The Most Excellent and Truly Amazing Letter Ever Written to the Hyde Park Herald

posted by chicago pop

We reproduce, forthwith and herein, the above-said most awesome and amazing letter to the Herald ever written. The author is one Charles Stephen Thompson.

Note that you don't have to have a particular viewpoint on the issue at hand to recognize that this letter effectively demonstrates journalistic bias in the Herald's coverage of the issues. We'll also take this opportunity to note that this blog raised the issue, not of the 47th Street women's clinic, but of the nearby 47th Street pediatric clinic and overall UCMC administrative restructuring, A YEAR before the Herald decided to focus on the latest phase of this restructuring.

Because this letter is so excellent, it needs no further commentary, and we therefore pass on the the brief in full:

U of C Coverage Smacks of Bias (Hyde Park Herald, July 1, 2009)

To the Editor:

It amazes me that your newspaper can be so blatantly partisan. I have watched for weeks as the Herald has methodically torn the university apart for closing its women's clinic at 47th Street and for downsizing and outsourcing its emergent care operations to other, cheaper hospitals. In each instance, this was deemed front page news. Yet, when it was reported -- by the same reporter, mind you -- that the university was donating at least $5 million to Provident Hospital, an "underutilized hospital," to assist in facilities upgrades so that they could better serve some of the same patients that the university will be sending them, this was relegated to page 4.

Moreover, the Herald has routinely pointed out that other non-profit institutions are buckling under the weight of the economic decline ("Budget cuts threaten Hyde Park orgs," June 24; "McCormick seminary for sale," June 24), effectively giving those same institutions a pass as they cut back on service and support of the Hyde Park community. From what I have read, the university's endowment shrank by a similar amount; I fail to see why it is held to a different standard.

While I understand that the university is looked on suspiciously in whatever it does simply based on its past behavior, I think it is deplorable for a journalistic organization to so obviously disregard the facts in such a methodical and partisan fashion. If I wanted such biased reporting, I'd watch Fox News.

Charles Stephen Thompson

Psst! You can talk about Village Center now!

posted by Peter Rossi

For several years, there have been rumors that Antheus Capital (owners of the Village Shopping center at Lake Park Avenue and Hyde Park Boulevard) was interested in replacing the run-down shopping center with a combination residential and commerical development.

At the 53rd Street TIF meeting held Monday (7/14), developer Eli Ungar was allowed to let the cat of the bag. The proposal is nothing less than stunning and represents the most ambitious project attempted in Hyde Park in more than 30 years. Ungar and associates propose a development of more than 500,000 sq ft with 170 residences, dozens of retail spaces and more than 500 parking spaces.

The development would cover the entire parcel, bordered along Lake Park Ave by a 10 story structure with retail on the bottom floors and 2-4 bedroom condos above. At the northwest corner of the property at Harper and Hyde Park Blvd sits a 24 story residential tower. Along Harper, south of the tower, would be small scale retail spaces. Between the tower at the west and the "bench" along Lake Park would be a transparent retail bank on Hyde Park Blvd that hides an interior parking structure.

Elevation from Kenwood Academy Grounds

Along Lake Park Ave at Night

Designed by Studio Gang (creators of Aqua in the Lakeshore East development and designers of the yet to be constructed Solstice on the Park in HP), the development features a very transparent look that goes out of its way to relate to the streetscape and hide parking from view. The transparency is designed to reduce the mass of the development which is considerable.

At 244 ft, the tower is sure to get local NIMBYs stirred up but fits rather nicely with the 51st and East Hyde Park area.

View from atop Blackwood Apts at 52nd and Blackstone

Given the massive capital requirements, the development is to be attempted in two phases. Phase I will construct the "bench" along Lake Park and the interior parking and retail space, leaving most of the existing buildings along Harper occupied by current tenants. Phase II would add the tower and new retail spaces immediately to the south.

Cross-Section Viewed from South

The development faces a number of steep challenges including: leasing the retail space and generating residential interest, some current tenants who are holding long term leases, garnering Alderman Toni Preckwinkle's support, and dealing with the usual nay-sayers who oppose change in our community.

It should be noted that this is the ONLY development of any size that is on the drawing board for our neighborhood. Harper Court redevelopment is nowhere in sight and the University-funded Harper Theatre development is dead in the water. Add this to the stalled high rise at 53rd and Cornell, no clear future for the Shoreland, and vacant Doctor's Hospital and McMobil properties and you really have a ghost town in the making.

Millions in University and public funds have gone down the rat-hole of improving HP retail and yet the only development in Hyde Park comes entirely from the private sector. I hope our elected officials understand where the future of our neighborhood lies and offer to help speed this through the necessary zoning changes required for a more than eight-story structure.

The development will proceed with no TIF funding. The 53rd street corridor is fast degenerating into a mass of cell phone stores, vacant storefronts, dollar stores and branch banks. One wonders where our TIF dollars have gone?

There will be those who scoff at the sheer audacity of this proposal in the midst of paralysis in the mortgage markets. Ungar is betting on the future of HP. Who knows, with a windfall from the Olympics, he may end up having the last laugh.

Make no little plans!

Hyde Park Herald is Obamafied

posted by chicago pop

Obama First Declares for State Senate at Hyde Park's Ramada Inn:
Preservationists Fight to Keep it For Historic Value

Only slightly more surreal than the prospect of a President of the United States who lives less than a mile away, and who began his political career at the hideous Slumada Inn across the street from my home, is the fact that the lead story for the July 21 edition of the New Yorker is a densely researched piece on Obama's "Chicago period" that includes 10 references to the Hyde Park Herald in 15 pages. (We won't even get into the magazine's cover illustration).

Big media is turning over little rocks big time.

They're off to a good start. After the Weekly Standard's gonzo interviews with a few neighborhood relics, the New Yorker is reprinting excerpts from some of Obama's charmingly idealistic columns in the Herald, beginning when he assumed the office of State Senator for the 13th District back in 1996.

In his first column in the Hyde Park Herald ... he announced that he was "organizing citizens' committees" to help him shape legislation. He asked constituents to call his office if they wanted to participate. That kind of airy talk about changing politics gave way almost immediately to the realities of the job.

Really? Try getting people to a TIF meeting.

But Ryan Lizza delves even further back, into the Herald's pre-Obama archive: citing a front page article from 1995, it seems that the Herald once did some muckrake-ish reporting.

On more than one occasion, the Hyde Park Herald reported on the rise in campaign donations from these developers [taking advantage of City tax-credits to develop low-income housing on the South Side]; in 1995, it ran a front-page article about Tony Rezko, who was then a very active new donor on the scene.

This sounds like broad-ranging journalism, rooted in Hyde Park, but looking beyond it.

So what happened?

Now we can't get the Herald to unpack the drama about adult day care at the Hyde Park Neighborhood Club.

Most of what Lizza's New Yorker piece draws on from the Herald, however, are Obama's own words. The article's thrust, beginning with a very frank interview with Alderman Preckwinkle, is that Obama's recent political "maneuverings" on things like Federal campaign financing, gun control, and telecom immunity should not be surprising from a guy that endorsed Mayor Daley and worked to get Blagojevich elected.

Pretty much politics as usual, though that has come as some surprise to folks outside of Chicago, or to those few idealists who survive within it. Lizza asked Preckwinkle what she thought of Obama's rise.

""Can you get where he is and maintain your personal integrity?" she [Alderman Preckwinkle] said. "Is that the question?" She stared at me and grimaced. "I'm going to pass on that.""

Chances are the Herald will, too.

The Next Historic Landmark Building in Hyde Park

Hyde Park Heroes: Joseph Kelly, Kevin McVey, Carole E. Cooper

Spirit of Hyde Park Progress Slays Establishment Monster
in Tripped Out Landscape

We thought the image above was appropriate in the context of this week's reassuring batch of op-ed letters that not only express impatience with the Co-op, but are just generally tripped-out.

Joseph Kelly, for example, takes movement politics to a new level: on September 9, we are told, he joined together in a protest "to restore the former Marshall Field's store." That had to be a sight to see, and we're sorry the Herald didn't have a photographer there on the spot. Such a photo essay would easily have trumped the Herald's front-page headline, "Flies close Caffe Florian." We're thinking of recruiting Mr. Kelly, as he is apparently on a one-man campaign to "get retail stores from outside Hyde Park [are there any others?] to provide services to residents."

Viva la revolucion!

But at least the guy has some vision, which is more than can be said for the apparatchiks at the Hyde Park Department of Alternative Plans, who seem strangely devoid of ideas of their own. Why not take the former Goldblatt's on 47th and Ashland, slap the "Marshall Field's" name brand on the marquee, and turn it into Harper Court West? This guy is someone to watch.

Kevin McVey brings things back down to earth by questioning the University's willingness to be the lender of last resort to purveyors of "smelly meat and fish," and notes the number of neighbors spotted on frequent smuggling runs across the frontier to the contraband entrepots found in the Outside Northern World.

Carole E. Cooper, however, gets this week's Hyde Park Hero prize for her spirited rallying cry to finally slay the Great White Elephant that languishes at 55th and Lake Park. "The neighborhood is waiting with baited breath for Hyde Park produce to move into the old Mr. G's location, but that seems to be stuck on stupid [sic]...what is the problem?"

We can think of no better way to end this edition of Hyde Park Heroes than in the stirring words of Ms. Cooper herself: "Stop scapegoating, admit defeat, surrender, raise the white flag, give up and move out of the way for a market that can give you real progress, clearly this dog can't hunt!" Let's find one who can -- like Saint George -- help slay the dragon.

Hyde Park Hero

In the continuing series of HYDE PARK HEROES we present to you...

Neo Gullstrom, Peapod Driver Extraordinaire.

For customer service beyond the call of duty, and for his obvious love of his work, Neo Gullstrom is our Hyde Park Hero this week. Many Hyde Park businesses could learn a lot from Neo and from Peapod about how to keep customers and employees happy.

Hooray for Neo!

Hyde Park Heroes: Sylvia Telser, Jonah Roth, & Joseph Samuelson

Since we are only a blog, and not a journalistic enterprise, we thank The Herald for giving us plenty of juicy fat to chew on until the next issue shows up. We're still licking our lips after the latest set of apocalyptic headlines detailing the collapse of various pillars of the Hyde Park Establishment. History is on our side, and a new age is on the horizon! But we must not become complacent, as the struggle continues.

To boost morale, I want to highlight not just one, but three Hyde Park Heroes this week. Three sane and reasonable people who dared to let their voices be heard against the numbing background NIMBY-ism and the platitudes of backyard-barbecue bolshevism.

Let's get straight to the good stuff.

This week, in a pithy note, Sylvia Telser adopted the Socratic method and posed an open question to her readers:

Hyde Parkers want successful stores offering a range of products at reasonable prices. Hyde Parkers do not want high-rise developments built on current empty lots and boarded up buildings.

Go to the South Loop and points north and what does one see? Many successful stores bustling with customers. Whence come these paying customers? From the high-density high-rise developments surrounding the retailers. It takes a critical mass of population to support purveyors of goods profitably.

Will Hyde Parkers ever resolve this dilemma?

Editorial Comment: Probably not, but the University will probably resolve it for them, with a little bit of market assist. But three cheers to Sylvia for uttering the unholy word "density." If Hyde Park wishes to remain an island, it needs to densify within its current borders in order to build a market base sufficient to support to kind of consumer culture that many demand. Although some such densification necessary, much more likely and and perhaps more socially important in the long term is for Hyde Park-Kenwood to link up with and encourage development on its peripheries to the North and South. To lift Hyde Park, we need to lift the South Side.

Moving on: Jonah Roth cuts to the chase on Dr's Hospital.

I regularly walk by the Doctors Hospital on the way to visit my Grandmother in Vista Homes. I should not have to tell you that abandoned buildings are creepy. I would much rather walk by a well-maintained hotel than a shuttered hospital. It's wonderful to talk about the architectural value of the Drs. Hospital, but I urge you to go spend some time in front of it on Stony Island. It's a nasty place right now and it has no value to the neighborhood.

Well said. And with regard to the architectural value of the building, I'll share the wisdom of an archivist I once worked for: just because it's old, doesn't mean it's rare; just because it's rare, doesn't mean it's valuable.

And finally, with a crescendo, we introduce Mr. Joseph Samuelson, who blasted into this week's Op-Ed page with both guns firing. We'd like to meet him and have a beer.

I have had enough of people in this neighborhood trying to prevent Hyde Park from coming out of the Middle Ages. [I wouldn't be quite so harsh: coming out of the 1960s would be fine with me] Of course we need a hotel in Hyde Park...everyone stays downtown. And then we cry when stores and businesses are leaving the neighborhood.

And of course we need a new supermarket. Why on earth do we need a Cooperative? We do not live in the '50s anymore and we are all worse off clinging to this old mismanaged institution that hasn't paid dividends or lowered its prices in years...It's time to bring in a Dominick's or a Jewel that can bring a pleasant shopping experience and decent prices.

All in all, and especially set against the Encyclical of the last of the Medici family Popes, Hans More-bucks, this was an encouraging week for dissenting views.

Hyde Park Heroes: Edward Perovic

Every once in a while, a reasonable person writes a letter to the Herald. We think this is noteworthy. The most recent such epistle bemoans the chronic siege mentality and fear of change within the neighborhood.

Choice excerpts are presented below:

The front page of the Hyde Park Herald on July 18, would be comical if it didn't reflect a sad truth about our community..."Community input" in Hyde Park is becoming "Community roadblock." Every time a developer or the university proposes a new project, there is immediate outcry. For decades, all these outcries have produced is more vacant lots and boarded-up buildings. Meanwhile, we Hyde Parkers continue to do our shopping, eating and movie-going outside of the neighborhood.

Hyde Park's reputation has become one of anti-development and anti-retail...You can create all the TIFs in the world but if retailers are chased away by "community input," the TIFs become useless.

Finally, someone speaks the truth. Mr. Perovic is this week's Hyde Park Hero.