Tag: Chicago

Twenty-first Century Style Architectural Tour

Seth Anderson0 comment

A new way to take a tour of Chicago’s architectural marvels using a 2-D barcode and smart phones. Sounds very cool, I’ll let you know how it works.

Rookery

A new walking tour will let you download the history of great Chicago buildings on a web-enabled cell phone.

The tour promises to give you a quick and easy way to access loads of information about ten early Chicago skyscrapers, among them Louis Sullivan’s former Carson Pirie Scott & Co. store (now the Sullivan Center) at the corner of State and Madison Streets, Holabird & Roche’s Marquette Building at 141 S. Dearborn St., and D.H. Burnham & Co.’s Railway Exchange Building (now the Santa Fe Building) at 80 E. Jackson Blvd.

The tour has been put together by the Chicago-based Society for Architectural Historians and it’s expected to be up and running by Saturday, April 17.

“We don’t get a penny. It’s a public service,” said Pauline Saliga, executive director of the society, which is holding its annual convention in Chicago from April 21 to 25.

The tour uses a barcode technology called the Microsoft tag. Each tag is a small icon. The SAH is posting tags on signs in the lobbies of ten early Loop skyscrapers. (An example, from the former Carson Pirie Scott store, is above.)

To get the tour info, which is free, you download the free Microsoft application for your web-enabled cell phone (say, an iPhone or a BlackBerry) at: http://gettag.mobi. Then, open the application on your phone and, with the application still open, use your phone to photograph the tag on one of the lobby signs. Presto! A photo of the building and its history is supposed to appear.


“The Sky’s the Limit: A Century of Chicago Skyscrapers” (Rizzoli International Publications)

The text comes from the authoritative 1990 book, “The Sky’s The Limit: A Century of Chicago Skyscrapers.” Saliga was its editor.

[Click to continue reading Cityscapes: Point, shoot and learn–new system lets you download tour information about great Chicago skyscrapers ]

Other than using the proprietary Microsoft tag instead of the open-source QR code, this is an awesome idea, and hope it spreads to more areas, and even other cities

Mayor Daley’s Fence Inspectors haven’t discovered this alley yet

swanksalot0 comment

Probably because the lot is owned by the Hyatt, and the Pritzker family can’t afford to clean up their property.

Developed in SwankoLab for iPhone using Jerry’s Developer and Larry’s Developer

www.nytimes.com/2010/04/02/us/02cncpulse.html

After issuing only one fine for a landscape ordinance violation from 2005 until 2008, the city issued 51 in 2009, according to records from the Department of Administrative Hearings. The city meted out $29,000 in fines to businesses last year for landscape ordinance violations. Ninety percent of the violations cited a lack of the required fencing.

Deadlines for putting up fencing were phased in by area. Other parts of the ordinance require trees, hedges and screening of stored trash.

This alley has been this decrepit for several years, but I think the Hyatt purchased the lot in 2006 or 2007, and obviously they have higher priorities than urban beautification.

Turning a blind eye part two
Turning a blind eye, part two.
Another view of the fence and little shack of a lot owned by the Hyatt. Small businesses get fined by the City for eyesores like this; big corporations, not so much.

Removing Prime Time Parking Restrictions

Seth Anderson0 comment

Personally, think the parking restrictions are a good idea. I have enough trouble getting into my building during rush hour, if cars are blocking the impromptu extra lane, the congestion will only magnify.

Evening float home

Mayor Richard M. Daley’s administration is planning to remove rush-hour parking restrictions on some of Chicago’s busiest streets.

City officials say the move will help businesses and make those streets safer, but it also appears likely to slow traffic and generate more money for the private company that runs the city’s parking meters.

Transportation Department officials sent letters to aldermen last month informing them of the change. In a letter to Alderman Scott Waguespack (32nd Ward), the city said rush-hour restrictions would end on stretches of North Clybourn and Lincoln Avenues that have meters and “pay and display” parking fee boxes. The restrictions had prevented motorists from parking at the metered spaces from 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. and from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays.

…

Mr. Waguespack remained unconvinced after meeting this week with Transportation Department staff members. “Is this about safety or about increasing revenue for the parking company?” he said.

[Click to continue reading Chicago News Cooperative – The Pulse – Prime Parking Space Is Opening Up – NYTimes.com]

Somehow this decision sounds more like a solution proposed by the private parking company.

Shut Fisk and Crawford Coal Plants

Seth Anderson2 Comments

Shuttering the damn things would be my preference – I can see the Fisk Coal plant from my window, spewing all sorts of toxins, and I don’t even live that close by.

Tales of the Towering Dead

Owners of two coal-fueled power plants on Chicago’s Southwest Side would have to clean them up within the next five years — or shut them down — under a proposal being pushed by an interesting coalition of aldermen and a Chicago environmental group.

   The proposed ordinance is aimed at the circa-1920s Fisk plant in Pilsen and the Crawford plant in Little Village, both now operated by Midwest Generation LLC.

Under its terms, scrubbers and related anti-pollution equipment would have to be installed by 2013-15, four to five years earlier than now required by state regulators.

   “The purpose is to get two of the oldest, dirtiest coal plants located in any urban neighborhood cleaned up soon,” said Howard Learner, executive director of Chicago’s Environmental Law and Policy Center.

    “These are the two biggest (single) point sources of pollution in the city,” Mr. Learner added. But modernization of the plants repeatedly has been deferred, and the city now has an interest in making the plants “clean up or shut down,” he said.

   A statement e-mailed by Alderman Joseph Moore (49th) said the measure will be co-sponsored by him and colleagues including Sandi Jackson (7th), Eugene Schulter (47th) and Toni Preckwinkle (4th).

   Ms. Preckwinkle’s presence is particularly notable since she is the Democratic nominee to head the Cook County Board and is heavily favored to win that position in the November general election.

[Click to continue reading Push begins to ‘clean up or shut’ Fisk, Crawford coal power plants | Greg Hinz | Crain’s Chicago Business]

Cleaning them up so they fit current EPA standards would be a positive step, but would mean that lots of toxins would still be allowed, just not quite as much.

Has It Really Been Ten Years?

swanksalot0 comment
Has It Really Been Ten Years?
Has It Really Been Ten Years?, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

West Loop

Embiggen

and yes, it has been ten years, as of next week, that I’ve lived here, by far the longest stretch of time I’ve ever resided in one place.

April 6th, 2000, to be precise. Lots has changed, lots still needs to be changed, but the decade was a good one, all and all.

Alley – West Loop

swanksalot0 comment
Alley - West Loop
Alley – West Loop, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

After my Leica committed suicide, t-plus about 5 minutes.1

decluttr

another photographer’s view:
www.flickr.com/photos/phule/4464047578/

but today, my Leica worked! Yayyy, maybe some capacitor had to discharge, or something. Regardless, now have to talk about my Leica’s attempted suicide…

Footnotes:
  1. details here: www.flickr.com/photos/swanksalot/4447962496/ [↩]

Bush team and David Headley

Seth Anderson0 comment

If you ask me, another sign of Bush Administration incompetence. What the frack was the TSA doing in all these years? If my luggage got searched over a dozen times, and I was set aside for special screening nearly as frequently, how come David Hadley didn’t get the same attention? Either he did, and the TSA was too incompetent to notice he was a person of interest or he didn’t, which defeats the whole purpose of screening passengers at O’Hare. Right?

Do All Photographers Need a Warrant?

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — An American charged with helping plan the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, moved effortlessly between the United States, Pakistan and India for nearly seven years, training at a militant camp in Pakistan on five occasions, according to a plea agreement released by the Justice Department last week.
Related

The odyssey of David C. Headley, 49, included scouting targets in several cities in India and meeting with a senior operative of Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas. These and other new details of Mr. Headley’s activities, contained in the plea agreement, raise troubling questions about how an American citizen could travel for so long undetected from his home base in Chicago to well-established terrorist training camps in Pakistan.

[Click to continue reading American Terror Suspect Traveled Unimpeded – NYTimes.com]

Not until Obama’s people took office did authorities even bother to track Headley:

The visit in February 2009 may finally have put Mr. Headley on the radar of the American authorities, who started tracking him in the late spring of last year, Mr. Riedel said. Mr. Kashmiri is considered to be one of Al Qaeda’s most dangerous commanders. The Long War Journal, a Web site that specializes in reports on militancy, says he is a former member of Pakistan’s elite commando Special Services Group, though Pakistani intelligence officials deny that. He was the target of a drone attack last September. After initial reports that he was killed, it appears that he survived, according to Pakistani officials and militants.

I know the ineffectualness of the Bush appointees is a bit of a cliché, but come on. Yellow alerts? Remove your shoes? What was the point exactly? Oh yeah, keeping ‘Murica safe.

Maria Pinto liquidating boutique

Seth Anderson0 comment

Local high profile designed Maria Pinto (we’ve discussed her store before) is closing down her boutique, located at 135 N. Jefferson St in the West Loop.

Maria Pinto

All of the praise for Michelle Obama’s grape- and tomato-colored sheaths couldn’t bear enough fruit to spare their Chicago-based designer — Maria Pinto — from the recession’s blight.

Pinto, whose work has been worn by not only the country’s first lady but also queen-of-talk Oprah Winfrey, will open her West Loop boutique for five final days starting Tuesday. Her daywear, eveningwear, wraps and one-of-a-kind accessories will be liquidated at 50 percent to 70 percent off their original prices.

In January, Pinto arrived at the decision to close her shop and cease wholesale operations, she said. A fashion designer for 20 years who previously worked for Geoffrey Beene, Pinto launched her own line in 1991. Bergdorf Goodman, Saks Fifth Avenue, Barneys New York and Takashimaya in New York, as well as high-end boutiques across the country, carried her pieces.

[Click to continue reading Maria Pinto: Chicago designer Maria Pinto liquidating boutique – chicagotribune.com]

I’ve glanced at her store window a few times, and I didn’t see any item that entranced me. Perhaps her best work was customized to particular customers, and not for display on a clothing rack.

And this statement mostly sounds true:

“In the general scheme of things, our store was doing very well. But our other retailers are paring down their open-to-buys (merchandise purchases) and looking to build sales through trunk shows,” she said. “It’s difficult because it makes your forecasted cash flow challenging. You’re waiting for the show to happen, waiting for things to happen. Before, the stores were committed to larger inventories.”

Any avid shopper can see the shift, she said.

“Walk through the stores and see how the stores are buying very differently. Saks had blast-out sales going in November 2008. November this year, there was very little in stores that was on sale. What was left was bottom-of-the-barrel. Everyone is having to reposition themselves.”

For 2009, total U.S. apparel sales fell 5.2 percent to $188.5 billion, market research firm NPD Group reported last month.

TIF Slush Fund

Seth Anderson0 comment

Mayor Daley’s budget is in deficit, municipal projects don’t get funded, schools don’t get funded, yet developers can get as much TIF money1 as they need, no matter what. No consequences, no strings. Just plain ole corporate welfare.

Half Done

A city panel approved another major increase in financial assistance for planned Loop apartment development that has struggled to get off the ground because of rising costs and the tough lending climate.

The Community Development Commission signed off Tuesday on a $34-million tax-increment financing subsidy to help pay for the conversion of a vintage Loop office tower at 188 W. Randolph St. into a 310-unit apartment building.

That’s more than four times the $8 million in TIF funds the city initially approved for the development back in 2006, when its total cost was estimated at $79 million.

But the projected cost had soared to $139 million in 2008, and the project’s developer, Village Green Cos., went back for more. The city complied by hiking the subsidy to $20 million.

[Click to continue reading Loop project poised to get another big TIF boost – Chicago Real Estate Daily]

Via Lynn Becker, who adds:

When, in 2006, a developer announced plans to rehab Vitzhum & Burns Steuben Club Building at 188 W. Randolph, an $8 million dollars contribution from the massive Central Loop TIF was going to kick in about 10% of the $79 million cost.

…

But wait – there’s more! The project is also getting $40 million dollars in tax-exempt bonds from the state, plus $37 million in tax credits. You, lucky taxpayer, kick in almost half of the project cost and the private developer gets the building. Socialism, Chicago style.

When Draconian cutbacks are effecting everything in Chicago from the CTA, to the schools, to 4th of July Fireworks, the city is diverting another $26 million in tax revenues to an economically unsustainable development.

[Click to continue reading ArchitectureChicago PLUS: Welfare Queen]

Really disgusting. The Vitzthum & Burns Steuben Club Building is not a cookie-cutter square box, but it isn’t in the upper echelon of Chicago architecture either.

from a CBS Chicago report (presumedly based on the press release from Village Green Companies)

The Community Development Commission approved a plan to redevelop the vacant and historic Randolph Tower at 188 W. Randolph St. into 310 apartments, retail and commercial space, according to a release from the CDC.

The action recommends the designation of Village Green Companies as the developer for the proposed $145 million renovation.

Plans call for the mixed-use building, formerly known as the Steuben Club Building, to be converted into 168 studios, 98 one-bedroom and 44 two-bedroom units, the release said. Sixty-two of the residential units will be made affordable to households at or below 50 percent of median area income.

Village Green bought the 45-story office building out of bankruptcy in 2005 and will convert the 80-year-old structure into apartments. Plans also include 9,500 square feet of ground floor restaurant and retail space. Village Green will occupy 11,400 square feet on the second floor as its Chicago regional office.

Amenities will include a fitness center, swimming pool and spa. A social club will be located on the 38th and 39th floors, offering 360-degree views of the skyline and Lake Michigan, the release said.

The Gothic-style building will have extensive work done to preserve its historic terra cotta façade and other ornamental details and a gut rehabilitation of the interior.

The CDC also approved a redevelopment plan for the proposed Randolph/Wells tax increment financing district. Creation of the district will support the renovation of Randolph Tower and help redevelop other underutilized and vacant buildings in the area.

[Click to continue reading
City OK’s Rehab Of Loop Tower, Home For Teen Mothers On West Side – cbs2chicago.com
]

Hey, build for the future, right? Demand for new condos might be low now, but in twenty years…

Via EveryBlock’s hyperlocal news

Footnotes:
  1. tax increment financing [↩]