Ah, Grasshopper: You Must Look at the Meadow to Understand the Waves

When the revetment was originally installed in the 1930s, the meadow (the grass behind the stones) reached almost to the top of the stone. When you walk on the edge of the meadow today, alongside the top limestone step, the grass is considerably "sunken:"
That represents a lot of lost sand and dirt: In some places, large objects are falling into the sunken areas, trees and weeds are growing (because the Park District lawn mowers are worried they'll fall in), and caves are forming under the stones. My brother-in-law lost his Jack Russell Terrier down this particular hole, and I'm not kidding:

Once again, I'm not a physicist or an engineer, but this isn't rocket science. The wave action under the unsupported revetment eats away the land below the limestone blocks, and the sand and dirt from the meadow erode into the lake.

Let's look at this example. This is what you see from the lake side --

I know it's tiny on your screen, but if you peer at it you'll see that in this spot the wood pilings, the steel girders, and the limestone blocks in the water are gone in many places, and there's an old cement slab hastily poured as a "repaired" promenade. The slab looks like icing on a cake -- thick, black icing on a cake that has giant bite marks in it. Mmm...cake...

Now, imagine east-wind waves smacking this shoreline, and washing right under that icing, wave after rhythmic wave.

This is what results on the other side of that section of revetment:

It's much more dramatic in person, and it would be even more dramatic if you pulled out those teenage trees that are growing in the sunken area, so that you could see how deep it is.

Try this test yourself: walk along the edge of the meadow, near the limestone blocks. Everywhere that you find the ground is especially sunken, scramble over the limestone blocks and really look at what's on the other side. I bet you'll find damaged girders, missing pilings, caves, and tumbled limestone on the lake side.

In fact, I'll bet my brother-in-law's Jack Russell Terrier on it.

Gone Fishin' -- Back 09.04

The blog administrator here at HPP (pictured above, aka "Chillmaster") is going to chill for a few days, so no comments will be moderated until Tuesday, September 4, 2007. Backlogged comments will be posted beginning next Tuesday.

Until then, keep the Chicken on the grill.

Herald's Chicken: Herald Balks at Reporting

To judge by this week's edition of the Herald, it's a slow week for non-news, and probably will be next week, too, which makes our job at Herald's Chicken somewhat less entertaining. But we're about to go on vacation too, it's Labor Day after all. So we won't hold it against the crack team of leg men and news hens of the Herald if they've gone on vacation and put the paper on auto-print, or have switched from investigative reporting to serving up public service announcements. This week, for example, we learn that a jazz festival will debut, an African art celebration will commence, a big bike ride will take place, as well as an ice cream social.

Oh, yes, and the Co-op stole a new general manager from the Piggly Wiggly in Sheboygan.

In more prosaic developments, we learn that the University is "balking" at easement protection pertaining to a group of buildings on 56th and Drexel. Let's put the issue of easements aside for a minute, to focus on the balking. There is far too much balking going on in Hyde Park, and most of it perpetrated by the Herald. "University balks at easement protection," runs this week's headline. Just a few weeks ago, it was "Residents balk at park high rise." Would the copy editor please go down to Powell's and get a thesaurus.

Moving on to the op-ed page: we also confess to some disappointment that the letters have been a tad bit less insane these last few weeks. A few local communards seem to be whooping up a movement to storm the Bastille that is Hyde Park Bank, demanding not the keys to the castle, but the return of the missing clock that, well, belongs to the communards, after all.

"Truly," writes the author, expressing the most fundamental contradictions of barbecue Bolshevism, "the building is private property, it lacks landmark status and management can deal with it pretty much as it will."

And so the point is? "We want the HP Bank clock back."

Management replies: "Why yes, and here is your rattle, too, and your stuffed bear. Of course, now which box did we put that in, and what were we thinking? All this will lead to is a scream fest ("community meeting") full of angry old biddies and their husbands yelling at us about our private property and capitalism. Ah hah! There it is; quick, can someone get a ladder and put this back up there?"

Before pulling the chicken off the grill for the week, as folks head to the beach, or to our magnificent Point, basking in its late summer decrepitude, crumbling slowly into the lake like those beautiful nostalgic paintings of mossy and broken Roman arches, we'd like to signal the second in a row of letters from disgruntled seniors upset that 1) it's hard for an old guy in a wheelchair to get down to the water, and 2) darn those cops for busting the swimmers!

We'll leave it to the Point Savers and their Landscaping Consultants to explain to the seniors why 1) they can't use the Point, because it's more important to keep it picturesque and crumbling than accessible to and safe for seniors, and 2) what those "SAVE THE POINT" bumper stickers really mean is "POLICE THE POINT," because the new police state is a direct result of the Point Saving campaign.

Who would have thought that all the efforts of Hyde Park's favorite landscape architect manqué would bring on the bike cops and their totalitarian reign? Ah, the ironies -- when our preservationist and activist community lands grandma in the paddy wagon.

To the Savers, if not the saved: this is what you petitioned for ... now you've got it!

Dishing on the Co-op

Discussion on HPP of late has centered on groceries, supermarkets, and how the Hyde Park Co-op got itself into the mess it's currently in on 47th, 53rd, and 55th Streets. A recent meeting of the Co-Op Board (Monday, August 27), which had the electronic rumor-mills of the Golden Rectangle abuzz with speculation about a University-led restructuring, turned out to be only the guilty fantasy of old-time die-hards who know in their heart-of-hearts that it's time to take old Bess out behind the shed. But lo, the University landlord would not perform the mercy-killing, at least not this time. Though the Co-op owes its landlord some $800,000 in back rent, the University would continue to "work with it."

Thinking some background and a few facts were in order, I did a little digging and came up with the following, courtesy of Crain's Chicago Business.

According to a Crain's article of July, 2004 ("Lean times at Hyde Park Co-op," Julie Jargon, August 9, 2004), the decision to go into the 47th St. location was a preemptive move to stave off potential competition.

The non-profit Co-op gave into a decidedly monopolistic impulse, snapping up a nearby store space a few years back to block a potential competitor from entering its turf. Costs went up. And now Hyde Park's only full-service grocery store is struggling to hold onto customers and keep its shelves stocked at both locations — some say because it's competing with itself...

But was there really ever any turf to defend on 47th St. in the first place? And even if so, was it good business sense to block competition by expanding operations into an unproven market, rather than improving the core business? The article cites a former Board member on the rationale for expansion.

When a new shopping center was proposed for East 47th Street in the nearby North Kenwood-Oakland neighborhood, [Lake Park Pointe Shopping Center at 47th and Lake Park] "the board and the manager thought that if another grocery store went in there, it would hurt the Co-op, so they felt they had to get a lease," Mr. Orlikoff recalls.

We know what the results were. Instead of two supermarkets in healthy competition, we have one on the verge of death.

Today [2004], the Co-op is working to refinance its debt and lure back shoppers. Co-op staffer Ernie Griffin says that as of June, membership data showed roughly 16,000 members hadn't shopped at the Co-op in the previous six months. Mr. Cooley, the Co-op board member, confirms that customer traffic has dropped, but couldn't provide specific numbers.

That number is roughly half the membership in the Co-op -- and certainly more than the number of professors likely to be on sabbatical at any one time. While the then Board president attributed the drop in sales to competition from local convenience stores selling a few cabbages on the side, a suburban food-retail consultant puts it all in proper perspective. "Consumers are more price-sensitive now, and I wouldn't be surprised if Hyde Park residents are driving long distances to other stores with expanded variety."

When you insist on local business, you're stuck with local talent. In the case of major commercial operations run by committee, that, as we now know, can be a major problem.

Leakage

It seems like a good time to post the map below, together with a link to an interesting piece from The Chicago Reporter on the city's "Commercial Chasm." It gives cartographic expression to what we all already know, but also attaches a few useful numerical values to familiar commercial trends.

This map represents "leakage," or "the amount of consumer spending that exceeds retail sales for a given market."


The general drift of the Reporter piece is that the dearth of retail on the South Side -- made graphically clear in several other illustrations not reproduced here -- is due in large part to racism. The most evident correlation, after all, is that money flows from black areas on the South Side to white/mixed areas on the North Side. I suspect that racism on some level certainly plays a part, though straight-up demographic factors related to economic class and urban geography, I believe, are more likely to be the root cause nowadays.

Chicago is a centralized city, and always has been. For most of the 20th century, neighborhoods that aspired to host anything more than a local retail district had to face competition with downtown. Then came the suburban malls, adding to the outflow of spending dollars from local neighborhoods.

Even so, proportion of spending over sales in South Side neighborhoods is striking. Between 25 to 50% of all dollars spent by Hyde Parkers go outside the neighborhood. And they're not going to Woodlawn or Oakland. In the ring of community areas around Hyde Park, the proportion of spending to sales is even higher -- 75% or more of local dollars go outside the community. And these shoppers aren't spending their dollars in Hyde Park, either. There are a handful of neighborhoods that appear to be in equilibrium, but almost none of them are on the South Side.

Hyde Park is not economically self-sufficient. While it would be interesting to know how leakage breaks down by all sorts of demographic categories, the fact is that in aggregate, there is not enough gravity in local commerce to capture all local spending. There is not even enough gravity to capture the spending of folks in neighboring community areas.

While racism should not be dismissed, it seems clear that the absence of supermarkets, discount retailers, restaurants, and apparel stores has a lot to do with relatively diffuse purchasing power across the South Side, a much larger area geographically than the North Side. Until purchasing power begins to concentrate more heavily -- through higher incomes, higher populations, or both, this will be the status quo for some time.

Which is why all those proposed condo towers might not be as evil as Hyde Park NIMBY's think they are.

Beauty and the Beast

Photo taken on Friday, August 23, 2007 in a newly-opened store approximately 12 minutes north of Hyde Park by car (I can't mention the name, because the Team Members asked me very politely not to take photos after I snapped this one):


Photo (below) taken on Saturday, August 25, 2007, in the only supermarket in Hyde Park. Their slogan: "A love affair with wonderful foods." Comment: unrequited. Their previous slogan: "Dedicated to outrageous service." Wait...OK, yeah, this one is correct.

Herald's Chicken: Isn't there anything out there to report?

I couldn't resist this little jab.

The August 22, 2007 edition of the Hyde Park Herald features three classic cases of stories that fail to report actual news events.

"Birders, Park no longer at odds" tells that some players in Jackson Park now agree. What is the news here?

"Police scatter August Point Swimmers" can't cite any specific instances of what the headline suggests. We have "reporting" that consists of listening to a few folks who called up the Herald. Certainly, this might be a good way to start on a story, but wouldn't you like to see some details, if indeed this is happening?

The crown jewel - "Clocked" where the Herald reports that the Hyde Park Bank clock has mysteriously disappeared, though the Herald can't confirm anything. Do Herald reporters have working phones?

But here is a piece of news that didn't find its way into the Herald -- it appears that the City is spraying our neighborhood for protection against West Nile Virus. There is something for the Herald to sink its teeth into. Go to it, boys! But it will require that you do something more than field phone calls.

Herald's Chicken: Waxing Eloquent About Nothing

This week's Hyde Park Herald (August 22, 2007) boasts examples of "no news is news," selective omission of relevant facts, and various other directives from the NIMBY corner. It was a tough several minutes finding the worst offender. We hope you will agree that the editorial, "A new day for Dr. Wax," is the winner by a nose.

We return to a tired story about the Dr. Wax used records store, which has run into financial difficulty. Earlier headlines trumpeted that Dr. Wax was being "forced out." This turns out not to be the case, or does it? The editorial hints that "Dr Wax will not be closing down." Dr. Wax will remain in Hyde Park, wink, wink. This sounds a bit more like a news story than an editorial. The reason it is not a news story is that even the Herald would be embarrassed to print such total speculation. The Herald can't cite any sources for their information about the future of Dr. Wax. It refuses to disclose the future location of Dr. Wax (if, indeed, they are moving).

After this half-hearted attempt to coax news from a rumor, the editorial returns to the well-worn conspiracy theory that Dr. Wax is being forced out by an unscrupulous and grasping Harper Court Foundation (HCF). What is the evidence for this? Dr. Wax owner Sam Greenberg decided that he was paying too much rent last year. He sent the HCF a letter suggesting that he be allowed to pay a lower rent. When "he got no reply," he began paying the lower rate. I think I'm going to try out this stratagem myself. My mortgage is really unconscionably high. I'm going to slip a note to GMAC mortgage asking to cut my mortgage payments to $50 per month. I expect that you will be able to buy a nice house in the "Golden Rectangle" in a few months.

The only shocking thing about this is that the HCF took more than a year to present Mr. Greenberg with a bill for back rent of $15,000. The Herald would have you believe that this is more evidence of a shifty and untrustworthy landlord. In fact, this shows that the HCF either a charitable organization or utterly incompetent. If it were my property, I would have evicted the tenant faster than you can say "Championship Vinyl."

The real crime committed by the HCF is their failure to "explain their behavior ... to the community." Here we should read, "to the Herald." Why should a private organization explain themselves to the community? What business is it of the Herald's how the HCF deals with deadbeats?

But yet again, the Herald drags out the conspiracy theory. It seems that the HCF must be preparing to sell off their property to an evil "developer." It is not clear why getting rid of tenants and allowing the property to run down helps maintain its value. But, suppose we accept the proposition that the HCF want to sell off their property to a developer who might build usable retail and residential spaces. Is this so awful? Something has to be done, Harper Court is at best a shell of what wasn't very good to begin with. Isn't that how a neighborhood adapts to changing demand?

The editorial now attempts to call the HCF to its noble past. "The ideas (sic) built into the brick and mortar of the place have a unique purpose." What is that "unique" purpose? According the Herald, it is to "help Hyde Park find businesses and services it needed." It seems that those ideals are engraved in every piece of retail property from McDonalds to the Hyde Park Bank building. What is so special about Harper Court? Again, the Herald weighs in with "to promote inexpensive space for creative entrepreneurs." Isn't everyone who succeeds in building a business in Hyde Park creative?

"We must redouble our vigilance" before the HCF pulls a fast one on us ends the editorial. If you mean, before the HCF foundation sells the run-down property and someone builds something we'd like to patronize, let 'em rip!

Harper Court Was, and Is, A Bad Idea

Harper Court is a failure. By the measures of its own founding mission to "further trade and economic development of the Hyde Park-Kenwood area," or to assist with the "continuation in the community of artisans, craftsmen ... of special cultural or community significance" it has failed from the very beginning. The artists and craftsmen it was intended for didn't move in. It is as much a product --in the very design and layout of the buildings -- of a 60s worldview as the Urban Renewal programs against which is was a response. Those who are attached to Harper Court are in love with its mission, and blind to the empirical fact that the site and the institution have not met their own goals nor met the pressing and changing needs of the community.

Harper Court has failed in its mission to "further trade and economic development." There are now more low-rent, vacant storefronts in Hyde Park than can be filled with tenants, while Hyde Parkers are still unable to shop for essentials in their own neighborhood. In light of the large sums of consumer dollars that are spent outside of the neighborhood, it is clear that Harper Court has not alleviated the drought of retail amenities that afflicts the neighborhood. Subsidizing small business does not economically benefit those who are burdened with frequent and costly voyages outside the neighborhood to procure quality food and clothing. In fact, it ignores this very real problem in the pursuit of an ideological chimera, and aggravates strucutral disadvantages that disproportionately affect the poor and minorities. The object of any redevelopment project or corporation should be to help draw money to our neighborhood, and above all to keep neighborhood money in the neighborhood. That is the best way to preserve the distinctiveness of Hyde Park and pursue social justice.

Harper Court was also intended as a refuge for artisans displaced from land clearance programs under Urban Renewal. Here its failure is even more apparent. Hyde Park currently has a thriving artistic culture, and it has nothing to do with Harper Court. Two self-governing artistic institutions have made Hyde Park their home, the Hyde Park Art Center and the Experimental Station. Evidently, for neither organization was the physical layout, location, or mission of Harper Court attractive. The failure of Harper Court in this respect is a symptom of its top-down, utopian-style approach to community planning. A philanthropist and some well-meaning activists thought they knew what artists and artisans wanted. They were wrong.

Beyond the empirical failures, the approach of Harper Court to commercial revitalization is backwards. Focusing on and subsidizing local businesses in fact guarantees that we have no businesses. The fixation on getting "local" businesses and keeping out "chains" is an aesthetic and ideologically-driven one that is uninformed as to the nature of entrepreneurialism and small-business dynamics. To get "local" businesses, you first of all need local entrepreneurs, and to judge by the number of empty storefronts, Hyde Parkers aren't jumping at the opportunity. Even if such entrepreneurs could be found, allowing their operations to be subsidized would not guarantee that the real -- as opposed to imaginary community in Hyde Park -- gets what it needs.

The preference for "local" businesses typically stands in opposition to a distaste for "chains." This stance quickly becomes problematic. The natural tendency of a good business is to grow. As soon as you have more than one branch, you are technically a chain. Several of Hyde Park's most well-known "local" businesses are now chains: the Medici, Toys Etc., the Seminary Co-Op, Powell's Books. Istria, if it ever manages to open its Cornell Avenue location, will then be a chain, and may expand into the rest of Chicago. Intelligentsia, the much-loved, Chicago-based purveyors of fine coffees, now has branches in the Loop and is opening in Los Angeles.

The fixation on subsidizing "local" business assumes that the best of everything can be found in one very small neighborhood, and that it is therefore justifiable to keep non-local things out. This gets the cause-and-effect of vibrant neighborhoods backwards. Local neighborhoods, the kinds that people love to live in and that others come to visit, don't emerge out of purely local conditions. They have strong economies that draw in outsiders, both to open businesses and to patronize them.

The most distinctive neighborhood shopping districts in Chicago have very few chains: Damen in Bucktown between North and Armitage; Armitage and Halsted in south Lincoln Park; and Central Street in Evanston. All of these shopping districts are full of local businesses. Hyde Park should be trying to replicate these areas, not tinkering with a flawed and obsolete redevelopment concept.

But Harper Court isn't only flawed in terms of its redevelopment track record. It is flawed in the very nature of its layout and buildings. Harper Court looks like a ski lodge in Aspen, not like a part of Hyde Park. More generally, Harper Court embodies the 60s era of urban design, when the whole trend of things was to close oneself off, to look within, to establish buffers between a given site and the "outside." This was the spirit that animated the design of Urban Renewal itself, a spirit that was shared by the design of Harper Court.

Harper Avenue was cut off, making the complex difficult to access, find, or even see. The very idea of a "court" was foreign to Chicago, based as it is on a grid of walkable pedestrian thoroughfares with storefronts coming to and meeting the lot lines. Everything about Harper Court is intended to isolate it -- never a good idea for business. It is of the same vintage as the State Street pedestrian mall, and about as effective. City leaders had the good sense to reopen State Street, and it has flourished. The whole trend of modern urban design is to connect places, not to cut them off.

Harper Avenue should be reopened. The buildings of Harper Court, which should have outraged preservationists when they were first built, did not and still don't fit with the period architecture that surrounds them. They should be torn down and replaced. This site is too small to house the large number of tenants for which it was intended. Modern retail demands larger spaces for fewer tenants. Whatever assets belong to the Foundation should be liquidated and transferred to a Hyde Park Trust for the Arts. These monies could then be used to fund juried, competitive, competitions in the arts, which would sponsor projects in the neighborhood and throughout the City. By being juried and competitive, but based in Hyde Park, it would bring the best of the City and the nation here, instead of making public art the object of public committees devoted to local clients.

We don't need more top-down economic and cultural central-planning posing as community control. Merchants and shoppers are part of the community too, and right now they are not sufficiently represented.

You Call This Water Access?

The SAVE THE POINT campaign was, I'll grant you, a brilliant marketing strategy. The slogan is so sweet and simple, the cause so pure. Who doesn't want to save the Point? Who doesn't love the look of limestone?

But what got swept under the rug were the details of the Compromise Plan that officials had hammered out with the original community task force (not with the Point Savers, but with the original Community Task Force for Promontory Point).

Just the title, Compromise Plan, tells you that the City, the Park District, and the Army Corps of Engineers made many concessions in the negotiation process.

But this is the only concession that matters to me:

Water Access.

Wait...make that Sanctioned Deep-Water Swimming Access.

Yes, my friend, if something else matters to you, then go ahead and contribute a post to this blog. All I care about is that I can jog to the lake with my family and my dog every available day in the summer and fall, and we can safely swim off the Point in deep water. All I care about is that my 78 year-old water-loving mother-in-law can safely swim off the Point if she wants.

The Compromise Plan had sanctioned deep-water swimming access, off of two, 150-foot-wide steps down into the water, one on the south side, and one on the north side -- the only deep-water access of its kind in the city.

That's 300 feet of step-down access, compared with what we have now, which are three slippery bottlenecks to get in the lake, all of which require the agility of an Olympic gymnast to navigate safely.

The Face of Erosion

Change can sometimes be good. That's one of the messages of this blog.
But this sort of change is not good:

South Side of Promontory Point, 1998/99*


August, 2007

And to think: this is the relatively more weather-protected side of the Point that the SAVE THE POINT crew thought needed minimal refurbishing.

Within the span of only about 8 years -- which is equivalent to two nanoseconds on the geological clock -- there's a substantial cave-in on the promenade, with a large crack forming behind it. Notice that the limestone block at which the arrow is pointing has completely collapsed.

I'm no engineer, but I would say that the crack and collapsed blocks indicate that the soil beneath the promenade has eroded away through wave action, and there's nothing supporting it but some rotted wood pilings and wavy steel girders.

*1998/99 photo courtesy of Vasile Jurca, Civil Engineer, Chicago Dept. of Environment, who is not responsible for the content of this post, or the opinions expressed therein.

Is This a Hint?

Promontory Point, South side, Looking West

I dunno. Maybe we're just last in line on the Park District's Weed Whacker duty sheet. But this unkempt scenario has all the earmarks of a mother teaching her rude child some manners. "You don't want me to set foot in your bedroom? Fine. You clean it."

It's a parenting strategy that should work. The child would eventually make concessions, recognizing that negotiating with the person who does his laundry is probably not a bad idea.

But we Hyde Parkers are a stubborn lot. Give me five minutes, and I could probably find a few passionate activists who think the weeds are pretty, the dead tree is historic, and they should all be saved.

SAVE THE POINT!

An Open Letter to Hyde Park Progress from Eugene F. Fama

I have been biking the lakefront from Hyde Park and swimming at the Point for about 45 years.

I risk assassination in saying this, but I think the new concrete revetments from the loop to Hyde Park look better than the old limestone -- in its best days.

The concrete is definitely more user friendly -- to sit, walk, or bike on. Returning from the Loop on my bike, I can now ride comfortably around the revetment that leads from the Aquarium to the Planetarium, and then pick up the delightful new path in Northerly Island (formerly Meigs Field). I look longingly at the ladders installed on the revetment between the Planetarium and the 12th Street Beach, to allow easy exit from the water. All the way south from the Loop, there seem to be many more people sitting and walking on the new revetments than in the past. The lakefront in general seems much more attractive and inviting.

The new revetments do, of course, have their downside. For one, they would force out the hordes of rats that live in the gaping cracks in the limestone at the point. (Rats have rights, too, you know.) Concrete revetments would also make it too easy to sit, stretch out on a blanket, or stroll around the point without breaking an ankle. (We don’t want the revetments to actually be used.) And concrete revetments would make breaking beer bottles late at night less fun since there would be no cracks to hide the shards that now get into the feet of unsuspecting walkers and swimmers emerging from the water.

When I go to the Point and look at the revetment, I wonder what it is that the limestone crowd is trying to save. I think I know the answer. I have been stopped several times at the entrance to the Point by SAVE THE POINT petitioners. I never recognize them as frequent users of the revetments. I suspect many people who signed SAVE THE POINT petitions were also not frequent users, but were simply fooled by a good slogan.

To vote on this one, maybe one should be able to show evidence of the cuts and bruises that regular users of the limestone revetments accumulate over the years.

Eugene F. Fama

Herald's Chicken: Keep Vacant Lots Vacant

Another of the Hyde Park Herald's attempts to drum up support against those who seek to build new housing graces the lead spot in this week's issue (August 15, 2007). "Residents balk at park high rise" shouts this Herald's Chicken winner. This singularly uninformative headline (what is the "park" -- Nichols Park?; is an eight story building a high rise?) is referring to the vacant lot on 53rd street and the Mobil station/car wash. A developer (hiss, hiss) who has on option to purchase this property once proposed an eight story condo for this spot.

"Residents" turns out to be only one Hyde Parker, Ms. Jill White, who is "meeting" and circulating a petition for a different option -- a four story mixed retail and residential property. The Herald could not identify any other Hyde Parkers who support Ms. White's position. No evidence was provided by reporter Yvette Presberry that any meetings had actually taken place.

But let us examine the reality of the situation. The current property is a disgrace to Hyde Park, home to a run-down business and a vacant lot. The developer would, horrors of horrors, provide an attractive and useful building on this spot. It is in the interest of any developer to gauge what sort of building would be economically feasible. Given the large number of vacant storefronts on 53rd street, it is not surprising that the developer's proposal did not include retail.

Ms. White assumes that her alternative, a four story mixed use building, is economically feasible. She believes that current residents are entitled to rights over what is built on vacant or underused land. She neglects the benefits that more, reasonably well-heeled residents will bring to 53rd Street corridor. Instead, she proposes that the developer move his plan to another site he owns at 53rd and Cornell. Bascially, she wants to downsize the proposed developments at both sites.

Housing density in the 53rd Street corridor is not very high to begin with. There is nothing wrong with an eight story building on 53rd street or a 17 story building in East Hyde Park. Lincoln Park is full of eight story apartments and yet remains one of the most desirable neighborhoods in Chicago. The South loop is booming with a host of 25 plus story apartments. These developments have already created a retail environment that puts Hyde Park to shame. One can only imagine how South Michigan or Wabash Avenues will be in five years. But we know that they were a wasteland only ten years ago. Is this the future of Hyde Park?

To cement her position, Ms. White brings up the double bug-a-boo of "congestion" and "parking" problems. She obviously has not parked on 53rd street between Kimbark and Dorchester recently. At the height of the Saturday morning shopping activity, there are many vacant parking places in front of the site. Ms. White is unfamiliar with the Chicago Zoning ordinance that requires that buildings of more than four stories provide parking spaces, one for each apartment.

The coup de grace is the notion that the eight story building would block "sunlight" for residents on 52nd street. We wonder where Ms. White lives!

The Herald goes on to report the results of questioning 4th Ward alderman Toni Preckwinkle. Ms. Preckwinkle hasn't heard of these "petitioners" or their complaints. This is an obvious attempt on the part of the Herald to influence the alderman by holding up the specter of community opposition to much needed development.

The Herald reports that developer Leal did not return "repeated calls." Here the reporter is hinting at social irresponsiblity. All we have is an intelligence test. The developer has nothing to gain by talking to the Herald reporter. He knows that information about the development and it's benefits will not reach print. He will be portrayed as an evil profit-monger. What the Herald doesn't understand is that the profit motive incents the developer to build a useful and attractive structure, otherwise he will have no buyers.

It would be a great shame if the Alderman allowed just one person (or even a handful of residents) to block a very positive improvement in our community. Condominium owners at both sites on 53rd would bring foot traffic, pride of ownership, and money to our community. This can only make 53rd Street, in particular, and Hyde Park, in general, a safer and better place to live.

NIMBY's Corner #5

This week, once again, we have a solid vintage of NIMBYism -- not perhaps the finest harvest of recent weeks, from lesser terroirs and uncommon varietals, but recognizable nonetheless as belonging to the Hyde Park appelation.

What's distinctive about this week's pressing is a certain bouquet of incoherence, with peppery notes that finish with an aftertaste of contradiction. Such unpredictabilities, tho', are part of the joy of NIMBYism. Heretofore, we haven't devoted much time to a noisy little row among the neighbors of Bar Louie, one that has catapulted Sharonjoy A. Jackson to neighborhood fame and has taken up fully half of this week's Op-Ed page. Her arrival as an Establishment figure was this week Heralded when she was interviewed as a "source" in the conflict over Boisterousness and Parking near the controversial restaurant.

It will be remembered that Ms. Jackson, one of the first guests to NIMBYs corner, is East Hyde Park's promoter of Bucolic lakeside living, full of Tranquility not known in the commercial districts to the north. This week, her plaint is directed mostly to other people not taking her seriously, and though not therefore really related to NIMBYism, she does finish this week's letter with the following:

The only other chain that has entered the Hyde Park community is Borders, which, as predicted, is not doing well. Let us keep and nurture the small businesses, which are assets to our community, rather than those large, commercial entities that add nothing positive to our community -- and which show little, if any, interest in our community, our needs, and our uniqueness. And, yes, this is a community.

Editorial Fact Check: Quite a number of chains are alive and doing well in Hyde Park. I shop at most of them. A few of them are: Starbucks (3 locations that I know of); Potbelly Sandwich Works; Edwardo's Pizza; Jimmy John's; FedEx-Kinkos; Pepe's; Ace Hardware; Office Depot; Harold's Chicken; Leona's; McDonald's; Dunkin' Donuts; Baskin Robbins; Wok-N-Roll; The Great Frame Up; CVS; Walgreens; Boston Market; UPS Store; Radio Shack; Binny's; Domino's Pizza; Edible Arrangements, and Hollywood Video. I've probably missed a few. Borders wants to move out of two other custom-built stores (at Broadway and Lawrence in Uptown, and Clyborn and North in Lincoln Park), so the Hyde Park situation is not unusual, and most likely is related to the same trend to internet commerce that has doomed Dr. Wax.

Upshot: much of Hyde Park commerce ALREADY consists of chain stores, and no one is complaining. We need a lot of what they offer because we can't get it anywhere else. Painting Bar Louie with the brush of failed chain stores in Hyde Park therefore doesn't convince.

A much more curious piece of NIMBAGE is authored by one William F. Zieske, who actually introduces the term NIMBY into his letter. We only hope he's been reading NIMBY's Corner! But we can't quite figure out what he thinks: is he a NIMBY, or not? At first glance, he seems to be with us in denouncing NIMBYism everywhere:

Hyde Park-Kenwood is an affluent neighborhood, and is blessed with more parkland than ANY other neighborhood in the entire city. Look at a city map -- we are surrounded by vast green spaces and the blue of our beautiful lake. We have the right resources, transportation facilities, a location just minutes from the Loop, and already have the community vitality and prominence to make Hyde Park an attractive destination for Olympic athletes and fans world-wide.

Are we the ones who should be making [a] NIMBY argument, selfishly refusing to share a small fraction of our pristine parks, and hoving the burdens of hte Olympics on other neighborhoods?

Editorial Comment: All well and good so far, and full of good common sense. But here comes the CAVE to Establishment Orthodoxy.

We in Hyde Park-Kenwood should gladly give up some of our over-abundance of green grass for venues that would attract the world to visit Chicago in 2016, and to spend money here that can help build the much-needed parks, hospitals, and community centers -- not a stadium --in the communities that need them.

Mr. Zieske is therefore on board for doing everything we need to in order to host the Olympics, with the exception of being able to host the Olympics. So use the parkland, bring the people and the cash, but don't build a stadium. Just pass out folding chairs and pretend it's Ravinia. Alas, this letter came a hair's breadth from our Hyde Park Heroes column; instead, it landed in NIMBY's Corner for failing to perceive the anti-stadium argument as textbook NIMBYism.

Lastly is another itemization of complaints against the proposed Marriott, this one slightly different from that of Hans More-bucks and notably lacking the delightful category of "façadism". Mr. Allan Rechtschaffen notes with almost Victorian disapprobation that the Marriott plan is driven by "the profit motive." This variety of NIMBYism has distinct top-notes of know-it-all-ness given structure by solid anti-capitalism.

Many have questioned why we need a 380 room hotel. Surely it is more than we need for university and community purposes. The answer again was that this size favored profitability.

Editorial Comment: Surely it is more than we need? What neighborhood coffee-clatch did the market study to back this one up?

It is ultimately a matter of taste, but most people I have spoken to think the design is not what we want at the gateway of the university community...My understanding is that it is not Marriott's top-of-the-line model. Costs and profits again!

Editorial Comment: We've already highlighted the high aesthetic bar set by the proposed hotel's neighbor, the Vista Homes. But here it is inferred that what is called for is Marriott top-of-the-line hotel (fully unionized of course). But could low-paid academics and frugal Hyde Parkers really afford Marriott's top-of-the-line model? We need a hotel for conventions, conferences, and private events, but it's unlikely that anyone's tab is going to be underwritten by J. Walter Thompson, Citadel Group, or Aon Corporation. A little more familiarity with "the profit motive" and how it works might help the writer understand what it takes for an academic neighborhood to get a 5-Star, "top-of-the-line" hotel in its backyard.