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We got word recently that sales have started at Clark 36, three adjoining buildings at 4860 – 4872 N Clark St. Construction is moving along, too (it’s progressed quite a bit since this photo was taken in August). The buildings are starting to gain some critical bulk, raising questions about what kind of neighbors they’ll turn out to be.
As we’ve mentioned, the project comprises 30 condos and six ground-floor retail spaces. That’s quite a few stores for a stretch of Clark that right now seems a little dead (partly that’s because the east side is occupied by a cemetery, but the west side is pretty bleak, too). More retail is planned at several other mixed use projects along the strip: Rainbo Village, the development underway at 4836 N Clark St, includes 15,000 square feet of retail, and another mixed-use building nearing completion at 4880 N Clark St includes two storefronts.
As a local (I live around the corner in Uptown), I’d love to see a thriving row of new, interesting shops and restaurants. I’ll be a wee bit disappointed if it ends up a strip of chiropractors, real estate offices and salons – the kinds of businesses that often wind up on the ground floor of mixed-use buildings along main streets. Franchises might win the day; the blog Uptown Update says rumor has it that Panera Bread is coming to Rainbo Village.
This would be an interesting turn for “Andersonville South,” the term many real estate agents have been using for the Clark Street retail corridor that extends south of Foster Avenue (even though it’s technically just inside the western border of Uptown). In part because the Andersonville Chamber of Commerce has taken a big stand in favor of mom-and-pops and independents, Andersonville proper veers towards the cute, funky and eclectic. It’ll be interesting to see if the new retail follows suit.
Barabara Buchel, of Jameson Realty Group, has starting prices for the two- and three-bedroom condos at Clark 36 ranging from the high $380s to the high $480s, including garage parking. First deliveries are planned for the spring of 2008.
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{ 25 comments }
“Andersonville South”?
exactly what, pray tell, is the Swedish connection to the area in question?
regardless, putting the South after Andersonville is a red flag indicating fraud. you don’t hear about Loop South, or Loop West, etc.
say no to historical revisionism.
West Loop? South Loop? I hope you were being sarcastic. Sometimes it’s hard to decipher sarcasm in the written format.
My biggest laugh was when a friend of mine bought a loft condo in Logan Square in the 1990s called the “West Bucktown Lofts”. Apparently it worked, because I’ve talked to several people who live in that area since then who are convinced they live in Bucktown.
But back to Andersonville… It’s a dirty little secret that businesses like the Hop Leaf are actually in Uptown, but shhh, don’t tell anyone.
Carter,
I go way back with Andersonville’s Swedishness (I worked for several years at the Swedish American Museum), so I see your point. However, folks who remember what the neighborhood was like in the ’60s, when almost every Clark Street business from Foster to Bryn Mawr was Swedish, might say that even the official Andersonville doesn’t have many Swedish connections left.
And while I’m often skeptical of agents who try to push the boundaries of Andersonville, “Andersonville South” is a tricky question. The businesses that are opening on Clark south of Foster are really making the street feel a lot like, well, Andersonville – there’s abundant cuteness, funkiness and quaintness.
Extending the boundaries as far south as Lawrence, though, might be pushing it a little. That area will likely get its own, new identity, influenced by the rash of development in the area.
Maybe we need to brand it. How about SoFo? It’s right on the edge of Uptown and Ravenswood, so it will need an identity separate from its official community area name.
Why not leave the danged names be and let Uptown gain a little bit of luster?
Regardless, putting directional coordinates like North, South, etc. after a neighborhood moniker (and one that is overused already in this case) just sounds pretentious to my ears.
Upwood? Ravenstown?
Woodieville?
“I’m heading over to Woodie to get a drink”
“What? Did you say your need a drink to get….”
Well you know what I’m getting at.
UptownR,
There’s a bar on the southeast corner of Clark and Argyle called SoFo…
Part of the problem with getting retail tenants in many of these new mixed-use buildings is that many of them have bans on any food-related business (fear of bugs, etc.). Also there may not be parking spaces allotted for the commercial units. As a result, you tend to get boring bank branches, law offices, and if you’re lucky a beauty salon. (And for those of you who think that beauty/nail salons are somehow bad, well, let’s just say “It’s a woman thing….”)
Too bad they couldn’t have put a “Rainbo II” skating rink (with some “upscale” touches”) in the new Rainbo Village building, along with a regular gym! But I guess the sound-proofing costs would be prohibitive…
I like NoLa better than SoFo
Or NoLaSoFo
NoLaEaAsh
UptownR’s comment about not telling anyone the Hopleaf is actually in Uptown brings up a good point: the patrons and even nearby residents of the Hopleaf and Konak’s and Tokyo Marina and several other restauraunts south of Foster think this is Andersonville and refer to it as such.
Not to get all ontological here, but if enough people organically believe it’s Andersonville, it’s Andersonville. How else do we decide which neighborhood is which? This is one where the identity emerges bottom-up and has some legitimacy – not like SoLo.
Barry,
We have these things called boundaries that exist on a physical plane and make it easy to tell one neighborhood from another. Think Foster Ave.
Belief is a necessary but not a sufficient part of the neighborhood-naming mix. How many legs does a dog have if you call its tail a leg?
What’s organic about Realtors and pretentious residents pretending that a part of Uptown isn’t Uptown?
For all meaningful purposes, the Hopleaf is in an extension of Andersonville. The city’s official “community areas” really lost meaning decades ago, and populations have shifted. For instance, much of Humboldt Park and Logan Square are more similar in demographics to Bucktown and Wicker Park than they are to the rest of Humboldt Park and Logan Square. When the “community areas” were established, this probably wasn’t the case. The same thing happens at a lot of neighborhood borders. Buena Park is more similar to Lakeview than to the rest of Uptown… The Ukranian Village now spills further south than before, but not because of Ukranians… etc.
Joe,
It often is not “easy to tell one neighborhood from another” at the margins, as you’re aware, even among people who have lived in a particular neighborhood for years and know what they’re talking about – despite these things called boundaries.
Fifty years ago, many of the “neighborhoods” that are now accepted and defined by “things called boundaries that exist on a physical plane” did not exist.
(Chicago neighborhood boundaries don’t exist on a physical plane, by the way; they exist on maps and in people’s heads. Take a walk down Foster, and you’ll see this – no red line in the street, no wall. Chicago neighborhood boundaries, like language, are fluid and dynamic intellectual constructs. So, yes, if 50 years from now, the definition of “leg” has changed to mean “any long narrow protrusion extending from an animal,” then “leg” will also mean tail. New words are added to the dictionary every year, and the accepted definitions of old ones are constantly changing. Why do the definitions change? Because the understanding and usage of these words on the ground has changed sufficiently to warrant a new definition. The same thing occurs with neighborhoods.)
Many of the community area names with “things called boundaries” are no longer recognized by anyone who lives there.
Does that make these residents pretentious? What makes people who live a block south of Foster and call it Andersonville pretentious? Andersonville is not an official community area, and if you look at its history, your “official boundaries” are likely different from the boundaries that emerged organically when Swedes first congregated here. The first landmark in Andersonville, Andersonville School, I believe opened in the 19th century at what’s now the busy intersection of Foster and Clark. It’s likely that back then, anyone who lived south of Foster thought of himself as an Andersonville resident. It’s also worth noting that the current Andersonville Chamber of Commerce was originally called the “Uptown Clark Street Business Association.”
If you look at three different maps of this pocket today even, you’re likely to get three different sets of boundaries for Andersonville.
It would be helpful for those of us who live in or next door to the neighborhood if you could tell us the precise boundaries so that we’ll know where we live. Let us know, while you’re at it, the last time you had a beer at T’s or the Hopleaf, or brunch at M Henry or caught a show by the Neofuturists. Might help your credibility in the discussion if you’ve spent significant time lately in the neighborhood you’re defining for its residents and neighbors.
“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master – that’s all.”
I’ve never had a beer at T’s or the Hopleaf, or brunched at M Henry or caught a show at the Neofuturists. Somehow it escaped my attention that those were necessary qualificatons for defining Andersonville’s boundaries.
I have, on many an occasion, discussed neighborhood boundaries with Barry Pearce. The last time we settled on Andersonville’s boundaries, they were the following: Foster Ave (5200 N) north to Bryn Mawr Ave (5600 N), Glenwood Ave (1400 W) west to Ravenswood Ave (1800 W).
I’d forgotten that occasionally we play by Humpty Dumpty rules. Might help your credibility if you don’t change the rules, without notice, to suit your argument. At any given point in time your “fluid and dynamic intellectual constructs” have to mean something more specific through the application of intellectual rigor rather than arch attitude.
Let’s call the area from Lawrence to Foster LaFo, pronounced Laugh-O.
This amuses me.
Today George Will had a column that took on similar thinking. George Will bane of the left and the right.
Makes me long for the silliness of “freedom fries”.
“Schools’ mission statements, student manuals and course descriptions are clotted with the vocabulary of “progressive” cant — “diversity,” “inclusion,” “classism,” “ethnocentrism,” “racism,” “sexism,” “heterosexism,” “ageism,” “white privilege,” “ableism,” “contextualizes subjects,” “cultural imperialism,” “social identities and positionalities,” “biopsychosocial” problems, “a just share of society’s resources,” and on and on. What goes on under the cover of this miasma of jargon? Just what the American Association of University Professors warned against in its 1915 “Declaration of Principles” — teachers “indoctrinating” students.”
the part of uptown that we are talking about is separated from the rest of uptown by the cemetery at clark and lawrence-ish. the whole neighborhood south of foster and east of clark is neither uptown nor andersonville in my book. and please remember that edgewater (the official neighborhood that contains andersonville) used to be called uptown until they seceded.
m, you’re right to some degree, but the cemetary doesn’t start at Foster… It starts five blocks south of Foster at Ainslie, so there is quite a bit of Uptown that is right adjacent to Andersonville and on Clark Street.
I see your point Barry, but:
“Andersonville is not an official community area, and if you look at its history, your “official boundaries” are likely different from the boundaries that emerged organically when Swedes first congregated here.”
Just kind of proves my point for me. There’s no “Swedish connection” or explanation in terms of the Hopleaf (not that they care) or other establishments opening south of Foster & Clark.
I’d suggest that it a) waters down Andersonville’s cachet and charm by further making the history meaningless, and b) is kind of an unnecessary smack in the head to Uptown – if Uptown is improving and new places are opening in its borders (long established, btw, Uptown is no johnny-come-lately neighborhood), why not give Uptown some props?
If we’re going to use Swedish or Scandanavian ethnic culture as the basis for calling a neighborhood “Andersonville” – then its western boundary stretches all the way to Foster & Kimball! That way you can accommodate Swedish Hospital, North Park U. and several ethnic businesses that are located well beyond Ashland! (And then of course there’s the Norwegian Hospital in Humboldt Park and the former Norwegian Consulate, now condos, on Kedzie near Fullerton.)
If we’re going to change community areas to reflect their populations, then we’d have to do away with the Ukranian Village, Pilsen, and Little Italy as well as Andersonville.
You’ve got my argument backwards, I’m suggesting it is the attempts to change neighborhood names and boundaries every few years that’s the problem.
It’s an issue of historical accuracy (hence, the boundaries that were set in stone for data tracking purposes), and to a degree, of respect for that history.
And obviously, the idea that a single institution or restaurant is going stretch said boundary is what I find ridiculous.
Take your Foster example – OK, you’ve got Swedish Covenant, Tre Kronor, and a few things out west. Then from there to Ashland you pretty much got nothin’ that you could say really represents a major Swedish mark on the City (Bowmanville is a whole other story).
IMO people that think neighborhoods are changing every year & that everyone should be dancing the happy speculator dance which always changes areas into “up and coming” or “hot, hot, hot!” neighborhoods don’t know what a neighborhood really is.
Carter and Kate,
I think the use of “Andersonville South” by real estate agents is used to put a face on a formerly desolate cooridor area for the lesser informed consumer… is fine. For instance, when marketing, your making a choice to associate the location and lifestyle with a popular Andersonville hot spot rather than Uptown. My experience is a larger market associates Uptown with east of Clark and also feel Andersonville is a more desirable location.
I don’t feel it’s an egregious attempt to re-name a neighborhood… like say the West Roscoe Village or West Bucktown debacles.
In a listing, I would just say “walk to Andersonville shops, restaurants, bars” rather than add the directional moniker.
“My experience is a larger market associates Uptown with east of Clark and also feel Andersonville is a more desirable location.”
I’m quite sure you’re right, but it’s still a slap to the people in Uptown – 98% of which I’m sure are not criminals – who are trying to work to rejuvenate the neighborhood. It sends a pretty bad message that the hard work of these folks is not recognized by the larger City.
I live in “Buena Park”, which is really just the southern part of Uptown. Edgewater was part of Uptown until the 1970s, when it successfully seceded and formed its own official Community Area with the city. Other efforts to distance areas from the “Uptown” name have included the monikers “Sheridan Park”, “Margate Park”, and even “Clarendon Park”, which is ironically the most crime-infested part of the neighborhood.
I used to see real estate listing in my area say “North Lakeview” or “North Wrigleyville”. However, more and more agents and sellers have become comfortable with the name Buena Park in recent years. I NEVER see listing that say Uptown in Buena Park, but the rest of the neighborhood is becoming less afraid of that name. Maybe someday, with all of the new entertainment options in the heart of Uptown, people will use the name Uptown with pride.
Speaking as one of the 2% of criminals who live in Uptown it really doesn’t bother me how that stretch of Clark street and that immediate area is marketed.
From the SE corner of Uptown to the NW corner is about 2 miles in a straight line. Even within a 1/2 mile square area of Uptown like Buena Park feels much different depending on the block you are on.
You have the highrises on Marine. The mansions on Hutchison. The center entrance six flats on Kenmore.
Whatever will get taxpayers buying and shopping in that section of Uptown is fine with me. The more the merrier.
What Irish said.
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