Broken window theory in action.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_Windows_Theory
Building owned by the CTA has had a broken window for several years now.
and still has broken windows. You’d think some city official would have noticed by now
Tag: 42nd_Ward
Unitrin Building – Plus-X 125
1 East Wacker, Chicago, IL
sliver of moon noticeable in larger view
The Three Arts Club Chicago – a Mausoleum
Gold Coast
www.cityofchicago.org/Landmarks/T/ThreeArts.html
Crains reports: building considered being converted into a mausoleum www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/article.pl?article_id=325…
Seems sort of a ridiculous waste of an architecturally significant building.
Designed by Holabird & Roche and completed in 1914, the Three Arts Club was home to more than 12,000 female artists during its nearly 90-year existence but closed in 2003 because it didn’t have money for a major renovation. The building was designated a landmark in 1981.
A company controlled by Chicago developer Mark Hunt paid $13 million for the building in 2003 with the idea of converting it into a boutique hotel and social club. But that plan fizzled, and Mr. Hunt put the property back on the market.
THE CREMATION TREND COULD FUEL DEMAND FOR MORE PROJECTS. ABOUT A THIRD OF AMERICANS WHO DIED LAST YEAR WERE CREMATED, UP FROM 7% IN 1975.
Mr. Bickford confirms that he and his partners have a letter of intent to buy the building. Sources say Mr. Bickford’s group has agreed to pay $6 million to $7 million for the property, less than Mr. Hunt’s $9.8-million loan, which came due in February. Mr. Hunt did not respond to requests for comment.
Where Mr. Bickford’s idea goes from here will depend in part on how Gold Coast residents react to it. Alderman Brendan Reilly (42nd), whose ward includes the property, is reserving judgment but likes the proposed project’s limited impact on traffic.
sure, it would be quiet, but is that really what the building should be used for?
Clarity of distress
iPhone snapshot modified with Best Camera App
probably my personal favorite iPhone snapshot, so far. Might be a copy of some famous photo, but not consciously, if at all.
Train Chants Resuming
Kinzie Street and Clinton.
Yahoo Maps/Flickr lists this as being in Killgubbin, Chicago. There is an alternative spelling of Kilgubbin, which was also known as Little Hell. Used to be predominately Irish immigrants, many from the Irish town of Kilgubbin.
GapersBlock wrote about the area a few years ago;
So where do the Irish come in, and how did the name transfer?
In the mid-1840s a devastating blight struck the potato crops in Ireland, leaving hundreds of thousands hungry and penniless. Perry Duis writes in his book, Challenging Chicago, that, as a consequence of the famine, “three large landholders in Kilgubbin, County Cork, and County Mayo evicted their peasants and paid for their passage to America.” (93) These Irish peasants made their way to Chicago.
Jobs in Chicago in the late 1840s were scarce, and the Irish arrived with little money or resources. As a result, they became squatters, erecting a shantytown on unoccupied land just north of the river, near the site of the “original” Goose Island. When the Irish moved their settlement northwards to the present-day Goose Island, they took the island’s name with them.
Accounts from the period clearly state that the Irish settlers raised livestock on the island, including cows, chickens and pigs. Whether or not they actually raised geese in their backyards is a bit unclear, but that certainly became the popular story.
…
By the 1890s, Goose Island had developed an unsavory national reputation for its slums, crime and industrial pollution. In 1896, a news item in the New York Times about a fire at the American Varnish Works on the island described Goose Island as “a dilapidated locality.” Partly in an attempt to combat this image of the neighborhood, Chicago alderman considered making “Ogden’s Island” the official name in 1891, but the change apparently was never made. (Duis 107) Goose Island persists as the accepted name for the area.
In addition, the neighborhood has entertained many other nicknames throughout its early history. The Irish settlers gave the area the name “Kilgubbin” for the home they left in Ireland. In the 1860s, flames and smoke from the Peoples Gas coal plant on the island gave the neighborhood the name “Little Hell.” And, finally, the fumes from tugboats moored at the island in the early twentieth century gave one unfortunate area the name “Smokey Hollow.” (Duis 103)
[Click to continue reading Gapers Block: Airbags – Goose Island]
“Challenging Chicago: Coping with Everyday Life, 1837-1920” (Perry R. Duis)
Man Sues RINO nightclub
My quick take: serves the patron right for stepping foot in such a lame bar.
[343 West Erie, Chicago, despite what the sign says – 658 North refers to the cross street ]
A man is suing RiNo nightclub for injuries he says he sustained at the hands of one of RiNo’s bouncers.
According to the complaint, on December 20, 2008, plaintiff Sean Regan was in the VIP area of RiNo nightclub when he “inadvertently dropped a drink on the floor” and was asked to leave by an unknown bouncer.
When Regan asked to speak to the manager, the complaint states, the unknown bouncer angrily denied his request, led him down a dark hallway with another unknown bouncer, shoved him, twisted his arms behind his back and “spun him around violently at which time [plaintiff’s] left thumb hooked into the unknown bouncer’s jacket pocket, resulting in a fracture to [plaintiff’s] left hand.”
[Click to continue reading Man Sues RiNo nightclub for Injuries by Bouncer – Chicago Bar-tender, complaint here Scribd.com ]
Of course, I’ve only been inside about three minutes, but any bar that names themselves Republican In Name Only is suspect.
Say Goodbye
even though phule beat me to it…
[ www.flickr.com/photos/phule/3828089135/ ]
a few blocks north of me…
Dwyane Wade buys Chicago townhouse
[Summer Hoops, Rogers Park somewhere]
Sam Smith reports:
Has Dwyane Wade purchased his Chicago dream house as a prelude to signing a free agent contract with the Bulls next summer?
Or is Wade just a clever real estate speculator at a good time?Prying eyes want to know. And at least basketball franchises in Chicago and Miami.
ChicagoMag.com’s real estate blog reported Monday that Wade has purchased a four story riverfront townhouse in Kinzie Park, which is just west of the Loop across the river from the East Bank Club. The price is said to be about $1.4 million, which hardly seems like what you’d pay for an occasional getaway place back in your hometown if you are planning to establish roots in Miami by signing a major extension.
[Click to continue reading Chicago Bulls Blog: Dwyane Wade buys $1.4 million Chicago townhouse]
Hey, DWade for Ben Gordon1 is definite upgrade; even though Dwyane Wade is injury-prone, he is certainly one of the top guards in the NBA.
Sam Smith still doesn’t believe in outgoing links, but Google is2 our friend:
The Kinzie Park townhouse is part of a development of former industrial parcels across the river from the East Bank Club that also includes high-rise condos. The townhouses have private yards fronting the river along a shared promenade. Wade bought a 3,900-square-foot unit with a two-car garage and a rooftop deck.
The property was on the market for almost a year, says the seller’s agent, Harold Blum, and it sat vacant for a while. “But then we furnished it and we got two offers,” says Blum, who would not reveal whether Wade’s offer was the higher of the two. Wade closed on the sale in late June, but information on the deal only surfaced recently at the Cook County Recorder of Deeds.
[Click to continue reading NBA and Olympic Star Buys in River North – Deal Estate – August 2009 – Chicago]
Coincidentally, Flickr-eeno phule and I were just walking past here a couple weeks ago, albeit on the other side of the river. It doesn’t look like I took any photos of this area, but then I didn’t see anything photo-worthy either. I’d like having DWade as a near-neighbor, not that I’m much of a celebrity stalker (well, except for the time Michelle Obama was eating across the street). The Chicago Bulls can dream, right?
Footnotes:Sidewalk Salads
I think this would be a fun field trip, traipsing around the West Loop with Nancy Klehm (http://spontaneousvegetation.net/). I’d want to wash the dog piss off of anything I foraged though, perhaps in a bath of lye and bleach1.
Armed with pruning shears and a paper bag, Nance Klehm walks along a Chicago sidewalk, pointing out plants and weeds that can make a tasty salad or stir-fry.
She snips stalks from a weed with downy leaves and white powder commonly called goosefoot or lamb’s quarters.“I collect a lot of this,” said Klehm, 43. “It’s indistinguishable from spinach when you cook it. I never, never grow spinach or other greens except kale. Everything else I forage.”
Klehm is among a small group of urban foragers across the United States who collect weeds and plants from city streets and gardens to use in meals and medicines. Some are survivalists while others are environmentalists or even gourmands seeking new flavours for cooking.
Klehm leads small groups of about 20 people a few times a year on urban forages in Chicago.
[Click to continue reading Urban foragers feast on sidewalk salads – Yahoo! News]
Also – seems like there is a lot of industrial pollution in the soil in the city, especially the older parts of the city like the West Loop area. Used to be a lot of factories around here in the days before the EPA was even a glimmer of an idea. Not to mention the Fisk coal plant nearby, spewing heavy metals.
Still, an interesting topic.
Footnotes:- kidding, almost [↩]
Chicago Children’s Museum move stalls out
About a year ago, we had a flurry of posts opposing the move1 /2 /3 /4 /5 /6 /7 of the Chicago Children’s Museum from Navy Pier to a semi-subterranean location in a corner of Grant Park.
Just a year after winning hard-fought City Council permission to move to Grant Park, the Chicago Children’s Museum has hit a financial wall, raising a real prospect that its highly controversial new facility in the park’s northeast corner may never be built.
A moribund economy now may have a better chance of blocking the project than lawsuits by parks activists and neighborhood opponents. Fundraising has foundered while projected costs have climbed by tens of millions to $150 million or more, Crain’s has learned. Sources close to the project say odds now are 50-50 at best that the Grant Park plan will proceed.
As a result, the museum is considering its options, including downsizing the proposed facility, getting a cash infusion from the Chicago Park District or extending the lease on its current space at Navy Pier as far as 2025.
…
Museum board Chairman Gigi Pritzker, who was not available for comment, could tap her personal fortune to bail out the project, were she so inclined. But short of that, signs are multiplying that the proposed facility is turning into one more headache for Mayor Richard M. Daley, who spent considerable political capital pushing the museum plan through the council in June 2008 over the opposition of the local alderman, Brendan Reilly (42nd).
According to the museum’s latest available income-tax return, filed in May with Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s charitable trust division, the museum had $28.1 million in “pledges receivable” as of June 30, 2008 — just $1 million more than it did a year earlier. Much of that is believed to be a continuing naming-rights commitment for the proposed facility from Northbrook-based Allstate Corp., which says it still backs the project.
[Click to read more details of Museum move stalls out | Crain’s Chicago Business]
Of course, wealthy heiress Gigi Pritzker could fund the construction out of her own vast wealth should she choose to, since she was one of the driving forces behind the whole fiasco, but the whole point was to get taxpayers to pay for the museum’s new location. Kind of like one of those sports stadium deals we fulminate against now and then. The Chicago Children’s Museum is a private museum, thus any profits collected will remain in the museum, and not the City of Chicago.
Footnotes:- for instance: Setback for the CCM juggernaut [↩]
- or: Fight for Chicago’s treasured lakefront [↩]
- or: Subterranean museum [↩]
- or: The Grant Park land-grab [↩]
- or: Chicago astroturf alert [↩]
- or: Keep childrens museum out of Grant Park [↩]
- or: Daley vs Reilly [↩]
Happiness is Next on the Agenda – oil on canvas
abandoned business space, West Loop.
[view large on black at my photoblog: www.b12partners.net/photoblog/index.php?showimage=207 ]
former home of EHDD, an architectural firm, and most recently, Mesirow Stein office for R+D 659. Vacant since 2/2009.
First Bike Trip of 2009
I realized I hadn’t been on my bicycle since last year’s accident. Last weekend, we went to an art opening that was near the outrageously large pothole that caused last year’s spill: consequently I was determined to jump on at least a quick ride as soon as possible. Prove to myself I had no residual fear of biking in the city. Turned into an 8 mile excursion – I didn’t go very fast because I am woefully out-of-shape1, but no matter. Utter bliss. Didn’t bring my iPod, wore a helmet, still was delightful to cruise through alleys and streets. Sunday is a good day to bike in the city, traffic is significantly reduced, at least in my neighborhood.
Here is the route as reported by EveryTrail’s iPhone application:
(click to embiggen, natch)
First bike trip of 2009
Widget powered by EveryTrail: GPS Geotagging
I took some photos with my D80, will post those later at Flickr.
- wine belly especially [↩]
David Simon and Ed Burns Working on a Haymarket Riot piece
As an aside to the main thrust of the Bill Moyers David Simon interview, Mr. Simon notes that Ed Burns1 is working on a Haymarket Riot piece. Oh please, please, please do this!! And please, please, please, I want to work on the set!. Actually, Richard Linklater was supposedly working on a Haymarket Riot film too, perhaps they could collaborate. Or share research, whatever, as long as I can help in some way with either project.
DAVID SIMON:
But I look at what’s happened with unions and I think– Ed Burns says all the time that he wants to do a piece on the Haymarket.
BILL MOYERS: The Haymarket strike.
DAVID SIMON: Yes. That– the bombing, and that critical moment when American labor was pushed so much to the starving point that they were willing to fight. And I actually think that’s the only time when change is possible. When people are actually threatened to the core, and enough people are threatened to the core that they just won’t take it anymore. And that’s– those are the pivotal moments in American history, I think, when actually something does happen.
You know, they were– in Haymarket, they were fighting for the 40-hour work week. You know? So, it wasn’t– it sounds radical at the time, but it’s basically a dignity of life issue. And you look at things like that. You look at the anti-Vietnam War effort, in this country which, you know, you had to threaten middle class kids with a draft and with military service in an unpopular war for people to rise up and demand the end to an unpopular war. I mean, it didn’t happen without that. So, on some level, as long as they placate enough people. As long as they throw enough scraps from the table that enough people get a little bit to eat, I just don’t see a change coming.
- David Simon’s long time writing partner [↩]
Actors’ Equity Association’s new home
557 W Randolph St, formerly the headquarters of Zonta International, will be the new home of the 48,000 member Actor’s Equity Association.
Actors’ Equity Association, the union of professional actors and stage managers in the United States, has purchased its own building on Randolph Street just a block or two west of the core of Chicago’s theater district. And according to Steven DiPaola, the union’s assistant executive director for finance and administration, Equity is considering moving some of the union’s national back-office functions from New York to Chicago.
According to Chris Jones, the building at 557 W. Randolph was built in 1855, and is one of the few that survived the 1871 Chicago fire. I wonder if there will events held there? Celebrity sightings?
Daley and his Parking Meter Scandal
Doubt if this particular Mayor Daley scandal has percolated into the national news media yet, but it is only a matter of time.
No one in Chicago has been happy about the recent hike in parking meter rates, but by last week the frustration had become outrage, and the outrage had become a political problem. Since the city’s speedy decision in December to lease the meters for 75 years in return for about $1.2 billion in quick cash, what you get for your quarter has declined precipitously. Worse, residents are fed up with the tickets they’re receiving thanks to broken meters and outdated labeling. Some are boycotting meters by parking on side streets or not driving at all; others have tagged or vandalized them.
Finally, on March 31, city officials called a press conference to confront the problem—or at least to offer up someone who could take the blame so the Daley administration didn’t have to. They presented one Dennis Pedrelli, chief executive officer of Chicago Parking Meters, the private entity that’s now responsible for operating the meters. Pedrelli delivered a mea culpa. “We regret any issues that occurred,” he said. “We are working as quickly as possible to address those issues.” He promised that the company wouldn’t raise rates or write any more tickets until it had fixed the broken meters and posted accurate information.
But the event didn’t touch on what’s really behind the parking meter problems: the deal that put the city’s 36,000 meters in the hands of Pedrelli’s company. Once city officials decided to privatize the meters, they rushed into a deal with little regard for the financial risks or potential impact on the public, turning control of a revenue-generating city asset over to a company that had just qualified for federal bailout funds.
[Click to continue reading Chicago Reader | FAIL: The Story of Chicago’s Parking Meter Lease Deal – How Mayor Daley and his crew hid their process from the public, ignored their own rules, railroaded the City Council, and screwed the taxpayers | By Ben Joravsky and Mick Dumke]
Citizens get angry over the kind of corruption that directly effects them every time they drive in the city; Daley better watch out if he wants to remain Mayor-For-Life. I’m voting against him in the next election, should he decide to run again.
Not sure if this Department of Revenue employee was repairing a vandalized parking meter, or just a damaged one, but I suspect vandalization as he repaired several on this block or W. Randolph.
–update 4/10/09
Ramsin Canon of Gapers Block has an excellent article expanding on the topic
Progressives, do you think your constituencies will forgive you for your silence, cooperation, and collaboration? Do you think your legitimacy will survive what is now growing into more than a decade of utter silence? Do you think making demands on behalf of some corner or slice of the city will make up for refusing to take on the system that forces you to beg in the first place? It won’t. Your irrelevancy grows with each day you refuse to dissent in any meaningful way. Spending money to replace one group of aldermen, state legislators, or whoever, with another group that have to work with the same rotten system is not an effort at real change; it is political posturing meant to extract more concessions from a system left untouched.
The excuse we always hear (off the record of course) from Aldermen, community groups, think tanks, and the rest, is that taking on the Mayor is just too darn scary. He’s too powerful. But what makes him powerful, like all bullies, is the constant refusal of anybody to stand up to him. And of course, it isn’t fear: its convenience. That whole “…but he’s our sonofabitch” mentality. We saw how well that worked with Augusto Pinochet and Saddam Hussein.
[Click to continue reading Gapers Block : Mechanics : Chicago Politics – The Erosion of Daley and the Coward Defense]
Daley had better watch out, the public rage at his administration is palpable, and growing.