Comments ( 36 )

• I stumbled across this site and I must say this might be the worst professional Web site I have ever seen. Honestly, you can’t be making any money off of this. I have looked at it and I can’t find anything worth really taking a look at. You have a handful of comments from the same people each time – who are probably employees.

  Please let me know when you’ll be shutting down. My friends and I have a pool for when it will no longer exist. I have January of 08. Please don’t let me down.

• Jackson,

  Tell us who you are, and what your interest is. Anonymous slams can come from anywhere, including a competitor or a disgruntled developer.

  At last count we had just over 40,000 unique visitors a month, many of them repeaters.

  We’ll be around well past your pool date, so we’re guaranteed to let you down.

• Clearly, this stretch of Halsted has it all over Ashland, Western, Irving Park Rd, much of Belmont etc…

  I still maintain that this area north of Diversey can be “relatively quiet”. I have spent alot of time here. Other than an occassional siren, for street noise, its not bad here.

  I personally think Ashland/Western are too busy. These are totally different streets than Belmont and Halsted; 4 lane highways effectively.

  But…

  Chicago has become a better place to live year after year… The Ashlands and Westerns were and are the cheaper way to build and a cheaper opprtunity to own in good neighborhoods. I think the building on commercial thoroughfares was purely a response to demand from professionals wanting to live, work and own in Northcenter, Lakeview, Lincoln Square etc…

  Consider that there were multiple offers for the few properties available on residential streets… first time buyers and buyers without the means to out-bid were shut out. There still remains few, nicely placed residential street homes. They still command more money when available.

  So, build a 6-8-16 unit building around the corner on Ashland where its cheaper (between Roscoe Village and Lakeview), price $50 to $75K less than the residential street units and there you go.

  The people living on Ashland enjoy the same neighborhood amenities and trade off street noise.

• I’m not an employee…….hell I’m hardly a people.

  Joe, Jackson just sounds like someone who you pissed off Too many suspects to count in that category.

  Jackson, my suggestion is if you don’t like it then don’t read it. Real simple. Some of us do enjoy reading it. For various reasons.

  I always wonder how lonely and pathetic a person’s life must be to post comments like that. When I don’t like a website I just move on to the next site. I’m sure there is even a site out there Jackson might like. Perhaps a site dealing with “erectile dysfunction” issues.

• I’m a home owner, property manager, and concerned citizen. You sound like a disgruntled developer.

• I live on Belmont, though not really in an “upscale” condo. I chose the location primarily because of it’s proximity to the Belmont Red/Brown Line station. But I’m also a strong believer in public space and like seeing people walking around on my street outside my window. I love my view of the street, businesses, train stop, and a slice of the Lakeview skyline. I’m also an advocate of mixed-use buildings — they’re what differentiate us from the suburbs and allow us to be dense and walkable.

  I do think it’s odd there aren’t more cheaper, smaller-unit condos on the busy commercial streets. My building fits this description and sold out very quickly, but I know of other buildings with more upscale condos having a much harder time selling. Maybe developers haven’t caught on to the demand for smaller units? Or maybe it’s too difficult for them to meet the parking requirements when building small units? I’d be interested in hearing about that from some developers.

• Lee,

  I’m not a developer, but I would suspect maybe it costs more per square foot to build a small condo because the cost of bathroom/kitchen installation is spread out over less square footage? Maybe many developers think the potential buyers are breaking that cost down and figure they’d be better off with more space?
  It would be a great thing though if more developers could figure out a way to squeeze in some of these smaller condos to hide the parking podiums in future highrises.

• daveydoo — considering squeezing in more smaller units also means squeezing in more parking spaces (one per unit), and considering people who buy small units would be less likely to even want the parking, i imagine the parking requirements would be a disincentive to building smaller units.

  in my last comment, i also forgot to mention the convenience of living on a commercial street. i live above my corner store, so the distance from my couch to the corner store is about the same as the distance from the average suburbanite’s couch to their pantry. i don’t keep cookies or chips in my pantry — if i want them i drop downstairs and buy them. people might think there’s not much difference between living on the street and living 3 blocks away, but it does make a difference in your everyday habits.

• Jackson, this website is thriving and will be around long after you’re dead.

• Having driven down Belmont from the Kennedy to Sheffield several thousand times during the last 6 yaers, I can’t say that I’ve seen much change in its character.

  Until you get east of Racine, Belmont still has a forlorn, lifeless aura about it, despite all the new construction.

• Many people simply make a rational cost/benefit analysis of noise levels v. cheaper condo/convenience and conclude that street noise is not so terrible. If you spend time in places like New York, Rome and Hong Kong, you see that most streets are busy thoroughfares with noise aplenty, and people still pay big bucks to live right on them. The fact that it’s happening here shows the maturation and growth of Chicago, IMO.

• Belmont is one of my favorite streets in Chicago. I really love the way it has developed, and I look forward to seeing other Chicago boulevards developed in this fashion.

  Blocks upon blocks of urban streetwalls. Ahhh, reminiscent of the 1920’s….

• Take a drive with me along Belmont Ave. Are we talking about the same street? This is not Rome, not New York, not Hong Kong. I don’t remember the 1920s, so maybe it is reminiscent of that era.

• Michelle, I agree wih the analogy. Ashland Ave is not 2nd or 3rd Ave in Manhattan’s Midtown, but it is the same concept. If you want to be there, you have to buy what you can afford. The demand for condos was high, supply of residential street condos and $400K plus buyers low. So build on Ashland, Western, Belmont etc… and charge $350K.
  Joe, Michelle’s basically saying, you go where you can. You know as well as I do, residential streets command alot more money in the same hot areas.

  My cousin lives at 43rd and and 2nd by the UN in Midtown, Manhattan. The units in the building go for 1000+ sq/ft and you wake up to glorious car horns… it’s awesome… I love it there.

• Note that I wasn’t disagreeing with Michelle as to the cost / benefit issue, or on the desirability of living in a dense, noisy area.

  Belmont has a different character than the lively, crowded thoroughfares of some other cities.

• Joe:

  Thanks for the tour. I have personally also driven that stretch of Belmont. Of course there are plenty of street discontinuities, but your tour doesn’t change what I say. Given that it’s inevitable for a modern city to have streetwalls pockmarked with gas stations and strip malls, Belmont does a great job of maintaining a streetwall as a whole for quite some distance. That is all I was commenting on.

  The problem is, while I don’t deny the truth behind the fact that Americans have largely become one stop shoppers, and that is likely why so many retail strips aren’t succeeding, I have a question for you. What solution to this problem do you have in mind that continues to maintain Chicago’s treasured urban character? Certaily we can tear down those buildings on Belmont and replace them with giant strip centers and parking lots, but we all know that wouldn’t be palatable to any of us, aesthetically.

  I think the root of the problem of why Americans have become 1-stop shoppers is very simple–the car, and ample parking. The reason I say that, Joe, is because of my experiences in New York, especially Manhattan. While New York is full of immigrants, a LOT of Manhattanites are plain old Americans who have come from someplace else, like myself. They were all accustomed to driving to Meijers or Shop-Mart or Target or what have you, getting their stuff, and driving home. Yet quite easily one gets there and adapts himself to a different way of shopping–walking, browsing windows, etc etc. So I don’t really think that Americans are BOUND to remain one-stop shoppers as some people may imply. It’s a matter of the environment.

  I think what has gone wrong in Chicago and what has hurt strips like Belmont is actually pretty simple. Poor transit ridership, and constant accommodations for the car. When you have a strip like Belmont, but then a few blocks or miles away you have giant retail centers with ample amounts of parking, you are making people’s decisions for them. People will choose to take their car to the convenient strip mall over driving to Belmont and spending 1/2 hour looking for street parking. Plus, people will choose to drive over using a bus anyhow if given the choice and if parking looks like it will be readily available.

  And this is exactly what is happening (and will continue to happen) in Chicago. Retail centers with ample parking steal business away from developing urban-style retail strips. More people choose to drive, and because of that people begin to demand parking in EVERY new project that gets built. It’s a never ending cycle.

  What Chicago should have done long ago (and it’s likely too late for this now) was to simply level the playing field EVERYWHERE, as tends to occur in New York. Instead of retailers with ample parking getting a distinct advantage (and encouraging more people to drive), no stores anywhere should have additional off-street parking. I guarantee you that while this sounds silly in Chicago 2007, if such a thing were implemented 25-30 years ago, Chicago would be better off now, and people wouldn’t be complaining about parking.

  Why? Because people would have found a way to get around as they always do, and they would have used the bus or the L. With a higher transit constituency, service cuts would have been less likely, retail strips would have remained successful, and Chicago would have turned out to be a much less car dependent town than it is today.

  So the problem with Belmont isn’t that there aren’t buses serving it. The problem is that not enough of a critical mass of people are riding those buses and interested in getting out and shopping along the strip. Those that do want to shop do so elsewhere, and the rest just get into their car and drive to North/Clybourn with all of its abundant parking. Horrible planning lead to this rather pathetic state of affairs, and I don’t see Chicago turning this situation around. STOP CREATING SO MUCH OFF-STREET PARKING is probably the only message I have.

• I’ll second urban politician. Joe, I think he’s saying that in the 20s we hadn’t yet turned against urbanism and demolished pieces of streetwall to create gap-tooth low-density streets. Now urbanism is returning and we’re rebuilding our streetwalls, including on Belmont.

  If you’re judging Belmont from a car starting under the Western Viaduct (don’t get me started on that topic), then of course you’re not going to see it as a great example of lively urbanism. I do think Belmont is lively east of Sheffield though, and that feel is spreading west. Your video doesn’t even make it past Sheffield — this is where the street’s “Pedestrian Street” zoning designation begins. When I moved here five years ago, it felt pretty dead west of Sheffield, but these days there’s a lot more foot traffic spilling west. I think as the surface parking lots, strip malls and abandoned buildings get re-urbanized, more pedestrians will feel comfortable wandering that direction.

• I’ll second urban on the parking too. Only, it’s not a matter of not allowing so much parking to be built, it’s a matter of not *requiring* that private developers build so much parking. The reason there are parking requirements is that the market does not favor plentiful free parking and would eventually lean back toward a more urban, walkable, transit-oriented system of living. Also as I mentioned earlier, these draconian requirements have unintended negative affects on things like affordable housing too. Maybe that actually is the intention though.

• Here’s the Sun-Times on the impact of parking requirements on affordable housing:

  Remember that this impacts not only subsidized affordable housing, but also market-rate affordable housing in the form of studios and one-bedrooms.

• Lee, Urban,

  Belmont is lively and interesting from Racine east to Halsted, largely becauxe of a nearly unbroken commercial street wall fed by the Belmont El stop.

  Chicago doesn’t have the density, and Chicagoans don’t have the habits, and the retail world has changed too much to revitalize much of Belmont west of Ashland.

  I’ve lived on Armitage just west of Clark, On Seminary in two different spots a half-block north of Armitage, and in the 1800 block of Halsted. I love noisy, crowded, vibrant, unruly pedestrian streets and will live on or very near one when I move back to the city. The more of those streets a city has, the better.

  Unfortunately, it isn’t possible for Chicago to develop truly viable urban locales throughout the city. Indulging in fantasies about this dilutes the vitality of the areas that are viable and dooms the less viable to drift and decay. The city needs a more robust approach to these issues than it has now.

• ^ You see Joe, I don’t agree that the retail world has “changed too much to revitalize west of Ashland”. I hate to always mention Manhattan, but I am simply using it to illustrate that the issue is more about environment than shopping habits. Whole Foods and K-Mart, which always demand off-street parking, have absolutely no parking in Manhattan. They both get ample pedestrian traffic to accommodate their needs.

  You’re right that Chicago doesn’t have the density for such an ideal situation. But when the city is trying to revitalize Belmont, or Clark, or University Village (south Halsted), or any urban retails trip,for that matter; why do they make the stupid mistake of allowing a traditional mega-strip center with thousands of surface parking spots get built only a mile or less away?

  The city is falling into this trap over and over again, and it’s really an example of incredibly poor insight & planning. You are undermining your own efforts.

  I know that you are talking about a car-dependent Chicago today, but with better planning as recently as the mid-90’s, I really thing Chicago could have made a turn for the better.

  The only hope for strips like Belmont is if all the local former manufacturing sites get developed, there is no more room for new strip centers, and all of the strip centers’ parking lots get saturated. That and, of course, if a better transit system that has its own ROW (and thus cuts through the traffic hordes that clog up every street known to man) gives people an opportunity to get around more easily.

  So either build a subway system that cris-crosses the neighborhoods or bring back the streetcars (or BRT).

• Joe — You make it sound like it’s hopeless. It’s not. There’s currently a wave of the new urbanism taking over planning, development, and even politics in this country that will restore urbanism in the same way that modernism so quickly destroyed it. You can see it happening in towns, cities and even suburbs across the country — not just in hyper-dense place like New York. Public space is making its comeback. The malls of the 60s and 70s are already dying. It won’t all happen instantly, but it will happen. Urbanism has thrived for thousands of years and I don’t think the car will change that for one simple reason — we can’t afford to subsidize driving any more — both economically and environmentally speaking. The rest of the world has learned this, and we will be forced to as well.

• The rest of the world is just a lot older than we are and has used up all of their space – we have a long way to go before that happens.

  I’m not so sure malls are dying, they are being forced to change like everything is, but dying seems like a stretch.

  And my understanding is that Chicago started losing a lot of retail business when the giant malls went up – Woodfield, Old Orchard, etc.

  as people started moving back into the City from the burbs, the big chain stores with big parking lots filled in the old industrial sites (Elston, Clybourn, etc), now we’re seeing some residential there as well, but I don’t expect the Best Buys and Home Depots are going away anytime soon.

  I’m not sure that was bad (even though I wonder why we have so many Home Depots). In the larger scheme, even though it’s providing some gridlock headaches now, probably better to have Chicago getting this revenue than to have people driving out of town (and eventually leaving town permanently). Either way, it was part of the City’s evolution, and the heavy industry isn’t coming back, so we gotta deal with it. Even Lake View has some of these kinds of stores, they’ve just done a good job of masking/condensing the parking.

  Large malls are functional- you can go and get all your shopping done in one place. You just can’t really do that in the City walking around, it doesn’t work, unless you happen to be in the relatively small demographic of living right smack in the middle of a retail corridor, as Lee seems to.

  For a few years I was doing a good amount of my holiday shopping largely in Old Orchard (where I drive). Anyone who knows me would confirm it was not without great resistance I finally bought into the shopping mall concept – I really don’t like shopping that much, much less making a long trip to go do it, but used to go the Century, and the newer stores just didn’t have what I was looking for.

  But you can’t beat a place like Old Orchard for efficiency. Everything is there, it’s laid out well, it’s outdoors and pleasant, and it’s 2 seconds off of the expressway. It actually takes me less time to drive there from Belmont/Kimball where I live than it does for me to take a bus over to Clark St.

  But in recent years I decided to go back to Lake View to shop, Belmont & Lincoln and Belmont/Diversey & Clark, which I bus to, or drive somewhat nearby and then walk around, dropping off packages in my trunk when there’s too many to carry. It takes a lot lot longer to do, but the bus is a lot more peaceful, as long as it’s not crowded like a sardine can. I even made a side trip to Toys R Us last year, only to find that a particular toy car I bought for a nephew made ridiculous irregular revving noises in my backpack the rest of my trip. Hopefully it was more amusing than annoying to the other folks stuck on the bus with me.

  For a while I went down to North & Clybourn, but now it’s just too much of a zoo, it hit a tipping point and just sunk IMO. The parking lots there are actually a negative, as even if you can find a spot the people fighting over them and honking at each other create a very unwelcoming atmosphere, I will definitely take hustling around on foot in Lake View over that any day.

  Maybe we need an elevated line running right down Belmont… or a street car running in the middle of the street. I don’t see a subway going in (although that would be excellent), and Belmont is long overdue for a complete and total rehab in any case. It goes from being a 2 lane street to a 4 lane street and back again so often that people don’t seem to much respect the lanes at all, and the buses bunch with more frequency than any other street I’ve ever seen in Chicago.

• Manhattan, 23 square miles. Chicago, >230 square miles.

  I didn’t say the prospects for greater urbanism are hopeless – I said they’re hopeless in most of the city and we all need to recognize that and concentrate efforts where they make sense rather than pursuing some romantic vision that’s often idiotic in situ.

• PART of the problem is NIMBY’s who fight almost any building “larger” than what they want. Unfortunately, most alderbeasts are unwilling to tell them to stick their “ideas” in a dark, warm, place.

  There are many places in the city where larger buildings should be built. Not necessarily on side streets, but often on main streets like Belmont or Western. Density is vitally important to a vibrant city.

• All of you anti-car fanatics need to get over yourselves. There are some places where its not feasable to take the bus, such as the grocery store or hardware store. Sure, you can walk or take a bus just to pick up a few things, but who wants to lug home a week’s worth of groceries on a crowded bus? Who wants to ride that bus with people trying to do this?

  Public transit has its place in a large city, but so do cars.

• Oh Jane. In many parts of the world including NY, Paris, Rome, Madrid….., people have these $15 carts to haul groceries in. When you get home, it neatly folds away into a closet. But alas, we live in the OBESE mid-west. Walking 4 blocks with groceries in Chicago is considered shameful. Time to change, Jane.

• Jane — I’m not against cars. I’m against creating places where cars are the only option. And I’m against the disincentives for building the kind of development that gives people more transportation options.

  Carter — Yes, the traditional shopping mall is dying. PricewaterhouseCooper did a study in 2001 that found that 19% of US shopping malls were dead or dying, and it’s becoming increasing rare that new shopping malls get built. I grew up near just one such dead mall in Annapolis, which is currently being redeveloped into a second “downtown” with a commercial street, park and several 12-story residential and hotel towers with bus connections to the historic downtown. The shift is toward more urban mixed-use shopping districts. Even Tyson’s Corner, the mother load of malls, is planning a major retrofit with residential development and a train stop.

  You’re right about streetcars — they’re a great way to add more consistent transit in a very developed area without insane costs or teardowns. I believe Chicago is currently exploring the return of streetcars with a project on Ogden on the south side. Streetcars are already making a comeback in other US cities, including Kenosha, Wisconsin.

• Joe:

  As usual you sidestep the point with vague statements like “we need to concentrate efforts where they make sense” while continuing to spell doom for urbanism.

  Just what the hell is your solution, then? And this time, no smart-ass, condescending replies, please. And please answer this–I’ve always wanted to know: do you take some sort of morbid pleasure in watching Chicago’s built environment struggle to revive, while sitting in your happy Wilmette home?

• UP,

  why are you assuming Joe has a “happy Wilmette home”? Sure, he may put the “fun”in dysfunction, but happy?

• ^ LOL

• 1) Joe’s right on the Manhattan v. Chicago issue. Manhattan is a small dense area and everyone wants live there. Brooklyn and Jersey – just across the river, doesn’t have quite the same appeal. In Chicago there really isn’t much difference b/w Roscoe Village and West Roscoe Village. The north branch of the Chicago river isn’t same sort of diving line as in NY.

  2) The cost of ownership of a car is quite low. A couple hundred a month for a car payment/insurance, a few hundred a year for license and reg, and gas. Anyone who can drive in the city does. Have you ever been on the bus anywhere in the city other than the northside along the lakeshore? It’s not that great of an experience. IMHO the bus is filled with our segment of the population that cannot meet the low entry requirements for a car. Rowdy teenagers, lots of bums, sketched out looking child molester dudes, old people on fixed incomes, people who are not eligible for driver’s license (i.e. no SSN) etc. Maybe that’s a generalization but there’s a lot of truth to that. The 151 from Irving Park to downtown is not representative of the bus using population.

  3) People drive to shop at larger stores or retail centers because it’s cheaper and much more convenient. Smaller stores generally charge more money and have smaller selections. I like the concept of supporting local businesses as much as the next guy but when Target charges 2 dollars for a bag of chips vs. the 4 dollars at the convenience store, guess who wins. Especially in the neighborhoods where they’re trying to create the ‘new’ urbanism. It costs a premium to own a place in a ‘new’ urban center and consequently, I dont think there’s enough money to be filtered back into the local business community.

  4) Don’t forget that not all neighborhoods are blessed with big box stores. There are many neighborhoods in the city without grocery stores, even today!

  5) Such neighborhoods already have a form of urbanism, albeit not the ‘new’ urbanism cited by some who post here. These neighborhoods have urbanism too – with lots of local businesses. They have lots of small convenience stores, liquor stores, phone card stores, salons and barbers, SR-22 insurance brokers, store front law offices, small doctor’s offices, bakeries, etc, community aging centers, local bars with the PBR signs. Check out Lawrence Ave west of Western, Devon Ave in Roger’s Park, Milwaukee ave from say Armitage north to Jefferson Park, etc. Urbanism is thriving there too with lots of foot traffic. yeah, most people aren’t young professionals with high incomes, but that elite group isn’t the only demographic in search of an urban environment.

• the urban politician,

  The great bulk of this great city has never met, and will never meet your notion of an urban environment. I don’t think most people want to live in that kind of environment, witness the several millions who removed themselves entirely from the city in the past 60 years.

  Far from taking any morbid pleasure in the state of Chicago’s built environment, much of what I see makes me nauseous and violently angry, since I know what it’s like to live and grow up in the kind of neighborhoods that constitute much of this city.

  I’d like to see less of a focus on the affluent lakefront core and more attention to the neighborhoods. I’d like to see a wholesale revision of the building codes and to see the power of the unions and the alder-thugs broken so that it becomes possible to build far more affordable housing in the city. I’d like to see the city assemble large tracts of its wastelands and facilitate the building of the kind of semi-suburban environments that people want to live in. I’d like it to be possible for middle-class families to consider Chicago as an alternative to Aurora or Plainfield or Grayslake. The city needs famlilies, and it doesn’t much need people telling them how they must live.

• ^ Joe, you seem to have described much of the far northwest, far south, and far southwest sides of Chicago. Building semi-suburban housing that people want is exactly what is happening. Browsing YoChicago alone I read regularly about developments that fit your criteria happening all over the city. Every few months I hear of a new shopping center being built on 115th St, or Cicero, etc. Every time I visit those areas that’s basically what I see–semi-suburbia. But how can you completely blame the Alderman (while I agree that they are total thugs) when vocal NIMBY groups are blocking developments such as the housing that was planned near Midway Airport?

  However, isn’t it okay to at least have standards for development in some core neighborhoods? Isn’t it okay to say that neighborhoods east of western up to Rogers Park should at least try to have more pedestrian-friendly standards, and the same should be said of neighborhoods east of the Ike down to, say, Woodlawn?

  I know that you think that the city doesn’t have the luxury of being picky with developers in the south side, but I have a funny feeling that even if the city said, “go right ahead, you can build whatever the heck you want at 35th and Michigan”, developers still won’t come running.

  The stigma against the south and west sides of Chicago goes far deeper than simply pointing the finger at Chicago’s leaders. It’s blatant racism, and we all know it. We all take a part in it in our own subtle way.

  What I don’t understand, Joe, is this. Isn’t exactly what you want to see happen already happening? Housing is going up near Mercy Hospital, as well as in numerous other sites in Bronzeville. New low density housing could be seen on your motor Youtube tour of Bronzeville back in April. Chinatown has seen a ton of housing development in the past decade. Look at the Roosevelt Square development and other infill housing projects on the west side.

  Sure, most of the city still has a long, long way to go, but how fast do you expect this to happen? These things can take quite some time, no?

• “In Chicago there really isn’t much difference b/w Roscoe Village and West Roscoe Village”

  Sure there is – Roscoe Village is a neighborhood.

  West Roscoe Village is a developers’ pipe dream.

• up,

  You and I do not disagree on the desirability of pedestrian-friendly environments for higher-density parts of the city. I’m with you there. That’s the kind of city I want to live in.

  You ask whether what I want to see happening isn’t already happening. It isn’t. The examples you cite – Bronzeville, Chinatown, the near West Side – are not the neighborhoods that need more attention. And even those neighborhoods could have developed quite differently, Bronzeville being perhaps the best example.

  Bronzeville had / has huge amounts of vacant land in a desirable location with tons of infrastructure in place. Less restrictive building codes, non-union labor, an openness to non-insider developers, and a grander plan could have enabled the creation of an entirely new middle-income neighborhood with new parks and new schools appealing to an integrated population. That neighborhood could have even been built to a higher density than it eventually will be, and become more pedestrian-friendly and urban. It is, instead, becoming yet another upper-middle income mish-mosh.

  Developers from all over the country would come running if the right framework were in place. The city doesn’t want them and won’t tolerate them if they’re not in the insider network. It does its best to kick their sorry asses into Lake Michigan to make the message clear: “Chicago belongs to us, not to its people and not to the nation.”

  Finger-pointing is exactly what’s required. We set our expectations too low and accept too many things as givens and give too much credit to our pols for too little in the way of real accomplishments.