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After our tour of AMLI 900, Joe and shot some video while heading back up to the Loop on South Clark Street to give you a glimpse of the other developments around the building and some of the nearby shopping and nightlife options. The apartment high-rise is within six blocks of Burnham Pointe, Vetro, River City, Printers Corner and The Lofts at Roosevelt Collection.
AMLI 900 is also just a couple blocks north of the Target on Roosevelt Road and within walking distance of eating / drinking establishments like Blackies and Villains.
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{ 17 comments }
Nice tour.
Can’t stand Dearborn Park. The sooner that giant testament to hating your neighbor is torn down, the better. Chicago deserves better
tup,
When it was built, Dearborn Park had no neighbors.
Burnham Pointe has posted a pretty hilarious banner: “borrowminium.com”.
What student wouldn’t want to live in one of these brand new luxury condos? A full two bed for ~$2K is far better than literally sharing a single tiny dorm room for $900/month.
And now that Dearborn Park is no longer a fortress in the middle of decay, it sure seems out of place.
tup,
Are you proposing to tear down the high-rises along with the townhomes?
For all your hating on it, it remains a fairly popular place to live.
Last week, after expressing my positive reactions to a “new urbanist” portion of a large suburban development, I was informed that it was the worst selling part of the development. The developer went on to inform me that he’d seen a number of these projects fail in various places around the country. In his take, planners like them, consumers don’t.
How are we going to have cities that thrive if they don’t offer housing that a sufficient number of people want to live in? And what, exactly, privileges your “hating your neighbor” as opposed to someone else’s “hating your neighbor?”
^ Well, Wendell Cox, the success of Lincoln Park, Lakeview, Wicker Park, Bucktown, downtown, etc etc as well as Manhattan, Brooklyn, San Francisco, etc etc basically throw your argument into the trash heap where it belongs.
I’m not saying that suburbia isn’t where most Americans want to live. I’m just saying that using the popularity of suburbia to justify the existence of suburbia RIGHT NEXT TO THE LOOP is outright silly. Clearly anybody would love to have a 4 bedroom house and 2 car garage in a cul-de-sac right next to the Loop, or Manhattan, etc. But does that mean that the city should allow developers to build it?
Let the vinyl, cul-de-sacs, and winding roads be built where they belong.
tup,
Which argument of mine went onto the trash heap? You didn’t address any of them. You tossed gross distortions of my argument onto the trash heap.
Among other things, I cited the continuing popularity of Dearborn Park to justify the existence of Dearborn Park – which is a mix of high-rise, mid-rise and low-density townhomes. Would you have had that land lie empty until some unknown time when it was ripe for the type of development you deem appropriate near the Loop? Do you really believe Dearborn Park wasn’t instrumental in the development of the South Loop? Should people have to leave a community as their families emerge, or should those families live in high-rises only?
Look back at some history – the mixed-density Sandburg Village, with its townhomes, artists’ lofts, mid-rises and high-rises was also instrumental in changing that part of the city and spurring the resurgence of Lincoln Park and preventing decay from overwhelming the Gold Coast.
Look a little closer at the South Loop also. Central Station began with low-rise development. Without that development the high-rises you so treasure might never have happened.
The unreality of your approach to urban development and how people live in cities is absolutely stunning. Your argument, in essence, is that some planner’s abstractions should dictate the shape of parts of the city, rather than the needs and wants of the people who live in that city. What you wind up dictating, in effect, is who can live where.
Joe, to answer your question, yes–I would rather have the land under Dearborn Park lie empty until a later time.
Development just for the sake of development is not always good. I think Dearborn Park in its current state is damaging to the neighborhood around it. Your argument about its popularity as a place to live is irrelevant to me, because I long ago accepted that most people do not give two craps about what effect their places of residence have on the environment around them.
I take it that this is another one of those discussions where there ain’t a chance in hell of us agreeing (and there ain’t a chance in hell I’ll ever see any merit in Dearborn Park), so lets just save ourselves the effort and move on.
tup,
Go back to my starting point in this thread on the failed “new urbanist” suburban developments.
I’d give two to one odds that if your ideal city were ever built it would be a ghost town. Not your ideal city “as built” because you don’t seem to understand the importance of serendipity and satisfying peoples’ wants and doing what sells at various stages of development.
Without the Dearborn Park you detest and the low-density portions of Central Station you wouldn’t have high-rise development in the South Loop today. Fortunately for Chicago we had civic leaders and developers here who were wise enough and far-seeing enough to realize that.
I love how the Dearborn Park people actually believe that “if it weren’t for us, the south loop would never have revitalized”
BS. The highrises would have been built anyhow by now.
Putting up prison walls against your neighbor is not how you bring life back to a neighborhood. The video above brings back images of The Shawshank Redemption.
Whatever, Joe. I don’t drink the Dearborn Park Kool Aid and I never will. Tear that crap-hole down, the sooner the better. What a waste of space…
tup,
I wasn’t aware space had become that scarce in the South Loop.
I think every serious student of Chicago’s development would agree that a) Dearborn Park was the right development at the time and b) that it had a major positive impact on the area and on the Loop.
At the time DP was built, the South Loop was a barren wasteland and the Loop itself was rapidly deteriorating in the face of competition from areas north of the river.
You talk of how to “bring life back to a neighborhood.” As Gertrude Stein famously said of Oakland, there was no there there. No neighborhood. Nothing. You don’t have to look far into the New York and San Francisco you cite to find developments that will disturb you equally.
The more you sneer at DP the more you reveal your unfamiliarity with Chicago and with the dynamics of urban development. Were you even born when DP was built?
Tear it down.
There is plenty of unused vacant land in the greater South Loop on which multi-story condos can be built once the economy recovers. Therefore it makes absolutely no sense to tear down building in which people have demonstrated their willingness to live.
Hey urban politician, go … you are nothing but ignorant … I’ve lived in DP for fifteen years, taken all the crap from crackheads,seen the city expanding around us, built a community here. We pay our asses off for this fantastic oasis in the middle of the city. Go and take a look at the place now and drop dead, you would move in in a second if you could afford it!
Editor’s note: inappropriate language deleted from this comment.
DP should have more in and out points… Tear down those walls!
DP, your anger is understandable. I basically think that the neighborhood you live in does not justify existence. I guess if somebody said that about my house I’d be a bit ticked off, too.
But my opinion stands.
^ Let me correct my grammar:
“is not justified IN ITS existence”
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