… Can anyone comment on this? This is now teardown central in Lincoln Park. What was this area like in the 70s and 80s? I know Joe was buying real estate just north of there, right?

Carter,

It is so pointless to continue this because you are so clueless about what drove and what delayed development in Lincoln Park, and how the community functioned, and how developers make decisions about where to build. Your history – e.g. the Ogden Ave bridge point – is either wrong or irrelevant. All the townhomes along North Ave were built long before the bridge was taken down or anyone involved even dreamed of Cabrini going down.

I’ll show you around the neighborhood some day and explain it all to you if you want. You might be developing some cred with 15-year olds, but you’re not scoring any points with anyone who was an adult in that place at that time.

And stop – just stop – trying to tell me that the kids were a presence in Oz Park beyond the small corner of it where the high school is. I officed at 636 Webster for half a dozen years, looking out at that park every day, sitting in it, holding meetings in it, sitting on the front porch of oone of my neighbors looking out on the park and drinking beer with him, taking my kids to it, etc. etc. No Cabrini kids to be seen. Period.

Carter,

IrishPirate has nailed the timetable here – Lincoln Park, except for infill and do-overs and western fringes, was over by the late 80s.

Carter,

take a deep breath.

I suspect you are right about the presence of kids from Cabrini in Oz Park. Again I don’t think it or Cabrini itself had much impact on the overall gentrification of Lincoln Park. Now did the presence of some of those kids negatively effect the quality of life for people living around there. I’m sure it did. It only takes a few thugs to make things difficult for everyone.

In my then lily white neighborhood we had an extended family of Irish American thugs who made life miserable for everyone. Threats, thefts, burglaries etc. Until a group of off duty cops and firemen with private tow trucks towed all their cars and deposited them in a forest preserve lake. They loved their tricked out cars. They moved soon after and if what my brother told me was true it was like a scene out of an old western. Something to the effect of “git outta town before sundown or you’ll be lucky if you just end up in jail charged with every crime in a two mile radius.” The funny thing is they were probably guilty of most of those crimes.

Except for disagreeing on the presence of kids from Cabrini hanging out in Lincoln Park you are both making separate arguments.

You’re not going to agree because you both experienced things differently and your focusing on somewhat different issues. How Cabrini impacted gentrification and how it impacted the day to day lives of people living in Lincoln Park.

As for your crack that Joe Zekas ain’t a historian or a social scientist that doesn’t mean a whole lot. I ain’t an English teacher, yet I still speakz good Enlish.

Some of the “dumbest” people I have met in my life have PHD’s and call themselves academics. Along with some of the brightest. Some of the brightest and most decent people I have met are “blue collar” and Studs Terkel has focused on them in some of his books.

You are making a Terkel “micro” argument while simultaneously suggesting the Joe Zekas “macro” argument has no basis.

He knows a good part of the story of the gentrification in Lincoln Park because he lived and experienced it. Just like you understand the smaller day to day impact Cabrini had.

This argument is going to go no where. Your both going to get increasingly pissed off and agitated.

I recommend alcohol.

Carter,

I’ve never suggested you’re a liar – just a know-nothing when it comes to Cabrini and its impact on development, which is where you started this loopy thread.

I didn’t have to have any insight into what the plans were for Cabrini. Read what I said above: neither I nor any other developer cared about the subject.

Here’s one of your wildest (among many) fabrications: “I brought up the bridge as it was apparent to anyone with a brain that once they stopped keeping it up it meant that the reason for it’s existence – getting white people safely past Cabrini – was going to be removed.”

Far from being what you contend, the intersection of Ogden and Clybourn was the most dangerous place to be in the area. It was smash-and-grab central – a place to be avoided, not a way to get anyone safely past Cabrini. I drove my kids down Ogden several times a week to Near North Montessori, when it was on Chicago and Ogden. If I’d been concerned about getting safelly past Cabrini that’s exactly the last route I would have taken.

I’m not even going to talk about the Puerto Rican gangs when I was developing 1900 Halsted or their ownership of the El stop at Armitage and Halsted. The fact that those gangs also kept the Cabrini kids from being a factor in the area wouldn’t matter to you.

What I keep hearing you say is that some of the longer-term locals were hyper-hyper-aware of the presence of black people and fearful of their impact in ways that distorted the reality of their near total absence. Get a grip on it.

Many another pirate might have quoted Oliver Cromwell’s admonition to the Long Parliament:

“You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately … Depart, I say; and let us have done with you.”

I’ll sign off on this thread.

What you hear and what I say are apparently two different things. Perhaps I’m not explaining myself well, so this will be my last post (although I admit I do somewhat enjoy annoying irishpirate, just a bit of schaudenfreude I suppose).

I do reiterate, I don’t doubt your personal experience selling in the area, Joe. I would suggest you simply consider there are many, many more perspectives and viewpoints that are also quite valid.

A few quick links I found in 10 seconds of google searching, I’m quite certain that given the time and desire I’d have no problem taking both of you to the mat on this one.

http://www.forgottenchicago.com/ogden4.php
Ogden was removed north of North avenue in 1967. Severing the connection between Lake Shore Drive and the interstate system, the massive viaduct was left to carry sparse traffic through an area few wanted to traverse. In 1958, fifteen public housing buildings of seven, ten, and nineteen stories were constructed at Division and Sedgwick streets. Another eight buildings were added to the complex, fifteen and sixteen stories tall, in 1962. The 1962 addition was situated east of Ogden on the north side of Division, extending east toward previous public housing efforts.

These highrises, known as Cabrini-Green, were comprised largely of poor African-Americans and early on were plagued by crime, drug, and high-vacancy problems. The hopelessness and poverty that came to be associated with this area were a far cry from the ideal that Lincoln Park community leaders were trying to achieve. As writer Greg Beaubien puts it, the removal of Ogden “created a barrier at North Avenue between elite wealth in the Triangle District and crushing poverty around Cabrini-Green.” Lincoln Park and Old Town had been successfully isolated by the removal of Ogden Avenue. The Near West side would follow.

for more perspective on my point, which was not that people have some unnatural fear of black folks but simply that anything as notorious as Cabrini Green most certainly had an impact, no matter how difficult it is to translate that into stats in the real estate biz:

http://www.chicagoreporter.com/index.php/c/Cover_Stories/d/Rising_Values

By far, the most dramatic shifts have occurred near Cabrini-Green, where nearly $1 billion in residential property has been sold since 2000. It was no surprise that Cabrini-Green’s proximity to the Magnificent Mile and opulent Gold Coast would garner interest as public housing buildings there were torn down—it just had not been clear how much.

Since Jan. 1, 2004, residential property sales within two blocks of Cabrini-Green exceeded the sum for a six-square-mile section of the South Side—nearly $281 million sold near Cabrini-Green compared to a combined $272 million in Fuller Park, New City, and portions of Gage Park, Grand Boulevard and Washington Park.

“It hasn’t happened overnight,” said developer Dan McLean, whose MCL Companies has developed land near Cabrini-Green. “It’s been going on 10 years now, and it would’ve gone a lot faster if the CHA had torn down the buildings.”

http://www.chicagoreporter.com/index.php/c/Sidebars/d/Rapid_Change

“Many of the new residents, such as Woodson-Shelby, echo the same sentiment: They wouldn’t have moved to these areas until they knew the CHA housing would be demolished.

Three census tracts that include land immediately surrounding public housing developments in transition—one tract each near Rockwell Gardens, the Cabrini-Green Homes on the Near North Side and the Ida B. Wells development on the South Side—were among the city’s tracts with the highest increases in home mortgages from 2000 to 2003. The city’s largest increase in home mortgages during that time occurred in an area bordered by Division Street, Larrabee Street, Chicago Avenue and the Chicago River. That census tract, which sits across Division Street from Cabrini-Green, grew from two home mortgages in 2000 to 180 in 2003.

However, the Cabrini-Green area continues to grapple with safety concerns. Many new residents, most of whom are white and middle-class, remain leery of their public housing neighbors, most of whom are black.”

UICstudent

Who’s spewing hatred?

I was last in Pilsen about 4 weeks ago – that’s not “almost two years” on my calendar.

Look at my Pilsen photos on Flickr – were they taken “almost two years ago?”