Hospital for sale!

While a lot has been written about the continuing controversy surrounding the new Children's Hospital in Streeterville, the people at the Chicago Journal haven't forgotten about the old place.

The Journal reports that people living nearby are worried about what will happen when the thriving hospital at the heart of their neighborhood becomes an abandoned hospital in the heart of their neighborhood.

Naturally, there is talk of turning it into a library or a community center or any of the other typical suggestions that come up when vacant space presents itself.  But considering the city's financial condition and the condition of the real estate industry, this chunk of real estate is likely to remain abandoned for a long, long time.

North Side NIMBYs win another one

Looks like another vacant lot will remain vacant instead of homes for people paying taxes and contributing to society.  The alert came from Alderman Reilly's office the other day:

Clark & Chestnut Development Update -- Project Has Been Withdrawn
Earlier this year, LG Development filed an application to amend Planned Development #313, requesting approval for a 370-foot, 28-story residential condominium structure to contain 49 units and 83 parking spaces. Over the past several months, Alderman Reilly has hosted a number of neighborhood and condominium meetings to provide his constituents with an open and transparent process and solicit local input while he considered the merits of the proposal.

This week, Alderman Reilly received a letter from the applicant informing him that
they are withdrawing their application to amend Planned Development No. 313. Since the application has been withdrawn, the project is no longer pending the Alderman's approval and the existing Planned Development stands, which allows for the construction of a two-story structure on the site.

North side NIMBYs at it again

Just in time for Halloween, the old ladies of Chicago's Near North Side are at it again.

Back in the 60's and 70's they bought their plush homes in the sky on streets like Delaware, Chestnut, and Clark.  Now that a new generation wants a taste of that life, it's all hands on deck for a fight against change.

The latest target of their elderly invective is the proposed residential tower at 111 West Chestnut Street.  A recent article in the Chicago Journal outlined the typical bogus grievances about congestion and neighborhood character and oh... a new one -- sewer capacity.

It's the usual crowd of people who already have their high-rise lifestyles trying to keep anyone else from having it; or worse -- marginalizing their view!  

It's hard to argue that a building with just 59 residences will have much of an impact on traffic, but the geriatric gentrifiers have dragged that old saw out of the complaint toolshed.  They're also claiming that the building's residents will clog the buses and subways, too.

But most of the complaints are about "neighborhood character."  The old ladies are afraid that if anyone else is let in things might change.  Because, you know, the neighborhood has never changed before.  And it's exactly the same today as it was before all those old ladies got their dee-lux apartments in the sky-high-high.  

So what are they trying to preserve?

A quick look at 111 West Chestnut's current state reveals... plastic Walgreen's bags.  A brick.  Sand.  Dirt.  McDonald's cups.  And what maybe an adult diaper.

If that's the neighborhood character they're so desperate to cling to, I say bring on the cranes and bulldozers.  We're a movin' on up!

Chicago's chances of landing the 2016 Games

Exactly one year from now we'll know if Chicago will host the 2016 Olympic Games.  A lot of work has been poured into the city's Olympic effort in the last few years, but are we any closer to getting the games now than we were when we started?


Transit isn't up to snuff.  Though there are signs that things are getting better, it's only because most of the system seems to be under perpetual construction.  Forget about the billion dollars spend on the Brown Line which will still be crowded when all those dollars are spent.  It's the Blue Line shut downs and bus shuttles that are the real embarrassment and leave a bad taste in visiting mouths.


Hizzonor wants an express train to the airport, just like they have in Hong Kong and most other hubs of civilization.  But that would mean DOING something, and this isn't the Chicago of the 1890's.  There are no visionaries left.  No risk-takers.  No leaders.  Daley's old man could get it done.  The son... not so much.


It's not strange to place such importance on transportation when hosting a major international event like the Olympics.  Beijing built two entirely new modern subway lines.  Chicago is going to try to make due with the same creaky routes we've had since the middle of the last century.  Not because they are good, but because the leadership is bad.


Here's a cultural exercise I actually participated in once:

• Step one: Leave your hotel in Hong Kong and ride the Airport Express train to HKG.
  
• Step two: Sleep on the flight from HKG to ORD.
  
• Step three: Ride the Blue Line from ORD to home.
  

It'll leave you wondering which city is part of the Third World.


The importance of transportation cannot be underestimated.  Crain's recently reported that Tokyo is in the lead for the 2016 games in large part because of its transportation network.  Tokyo's competing subway companies move 23,000,000 people each day.  That's 20 times more than the CTA.  Tokyo can absorb the Olympic Games without blinking.  For Chicago it will be a hardship that the city must convince the IOC it wants.


Here's what's coming up:

• February 2, 2009: The final filing deadline for the candidate cities.
• April, 2009: The International Olympic Committee visits to inspect Chicago.
• October 2, 2009: The announcement is made in Copenhagen.

April of 2009 will be a magical time to be in Chicago.  There will be flowers everywhere, the streets will be smooth and perfect, and the trains will run on time.  Mayor Daley will make sure of it.  It's the biggest, most important, event the average person will never see.  But at least we'll benefit from the crumbs for a while.

At this point there are varying theories about which city is ahead in the contest, but by all estimates Chicago isn't it.  The two front-runners at this point at Tokyo and Rio de Janeiro.

Tokyo scores well in all the technical categories.  But awarding the games to Asia so soon after the Beijing Olympics seems unlikely.

Rio is on top because the Beijing games demonstrated that a Third World city can host a successful Olympics, and because there has never been an Olympic Games in South America.  

Chicago... Well, Chicago is in the middle of America.  And these days European bureaucrats hate America.  They love the notion of the care-free 1950's Happy Days America, and the one that saves their butts from military problems around the world.  But liking America is not politically correct in Europe.   And Europe matters because of the 115 people who will decide which city gets the 2016 Olympic Games, the majority are from Europe.  There are only three Americans on the committee, and they don't even get to vote.

This may be over before it even started.

Another parking lot bites the dust (we hope)

If there's one thing that doesn't belong in downtown Chicago it's surface parking lots.  They contribute virtually nothing to the economic, social, and visual vitality of the area.  And fortunately, there may be one fewer soon.

According to the Fulton River District e-mail bulletin, the parking lot at 108 North Jefferson could soon make way for a multi-use building.


View Larger Map


That's the lot a block behind the Citigroup Center, northwest of the ABN AMRO Technology Center.


As more and more people move into the area, we can hope that fewer and fewer surface parking lots will survive and the area can become a thriving home to thousand of new Chicagoans.

Metra Market Moving Forward

It's been decades since this was first proposed, but finally some dirt is turning with the Metra Market project.

This will take that bricked-up arcade beneath the Metra rail tracks north of the Ogilvie Transportation Center and turn it into a shopping and restaurant plaza.  Similar projects have been successful from Paris to Evanston, and with the recent spike in residential density in the West Loop it looks like this might actually happen this time.

The lead tenant is supposed to be a "French Market" (not sure if that's a brand or a description) which will be made up of a couple dozen specialty food vendors (cheeses, breads, etc...)  Boutique foods marts have increased in popularity in the last few years in the Loop are with the emergence of Fox & Obel, Pastoral, Lavazza, and others.   Hopefully they will do as well or better in the West Loop location.  However, what downtown really needs is a proper butcher shop.  Abe Froman would blanch at the current state of Chicago's retail meat scene.

Latest Esquire proposal passes latest hurdle

There may finally be some movement at the Esquire Theater on Oak Street.  It's been five years since the multiplex shut down, leaving the city's most posh shopping district with a giant vacancy.

This week city council's Plan Commission approved a plan which would replace the theater with three brownstone-scale retail buildings like the others lining Oak Street.  The facade has landmark status, so it will be fun to see how the architect manages to blend the old and the new here.

The buildings can be no taller than three stories, or 60 feet each, and no hotels are allowed.  That's a big concession to local NIMBY groups who blocked plans for a boutique hotel in this location fearing additional traffic and noise.

The current proposal still requires additional approvals before we see anything happen, but there were men in hard hats touring the inside of the building just yesterday, so things look good.

For those of you worried about what happens to your neighborhood Citibank branch, that's moving into the new Barney's New York building.  It will be on the corner of State and Oak where Papa Milano's used to be.

Why is a city on a Great Lake afraid of water?

For the last three days we've been inundated with television news coverage of the flooding happening in Chicagoland.  There have been plenty of pictures of people being evacuated from their homes because of rising flood waters.  Rescue crews have been mobilized to save these helpless victims from mother nature's fury.

Bullhockey.

What's wrong with these people that they need to be saved from six inches of water?  TV news producers, writers, editors, and reporters are trained to show us the most dramatic and important video that comes in that day.  So what do we see?  People huddled in rubber dinghies being pulled to "safety" by firefighters who are simply sloshing along in ankle-deep water.  People bemoaning their misfortune that they have all of nine inches of water in their basements.  These people need to suck it up and get on with their lives.

The storm that brought the flooding to Chicagoland was the remains of Hurricane Ike.  When Ike crossed from the Gulf of Mexico to Galveston Island it brought 21 FEET of water.   And what did the people of Galveston Island do when Coast Guard helicopters came to their rescue?

They said, "No thanks.  We're fine.  We can take care of ourselves."  With water up to the second or third-stories of some homes these people are taking care of themselves.

Meanwhile, the soft-and-doughy Chicagoans are freaking out at mere inches of water that might make the legs of their foosball tables soggy, or require wee water wings for their precious tiny dogs.

Seriously, Chicago: Grow a pair.

The high architectural price of Diesel

Everyone knows gas is expensive.  And diesel is more.  But the people running the Diesel store on Rush Street should ask for their money back.

After being closed all Spring and most of the Summer for interior and exterior renovations -- this is what it looks like.  Exposed screws in the facade, and a paint job that looks like it was done by pigeons with the runs.

Maybe it's supposed to look gritty, or industrial, or urban.  But it just doesn't work.  It looks dirty, and it certainly doesn't fit in with the surrounding buildings or the squeaky clean Gold Coast.

The saddest building in Chicago

This has got to be the saddest sight we've seen in Chicago architecture in a long time.  The city's mighty flagship cathedral has been undergoing repair work for months, ever since a piece of the ceiling caved into the sanctuary.  But this... this is just wrong.

From our perch we've been watching workers on the rooftop scrambling around for weeks and weeks.  Now a quick stroll to Whole Foods has us viewing the full horror as we pass by.

Sure on a global, or even a regional scale, Holy Name Cathedral wasn't all that great.  But it's the best church in Chicagoland and the focus of the thoughts and prayers of millions of people each day.  To see it trussed up like this is just heartbreaking.  We can only hope the bandages come off soon.

WBBM-TV manages to screw up a landmark

It's been a couple of decades since WBBM-TV ("CBS2" in consultant-speak) made much of an impact on the city of Chicago.  It's ratings have been in the crapper for years.  Its analog signal is barely visible even just a mile away from the transmitter.  And digital?  Forget about it.

As a former CBS -> Westinghouse -> CBS employee, I have a soft spot for the Tiffany Network.  I looked forward to a new age of Eye greatness starting with the opening of the new CBS2 Broadcast Studios at 22 West Washington.  I should have known I would be disappointed.

The Skyline lets us know that CBS has chickened out.  Again.  Instead of giving us an 80-foot-wide video screen wrapping around its corner of Block 37, WBBM-TV will instead have a video screen that's less than half that wide.  And it doesn't wrap.  Oh, and it's shorter, too.

I never worked for CBS in Chicago, but I have several friends who have and do.  They say it's typical of the way things run there these days -- take a big, important, brilliant plan and beat it into a homogenized, non-offensive, piece of who-gives-a-crap.  They say the video screen is emblematic of the state of the news that comes out of there:  small, lackluster, full of potential, but ultimately a child of compromise.

The Trib says there were complaints about the screen.  It's typical of local television stations to be hyper-sensitive to any little fringe group with an acronym and a word processor, but it's unclear if that's the reason CBS changed its great plans into mediocre plans.  Even the architects presented CBS with several dramatic alternatives if a smaller screen must be used.  Not surprisingly, these experts were ignored and the station decided to play architect and stick the screen centered above its studio.

Good job, WBBM-TV.  Once again you've proven to Chicago that you're a non-factor.

Tuesday Trivia: The Civic Opera Building

Q: Which Chicago showplace was shuttered because the Civic Opera Building took away all the best shows?

A: The Auditorium Building on Michigan Avenue

Millions of tourists must be right

It's something of a burden to bear.  For the thousands of people who live in the New East Side not a day passes without hundreds, sometimes thousands, of tourists wandering their streets asking how to get to the lakefront and Navy Pier.

Long lines of cars snake into, and then back out of, the cul-de-sacs and private driveways of the New East Side as legions of tourists ignore the few tattered signs put up to direct them.  Once an articulated CTA bus got stuck back there and it took the better part of 12 hours to get it turned around.

The opening of Millennium Park only made things worse.  After all -- it only makes sense that the city's front lawn would connect to the lake and eventually on to Navy Pier.  But more than once I have seen a frustrated tourist raise an angry fist to a local when told, "you can't get there from here."

Well, some day maybe they can.

With the impending destruction of Daley Bicentennial Plaza to make way for the new Chicago Children's Museum, there are finally some serious talks about linking the parks and the lakefront in that area. it cost $20 million to do the same thing at 11th Street.  How much it will take farther north remains to be seen.  But a committee is starting work on it, and maybe there will be some logical relief soon.

All cushions accounted for

Last night's storms were among the wildest we've felt since moving to Chicago six years ago.  The tornado alert for Lincoln Park and Montrose harbor was bad enough.  But when round two blew through a few hours later, our building got hit many dozens of times.



Things could have been worse, though.  Take a look at the roof of 777 North Michigan Avenue (you may know it as the Wallgreen's Building at Michigan and Chicago):

Ordinarily the rooftop pool furniture is aligned in neat little rows.  But last night's winds pushed all of the chairs, lounges, and cushions into a big pile.  Remarkably, it doesn't appear that any of it left the roof, which is good news.  Imagine your surprise if you got hit by a chaise lounge falling from a height of 30 stories.

A grand entrance to Chicago

A hundred years after the Burnham plan for Chicago was laid out, another piece that plan may become a reality. CDOT is working on a plan to make Congress Parkway in the Loop more grand, and in the process, more pedestrian-friendly.

Right now, Congress between Wells and Michigan Avenue is a big flat slab of tarmac with speeding cars and pedestrians in peril.  It is a psychological divider between the pedestrian-friendly Loop and the pedestrian-friendly South Loop.  But the street, itself, is something of an adventure to cross.

The CDOT plan is to make the street look more like a city street and less like an expressway.  The idea is to snap drivers coming in from the Eisenhower Expressway out of their daze and make them realize that they're in the city now and it's time to slow down.

The ideas call for new planters, new landscaping, more trees, and changes to the pavement to make it more than obvious that there are a dozen pedestrian crossings.  Changes in traffic signal timing and a reorganization of turn lanes are also in the works.

The Burnham plan envisioned Congress Parkway as a grand boulevard -- a major entrance corridor to the city.  This project will go a long way toward making that a reality.  It also includes decorative lighting of the buildings and infrastructure in the area -- a lighting scheme that could be tied into the renovated lighting coming to Buckingham Fountain.

Part of the $20 million needed for the project will come from federal congestion funds.  The rest looks like it will have to be ponied up by the city.

Another goal of the project is to draw more restaurants and cafes to the Congress corridor and the residential development that frequently follows them.

Live demolition online? Maybe. Maybe not.

The Ruby Tuesday's restaurant chain has taken out a lot of ads in newspapers and on the internet recently strongly implying that it's going to demolish one of its locations and stream the video live on its web site (http://www.rubytuesday.com/) There's a countdown clock on the web site which indicates the demolition is scheduled for this coming Tuesday, August 3. The ad and the press releases out of Tuesday leave out some very important facts, which is why I wrote "implying" at the top of this. I'm not entirely convinced that this isn't some kind of trickery. But I guess we'll find out in a couple of days.

Lollapawinners and Lollapalosers

Today is the day that the 2008 edition of Lollapalooza opens at Grant Park in Chicago.  For this long weekend, hundreds of thousands of people will swarm all over Chicago's front lawn enjoying food, music, and all the city has to offer.

Of course, this has the grumpy old ladies and NIMBYs who live along the park's perimeter on edge.  They see Lollapalooza as an invasion of their personal space, even though the park is public property and not their personal domain.

So if you've ever wondered what the city gets from Lollapalooza, other than the regular tax money generated by any other concert, we have the answer.

In 2007, Lollapalooza gave $100,000 to Grant Park.  that was used to plant 120 new trees, add new and better landscaping at Hutchison Field, a new garden on the south side of the park near Michigan Avenue, and 75 new shade trees.  In addition, Lollapalooza gives hundreds of thousands of dollars to smaller community parks around the city that would otherwise be neglected.

This year, in addition to the $100k being given to Grant Park, and the $1 million the festival is donating to renovate Buckingham Fountain, $75,000 is being set aside specifically to repair the grass after the festival.

Seems like quite a lot from one event.  By contrast, the Taste of Chicago, a larger, longer event, gives the park exactly $0.

We've heard frightened old ladies who watch too much CBS2News say they're worried about violence at Lollapalooza after the shooting at this year's Taste of Chicago.  Comparing the two events is the height of folly.

• Lollapalooza lasts three days.  Taste lasts for weeks.
• Lollapalooza attracts families.  Taste is open to anyone wandering by.
• Lollapalooza visitors have to pay $80-$200 to attend.  Tastegoers pay $0.
• Lollapalooza visitors buy tickets online so the festival knows exactly who will be there.  Taste is open to anyone wandering by.
• Lollapalooza will have 210,000 people this year. Taste had 1,000,000+ on July 3 alone.

In the past there has been very little crime at Lollapalooza.  The only arrests have been for scalping and gate jumping.  The same cannot be said Taste.

The bottom line is that there are a lot of people who don't understand Lollapalooza or what it's about.  I felt the same way first time it was announced, but after seeing the festival and the people it attracts first-hand, this isn't some meathead concert series.  It's a family event that's as much about granola and electric vehicles as it is about getting one's groove on.

A word of advice to the old ladies out there:  When you let fear win, you've lost at life.

Chicago to welcome transients -- It's a good thing

There's been a lot of talk among the lakefront set lately about the two new harbors the city plans to open.  The one at 31st street seems pretty straightforward.  But unless you live in the South Loop, who wants to dock at 31st Street?

The other is more interesting -- the new docking area planned south of Navy Pier called Gateway Harbor.  This area outside the Chicago River lock is envisioned as having 350 slips.  But more important than that is that 169 of those slips will be for transient vessels.

That means that, for the first time, people will be able to sail to Chicago, tie up at a transient slip, have lunch, take in a show, and then sail off back home to Michigan or the North Shore or Toronto, or Europe, or wherever they came from.  It's a fantastic idea that is long overdue.

Skippers pay for the transient slips by the hour, like you pay for parking at a parking garage.  High fuel prices notwithstanding, this could open up a whole new tourism avenue for Chicago.

Right now, the plan is to have both harbors open by 2010, but people in the know say that given the current state of the project, that goal is unrealistic.

Progress Report: The Clare at Water Tower

Every time we think this building is done, we wait a week and still work continues.  The Clare at Water Tower Place has been chugging along since 2006.  Back in the spring, construction crews put on the top -- a four-story space that looks like it's going to be part mechanical and part some kind of massive solarium.



For those of you who forget what the fugly four-story office building that used to be at this location looked like, there's a video of the demolition over at the Clare's web site.



We can't wait to see what happens at the fanciest old folks home in the Midwest.

Tuesday Trivia: The John Hancock Center

Q: What famous Hong Kong skyscraper was inspired by the design of Chicago's John Hancock Center.

A: The Bank of China Hongkong tower.