Dee Grant has become the activist that preservationists love to hate. Chicago Magazine raised her profile this month with a feature about Grant and her aptly named group, VOCAL, the Voters and Owners Coalition Against Landmarking. In shrill tones, Grant rails against government intervention mostly, though not exclusively, in the form of landmarking, or as she calls it, “government-sanctioned theft.”
Any good gadfly needs a nemesis, and for Grant, it’s Preservation Chicago, the local non-profit that tries to preserve historic architecture and has fought to landmark buildings and districts in a variety of neighborhoods.
We checked out the VOCAL Web site, where the lead post laments the loss of some small retailers around Armitage and Halsted. Grant mentions the letter of a 14-year-old girl who asks — cue the violins — why all the cute little stores have left. Grant’s answer, of course, is that the onus of landmarking is what drives such businesses out.
A reader comments that the local hardware store Grant mentions left for three reasons:
#1 Home Depot @ 2665 N Halsted St
#2 Home Depot @ 1232 W North Ave
#3 Home Depot @ 2570 N Elston Ave
“The cute little stores have left the neighborhood because people like yourself prefer to shop at Tarjay-on-Elston,” the reader commented, referring to a previous Grant post in which she mentioned her shopping preference. “Others will shop at Costco and the list goes on.”
Landmarking, like most issues, is complicated, with valid points on all sides, but it’s hard to imagine Grant’s tone is winning her many converts in Lincoln Park, where several blocks on and around Sheffield Ave have been considered for landmark status.
So, leaving aside the vitriol (or not), how do Yo Chicago readers feel about landmark districts, which also have been considered lately in West Town and Andersonville? Social good or evil intervention? Somewhere in between?
Landmarking is sometimes good, but often overdone. Blanket landmarks that preserve whole streets or blocks just because a few residents don’t want their neighborhood to change are ridiculous. This overzealous landmarking depresses the neighborhood and prevents growth. Increased density and a greater reliance on walking and public transportation is good for small stores. Of course people who live in low-density areas with few amenities and where driving is essential will choose to go to cheap outlets over local retailers if they have to drive anyway.
Overzealous landmarking is not preservation, it’s pubic subsidy at the owner’s expense. That said, it is good to save *select* pieces of the past to remember. We should work with property owners who would like their property landmarked, and find compensation for those who don’t.
I’ll skip the invitation to jump into the landmark districts fray, in part because it doesn’t have much to do with the Armitage and Halsted situation.
The viability of this area for retailing was destroyed back in the 70s when neighborhood groups killed new commercial development south of Armitage and didn’t insist on retail on the east side of the 2000 block of Halsted.
I’ve watched one set of retailers after another after another move on from Armitage Avenue for reasons that had nothing to do with landmarking. High rents, poor business concepts, inadequate parking due to residential permit zones – the list of real reasons is too lengthy to include the phony one of landmarking.