Comments ( 25 )

• How Belmont has developed in the past several years is what I would consider to be the ideal example of urban development along an Avenue in a city.

  Of course, the vacant retail spaces are problematic, but I think that is a problem which the market will eventually sort out.

• tup,

  See my take on the fantasy of pedestrian-friendly development along Belmont Ave in this video.

• ^ You didn’t have to remind me of that video–I already had it in mind when I made that above post.

  What’s not clear to me is your point.

• My point is that the market has already sorted out the problem of the vacant retail spaces. The passage of years of unprecedented retail expansion has demonstrated that there was and is little or no demand for neighborhood retail, even in dense, affluent neighborhoods near public transit.

  Much as we’d all like to see the pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods of our dreams, they’re not going to happen in many places. Not enough people want them enough to change their shoppping, dining and leisure-time habits to support those spaces, especially in the climatic conditions that Chicago enjoys most of the year.

  The vacant retail spaces are not merely “problematic,” as you phrase it. They’re deeply symbolic of a raft of social, economic and behavioral changes, and reflect the end-game for most visions of “pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods.” The visions are largely held by a tiny elite. The majority who have to live in those visions have been shouting that they don’t want them by leaving those streets empty of life.

  Since you’ve seen the video you’ve seen that your “ideal example of urban development” is an economic train wreck and a quasi ghost town most of the time.

• Quite a conclusion you’ve drawn based on your drive on Belmont.

  But the reality is, Chicago has plenty–dozens if not hundreds–of viable pedestrian retail strips.

  There goes that theory.

• tup,

  No theory – the reality you’d know if you had even minimal familiarity with Chicago. The reality everyone knows who knows the area.

  You know bloody well that I’ve made that drive 1,000s of times, and walked the area many times and talked to many people who’ve lived in the area, worked in the area and built in the area. And I’ve officed in the area for a dozen years in two different locations.

  My conclusion’s based on intimate, extended familiarity with that stretch over a span of decades. What’s your based on?

  Chicago has dozens, 100s of viable pedestrian retail strips? It’s a long way from dozens to 100s and I’m looking forward to seeing your list of them. I’ve been on the ground in every corner of Chicago, and I haven’t seen more than a few that aren’t utterly dependent on the automobile or tourists for their viability.

  Belmont Ave is a poster child for the triumph of urbanist fantasies over contemporary urban realities. Everything was done the way the fantasists theoritzed it ought to be. And none of it has worked.

• Drive those streets another 1000 times.

  As long as you keep arguing this way, there is no consensus to be reached.

  You could begin by recognizing that 1) I’m not the starry-eyed idealist that you’re trying to portray me as, 2) I never said Belmont will ever become a thriving pedestrian retail strip, and 3) I expect most Chicagoans to do their shopping by car.

  If you would have bothered to understand that I largely agree with many things that you say, we can do away with the patronizing and actually make this into a real discussion.

  Some strips won’t work for pedestrian-friendly retail (and pedestrian-friendly, by the way, does not necessarily mean that there is not ample parking), that’s for sure. Some strips can succeed–the city of Chicago is full of them. For some reason you must have some very specific criteria in mind when discussing “pedestrian-friendly retail”, but for me, if a streetfront retail space is occupied, it’s a success–regardless of whether people arrive by car, by bus, or by foot.

  I believe there are many reasons why much of Belmont is a failure, one of which being that the era in which people walk to Main Street to grab bread, cheese, medicine, get their shoes shined, get a haircut, etc etc is long gone–yet Belmont was pretty much designed for such a society. Other reasons include the fact that restaurants, cafes, bars, & nightclubs and some other types of retail that would perhaps work in some of the spaces essentially won’t fly with the residents living above them. Finally, as I kind of alluded to above, simply too many retail spaces have been built along Belmont–too much supply and not nearly enough demand.

  Most things are multifactorial, but for you to observe the conditions on Belmont and use that to proclaim the death of pedestrian retail strips in Chicago shows how much thought you put into your conclusions.

• tup,

  How Belmont has developed in the past several years is what I would consider to be the ideal example of urban development along an Avenue in a city.

  You’re ignoring the plain language of what you said and distorting the plain meaning of what I’ve said. Way to advance a discussion.

  I’ve made no argument premised on Belmont. I’ve argued from experience in all parts of Chicago.

  You need at least two things to have a viable pedestrian retail strip: pedestrians and viable retail. There are precious few neighborhood strips in Chicago where you’ll find either. Visit all of Chicago and get out on the streets and you’ll understand that.

  For the record, how much time have you spent in Chicago in total on your periodic visits to our fair city, and how many of its 100s of neighborhoods have you been to ? Don’t duck the question. It’s directly relevant to the weight of your argument. Despite your glib assertion, an argument from on-the-ground reality is the only one that matters.

• You quoted me, yet where did I say Belmont was a ‘great commercial corridor’, or that I expected it to be so? In your ever-so-narrow interpretation of things, did you ever stop to think that when I said “the market will sort it out” I meant that many of the vacant retail spaces should be converted to residential?

  Regarding the rest of your post, I don’t think it’s relevant to prove to you how many hours I have spent in Chicago because this is a universal discussion. We can be talking about Queens, NY, Washington DC, Evanston, Los Angeles, or Philadelphia.

  “You need at least two things to have a viable pedestrian retail strip: pedestrians and viable retail. There are precious few neighborhood strips in Chicago where you’ll find either.”

  ^ As long as there isn’t a parking lot separating a store from the sidewalk, and as long as the commercial space is occupied, it’s a successful pedestrian-friendly retail space–regardless of whether there are any pedestrians present or not. Best Buy on North Clark, Home Depot in the Gold Coast, Home Depot on Roosevelt, Target on Clark and Roosevelt, (potentially) Roosevelt Collection, the retail in North Avenue Collection, Armitage Collection, etc come to mind as examples of newly constructed pedestrian-friendly commercial spaces.

  This isn’t rocket science. A newer development can accommodate parking while still being designed to welcome pedestrians. Your declaration of the extinction of pedestrian-friendly retail based on a narrow mindset remains devoid of merit.

• TUP, you stated:

  “How Belmont has developed in the past several years is what I would consider to be the ideal example of urban development along an Avenue in a city.

  Of course, the vacant retail spaces are problematic, but I think that is a problem which the market will eventually sort out.”

  As someone who has traveled this street thousands upon thousands of times, I am asking point black:

  “Ideal development” for who?

  I bike down Belmont regularly, in rush hour – and there is no pedestrian presence once you get west of Racine, same as it ever was.

  Blind faith in the “market” to fix things isn’t what I call coherent urban planning.

  If you were on the ground here, you’d know that zoning changes and the like are dictated by a lot of local (corrupt) politics, the only market that counts is how much of a contribution one needs to make to a given campaign fund to get the change desired.

  “yet Belmont was pretty much designed for such a society”

  this just made me laugh. Belmont is not “Main Street,” and never was.

  Shoe shines? Until very recently you had factories in operation all over the place!

  If you want to bring back pedestrian oriented retail, I have one simple piece of advice for you:

  Lobby hard to have out-of-state purchases over the Internet subject to sales tax.

  Right now, for the privilege of having some kid making minimum-wage flounder around trying to even find me something at a Best Buy, I can do the research myself and get it on the Net for less than the store charges, before even considering the obscene 10% sales tax we now have.

  There is no more retail coming that isn’t chain, big-box – and those are as far from pedestrian friendly as they get. What we are getting now is service sector places, fancy nail salons, dog grooming, etc.

  And Joe is 100% right, these are expensive, boutique-style places, that cater largely to a small elite (financially speaking).

• argh, “point blank,” above, not “point black”…

• tup,

  I get it. What we all see here in Chicago isn’t relevant to what exists, and reality-based views reflect a narrow mindset. LA, Philly, DC – it’s all the same.

  The theories of the “universal discussion” are what matters. People don’t have to like a place and want to walk there for it to be pedestrian friendly. That’s something that’s derived from univeirsal principles. People’s likes or dislikes are irrelevant to the validity of those principles.

• Carter, you must be arguing with somebody else, not me. Not reading people’s posts carefully before replying to them and going way off on irrelevant tangents are what I have come to expect from you.

  Joe, you face the uphill climb of trying to convince me that urban retail cannot exist unless it is uninviting to the pedestrian–and I’m sure you reject any notion that there are many ways to build commercial than the standard “strip mall”, the crux of your problem. Knowing how you’ve made up your mind and sipped the Wendell Cox Kool-Aid, am I to believe that any further discussion will matter at this point?

• tup,

  I like to discuss what works in practice. You like to discuss what works in theory.

  I like to focus on what you say. You want to focus on what you meant.

  I like to have my words stand on their plain meaning and you want to make them mean something else.

  I think you can’t understand a place unless you’ve seen it function. You think the way it functions can be abstracted from its physical characteristics.

  Discussions that proceed along those lines do become rather pointless.

• TUP, you should go enroll in a high school debate class, because if you can’t answer questions when someone takes the time to pull an assertion of yours out, you need help.

  Again, you stated:

  “How Belmont has developed in the past several years is what I would consider to be the ideal example of urban development along an Avenue in a city.

  Of course, the vacant retail spaces are problematic, but I think that is a problem which the market will eventually sort out.”

  I asked who exactly you believe Belmont has ideally developed for, and how exactly you see the “market” working this magic.

  Is that off-tangent? Perhaps you should take your advice and try reading my posts before commenting.

  But, I suspect that from your POV, what defines “off-tangent” is anything that doesn’t fall into one of your neat, tidy explanations.

• Joe, I don’t mean to disregard your years in Chicago–clearly you know what works there.

  The problem is that it becomes very difficult to carry on these kinds of discussions on a computer screen with periodic responses every few hours. I think if we were to perhaps have this kind of discussion in person some day in the future we could communicate the various nuances of our arguments much better–I can’t speak for you, but I know that at least that’s the case for me.

  With that, lets move on…

• tup,

  My son lives just south of the Wisconsin border, and I’m up there frequently. I’ll come up your way when you’ve moved, buy you lunch, and we’ll do the discussion on video.

• Ha! That would be fun

  (not sure about the video part, though….. )

• Interesting discussion all the way around.

  I live on Belmont near Leavitt, a few blocks east of Western. We bought a new construction condo here four years ago, in part so my husband can walk to work two blocks away. I take the 77 bus to the L to the Loop. We put less than 3,000 miles on our car last year, but we are in the minority. The parking garage in our building empties out in the morning and fills up again in the evening.

  We had plans to make this condo our home for the end of our working lives and then our retirement, but I find myself with a deep longing to return to the bustle of East Lakeview, where I lived for 15 years.

  I’ll admit I’m part of the retail variety problem: I would love to have some restaurants on Belmont within a couple blocks of where I live, but I don’t want to live above one, with the chance of bugs and the smells. Evidently nobody else does, either.

• You aren’t part of the problem, Cynthia.

  The problem is the ousted- and ex-alderman Ted Matlak had nothing resembling an overall vision for the street.

  You do have a pretty good selection of restaurants on Roscoe right there, but I agree the variety you get east of Sheffield is tough to beat.

  Out of curiosity, do you know what is happening with Miska’s? It’s been shut down for months…

  FTR, I am sure Belmont will be quite fine in the long run – but that’s in spite of bad planning, not due to it. It’s main function is arterial (I believe it’s the longest running east-west street in Chicago) and it connects to numerous CTA train lines, infrastructure that always holds value.

• I agree that having some resturants, bars, and nightlife would be key to reviving the retail situation on belmont.Cynthia it’s not your fault. Not everyone wants to live above a resturant. What if you had recieved a discount on your condo would you accepted having a resturant or bar under you? Perhaps some developers should offer a discount on their residental units in exchange for allowing resturants and bars, so that they can sell their retail units and not have them vacant. You wouldn’t have to do that at every building, if there was more activity on belmont if would provide more incentive to increase retail demand.

  Also, after watch joe’s video again I don’t think there is a single fast food resturant on belmont other than subway and einstien bagels. Subway does well in store front operations all around Chicago. For such a huge market why aren’t there any mcdonalds, burger kings, KFCs, white castles, ect. in that area? Are they not allowed to open stores on belmont? It seems like a huge untapped market for them. There’s no reason why they couldn’t do business in store front locations.

• Sorry Carter, it’s 63rd Street.

• Thanks for reminding me about the former alderman’s contribution to the state of the street. Yes, I can’t take all the credit.

  Carter, I would love to know what’s happened with Miska’s. Why is all the food and liquor still sitting there a year after the storefront closed “temporarily”? (The Miska’s bar that faces Leavitt is still hopping.)

  I have to admit, I still had the idea that the part of Belmont I was moving to was antique store heaven. I gather that the retail space in the new condo buildings was too pricey for most of the stores to stay in the area.

  It’s just an odd retail mix near me right now: yoga place, Starbuck’s, shuttered Miksa’s, high-heel store, Montessori school, tattoo parlor, podiatrist, reservation-only cake bakery, and a whole bunch of dog boarding and training places.

• thanks, sheridanb.

  and Cynthia, I will say you are blessed with possibly the most competent alderperson in Chicago, and I think Belmont will always have an eclectic mix.

  the antique store issue is interesting, one my best friend’s family’s stores just got replaced by condos at Belmont just east of Southport. It was telling to me that after relocating from Armitage and Halsted to that location, they eventually just closed shop altogether.

  it’s got to be tough to pay the bills selling antiques these days…

• I’ve heard, anecdotally, that the antique business is suffering due to changes in tastes away from “traditional” furniture styles, though I don’t know if that’s true, but it certainly could be a partial explanation – it’s certainly the case in Britain more than here.