Harper Court: Rosy Future or Vermilion-Tinged Fantasy?

posted by chicago pop

Let's Party Like it's 2006?

Harper Court Redevelopment Site Plan: Looks Good, But...

$194 Million Redevelopment Cost: Who Will Loan the Money
in Current Credit Crunch?


And Don't Forget, Someone Else Also Has Big Plans for Next Door
Including 170 Residential Units and Dozens More Retail Spaces



Proposed Antheus-Financed, Studio Gang-designed Project Along Lake Park and 51st Street
Presumably in Dry-Dock
(July 2008)


Back to Reality:
Expect Some Nice Chess Tables

City of Chicago and University announce developer for Harper Court

posted by chicago pop

Newsflash!

From the U of C's website (January 14, 2010):

The City of Chicago and the University of Chicago on Thursday announced that Vermilion Development has been selected to redevelop the Harper Court retail complex in Hyde Park.

Vermilion, which has extensive experience in mixed–use developments, was recommended by a joint committee comprised of Department of Community Development planning staff and staff at the University of Chicago.

Vermilion was selected from among 12 development firms who responded to a Request for Qualifications that described the development opportunity and requirements for submitting a proposal for the 128,000–square–foot site.

“This creates an exciting opportunity to redevelop this portion of 53rd Street by creating commercial and retail space that complements the surrounding community,” acting DCD Commissioner Chris Raguso said. “The proposed development will complement and enhance other nearby revitalization efforts, helping to ensure Hyde Park’s future economic viability.”

“As a result of thoughtful and creative input from Hyde Park residents and business owners, we have an excellent development proposal that will serve both the neighborhood and the many visitors to Hyde Park from throughout the city and beyond,” said Ann Marie Lipinski, Vice President for Civic Engagement at the University. “The commitment to Hyde Park’s vitality by both the city and the university is very strong, and this project is a powerful demonstration of that commitment.”

“I am grateful to my staff, DCD personnel and University of Chicago staff for their hard work over the last year on this project,” said 4th Ward Alderman Toni Preckwinkle. “The development team which was chosen will transform commercial development in Hyde Park.”

The project is a partnership between the City, which owns an adjacent parking lot on South Lake Park Avenue just east of Harper, and the University, which owns the current retail properties.

Vermilion’s proposal calls for redeveloping the 40–year–old shopping center located at 5211 S. Harper Ave. by demolishing the existing center and replacing it with a mixed–use development.

The proposed $200 million development will be built in three phases that may include a mix of unique dining, entertainment, retail and office uses.

The City and the University will enter into negotiations with Vermilion and prepare a redevelopment agreement for approval by the City Council at a later date.

On the Pavement: It's All About Harper Court

posted by chicago pop

Harper Court Survey Released

The HP-K CC survey seeking neighborhood input on Harper Court redevelopment is online.

Check it out, take the survey, and send the link to all your friends.


52nd & Harper Redevelopment Process Meeting Tuesday February 26

Get the download on how development happens before it happens.

Word on 53rd: Put a Mid-Rise at McMobil

posted by chicago pop

In the aftermath of what, by all accounts, including my own, was a smashingly successful community meeting on the future of the 53rd Street TIF District, it seems like a good time to revisit our favorite little stretch of 53rd.

Side Face of a 6-Story Building Behind McMobil Lot
(5220 S. Kenwood)

If you've been reading this blog for awhile, it will come as no surprise to you what we think should happen at the McMobil site on 53rd and Kenwood. We want to see a mixed-use, mid-rise building put right there. Like the buildings of similar height just yards away. Not surprisingly, a group of folks want a building here which allows for more cars, fewer and therefore more expensive units, with none of these preferences based on substantiated arguments as to why a bigger building would be worse.

Mid-Rise, 8-Story Versailles a Block Away from McMobil Site
(5254 S. Dorchester)

In previous posts, we've gone over the reasons why we think a mixed-use mid-rise is a good idea, and in fact fits with the character of the neighborhood. The alpha and omega of this issue -- something which goes against the very core of the NIMBY soul -- is that Hyde Park needs more people. We've gone over the demographics here, and made it clear that the decline in neighborhood retail is linked to the decline in neighborhood population, and not just here but throughout the South Side.

We've also pointed out the research demonstrating that, as household density goes up, auto ownership goes down. That means fewer people actually chose to own cars. That's good for congestion. And the environment. And when retailers decide to locate nearby concentrations of shoppers, that means fewer trips by car are necessary. If NIMBYs don't want a building here, congestion is not going to be a convincing bogeyman.

Hyde Park is in fact full of such buildings, sprinkled liberally among low-rise structures. This is the case on 53rd as well, and a building here would in no way depart from the historic texture or precedent of the street or the neighborhood.

Here are a few examples of other mid-rise buildings amid low-rise housing. Does anyone have any complaints about these towers near the intersection of 56th and Kenwood? Can anyone argue that they contribute to congestion on 56th Street?

Residential Mid- and High-Rise Buildings at Intersection of 56th & Kenwood

After the 53rd Street community visioning meeting this past Saturday, I sense that people are starting to realize this, that the Old-Timer resistance to change may be ebbing. Hyde Park needs more people. It needs new people. And it needs new, modern housing to hold them in sufficient numbers to make streets busier and safer.

When you get a chance to build new housing on a major artery of the neighborhood, if you don't try to match what the neighborhood historically supported, you're perpetuating the suburbanization of the inner city that was the vision of Urban Renewal. It's something a lot of NIMBYs still cling to.

A lot of holes have been ripped into the neighborhood in the last 50 years, and the NIMBY crowd has grown accustomed to them. They like their vacant lots, dead space in public parks, empty streets with anemic urban densities, and marginal retail amenities. And they especially like their free street parking.

But none of those things are fundamentally good for the neighborhood. And there is as yet no good reason that has been offered as to why an 8-10 story building shouldn't go on this spot.

When we get a chance to fill one of those holes, and turn some of these things around, we should make the most of it, and in a big way.

53rd Street Visioning Workshop Saturday

Just a little public service announcement reminding folks about this Saturday's visioning workshop for 53rd Street. ( please email rsvp to: 53vision@hydeparkchicago.org ) For once, we have a community meeting with somewhat of a scientific methodology behind it (those electronic keypads), and put together by organizers who have made a real effort to turn out a real cross-section of Hyde Park-Kenwood residents.

It's a big time commitment, but one way to think about it is that with this meeting, you will have dispensed the equivalent labor of attending 4 or 5 less important ones. If you're going to put your time into any community meeting in the next little while, this is probably the one to invest in.

So come let your voice be heard, and tell the Man that you want more currency exchanges, dollar stores, curio shops, cell phone retailers, and third rate restaurants.

The Harper Court Torpedo Factory!

posted by chicago pop

Proposed Harper Court Torpedo Factory

[T]he converted torpedo factory in Alexandria, Va. ... [has] demonstrated the success of art colonies on a national basis. -- Charlotte Des Jardins

Every now and then, you hear something about a ham radio operator who picks up the transmission of a radio show or television episode from 1955 -- an Eisenhower speech, or an episode of The Twilight Zone -- that had been bouncing around the stratosphere for half a century before it crackled to life in some hobbyist's basement.

That's kind of what it felt like to read the letter from Charlotte Des Jardins in The Hyde Park Herald (October 10, 2007). Though we usually get plenty of signals from Planet NIMBY, this one had to be coming from an object far, far beyond the NIMBY belt -- a transmission lost in space, a time capsule of sorts, a relic from another age, from the dark moon Urban Renewal.

How else to explain the insistence in this letter that times hadn't changed, that there was still some kind of mission for Harper Court to fill, and it was pretty much the same idealistic and impractical vision that inaugurated the institution's construction in 1965? Advocates of Harper Court usually state their case by reciting the origins of the project as a community effort to house artisans and small businesses displaced by urban clearance, though it failed to accomplish this initially, and has had only patchy success ever since, as we argued in a previous post.

While the advocates of Harper Court see Jacobean tragedy -- with betrayals, double-crossing acronyms, and sordid revelations, -- in the decision to try to sell the property two years ago, the rest of us wonder why we don't just get on with it.

How long would you wait, after all, to fix something if it isn't working? A few days? A week or two? Maybe six months? In the case of Harper Court, it's taken decades for the accumulated failure of the institution to become manifest.

Perhaps a review of some of the things that haven't worked out in the meantime would help give us some perspective. Does anyone want any of these back?

The Vietnam War (1959-1975)
The Robert Taylor Homes (1962-1987)
The Soviet Union (1917-1991)

Unlike these great and failed episodes of human history, Harper Court is still with us. When something isn't working, like a war, or a housing project, or a communist country, you stand a really good chance of doing better if you just wipe the whole slate clean and start with something new. That's what should be done here.

But let's look at the letter's argument itself. The opening paragraph reveals a paradoxical complacency -- nothing gets built here, and why would we want it to? -- with the state of affairs in the neighborhood, a curious fatalism, not only about the ability of Hyde Park to attract development, but even about its desirability. Is this a future-oriented vision?

Do we really need another high rise in Hyde Park? Is there really a rush of developers to build a high rise at 53rd Street/Cornell Avenue [currently being demolished to make way for a developer to build a high rise! -- ed.] and 53rd Street/Kenwood Avenue -- two sites that have been empty for years? So, why are plans to build a high-rise in Harper Court proceeding, when there are other neighborhood properties that have been vacant for years?

The first sentence would imply that we have a glut of high-rises in the neighborhood, which is difficult to demonstrate. The presence of vacant lots or empty buildings -- one of which is currently being cleared for development -- is put forward as a sort of fatalist argument for letting thing be -- because nothing has changed in the past.

But then when things do change, that's an even better argument for leaving Harper Court alone.

The demolition of Harper Court does not make sense, especially at this time when major portions of 53rd Street are being improved by maintaining their original character [which differs radically from that of Harper Court -- ed.]

So because nothing is changing (i.e., vacant lots) we shouldn't redevelop Harper Court, and because things are changing (i.e., 53rd Street/Harper building) we shouldn't redevelop Harper Court.

The weakest argument of the letter is the suggestion that a renewed Harper Court could somehow accomplish what it has failed to do since the beginning: become the home to a community of artists and artisans. Hyde Park is already home to two flourishing artistic communities, and neither of them have anything to do with Harper Court: the Hyde Park Art Center, and the Experimental Station at Blackstone and 61st Street. If the artists who come to Hyde Park are setting up shop elsewhere, what does that tell you?

Harper Court Torpedo Factory Signage

Obviously, that you need a torpedo factory. Like the one in Alexandria, Virginia, with its 72,000 square feet of space, overlooking the Potomac River, with plentiful natural light, and constructed with slightly more durability than a Brady Bunch-era rec room.

Harper Court can be an ongoing conduit for the marketing of art in its multiple forms. Several models in other parts of the country -- notably the converted torpedo factory in Alexandria, Va. -- have demonstrated the success of art colonies on a national basis.

The analogies with Harper Court are overwhelming. All it takes is a major municipal grant to tear down Harper Court, built an old torpedo factory, and then convert it to gallery space for the artists who come to the 57th Street Art Fair.

One thing is for sure about Hyde Parkers: they took Daniel Burnham seriously when he advised "make no little plans."

Development Beat: Prospects for Retail on Cottage Grove and in Hyde Park

posted by chicago pop

That's just a tease, of course; no one expects Target on Cottage Grove within the next 6 months, 6 years, and some may say we need to wait 6 decades. After all, it took 30 years for Grand Boulevard to lose 52,000 people, about as much time as it took Hyde Park to lose a comparable number.

But there are signs of positive change. As we highlighted back in August, Alderman Preckwinkle is helping to bring an exciting mixed-use development to the corner of Cottage Grove and 47th. And an estimated 10,000 folks are expected to move into the area as it continues to attract middle-class home buyers, and as 3,600 new mixed-income units come on line by 2010 as part of the Chicago Housing Authority's "great transformation."

Some changes, in the right circumstances, can be bracing. Look at Evanston, which only a few years ago had a rather torpid downtown area with little-to-no advantage taken of its excellent and centralized transit infrastructure. It now has a booming downtown commercial district, high-rise residential clustered around METRA and "L" stations, and a combination of local and national, large and small-scale retail. All while preserving its historic, single-family neighborhoods. This took forethought, planning, and a commitment to change.

Similar transformations, though more limited, have occurred around rail hubs in Arlington Heights, and Palatine, both on METRA lines.

Hyde Park is indeed a different species, not being a distinct municipality, cut up into several different political jurisdictions, and like everyone else subject to byzantine City bureaucracy. But it does have a METRA line with multiple stations, and good bus service, and, as many readers of this blog have commented, a fair amount of pent-up demand.

So what's the deal?

A few factors are mentioned in a 2005 interview with Hank Webber, VP of Community Affairs at the U of C: prevalence of relatively small spaces discourages larger retailers, as does the suspicion that a local store would lose out to competition from the Loop, or the growing commercial strip along Roosevelt Road. From a demographic perspective, Hyde Park's high student population is viewed as more or less equivalent to an impoverished community like Grand Boulevard, with 25,000 people living below poverty. Though aggregate buying power is there, both neighborhoods have to work hard to convince retailers that they are viable markets.

A 2005 Urban Lands workshop on redevelopment in Grand Boulevard highlighted Cottage Grove as a key element in any revitalization. One crucial factor: there is land available. Public transportation, as well as under-utilized road capacity, make the area ripe for future commercial development as the local population grows and average household incomes rise. Hyde Park doesn't have this kind of real estate to offer, but it would only benefit from the development of a neighboring community that did.

While Hyde Park will most likely have to piggy-back off of neighboring communities for large scale retail, it's not too soon to think about how to improve the climate for smaller businesses. The participants at the above-mentioned workshop agree that, in any of the lakefront, South Side neighborhoods, there is a shortage of small retail space, but building it out is an expensive proposition that will require subsidy (from TIF funds, for example), and a commitment to providing top grade retail space in a mixed-use project.

We all know that a few of those are set to come on line, or are in the planning stages, and how important they therefore are to advancing Hyde Park to its small retail "tipping point."

"The most important thing a community can do is to set the table," remarked a local developer at the 2005 workshop. The deck is stacked against a lot of South Side neighborhoods, for historical, racial, and other reasons. But this is all the more reason to make it attractive for the small retailer to locate here by building the best quality and most plentiful new space that can be provided, whether in the ground level of a new hotel, the street level of a new residential tower, or by upgrading and expanding existing properties.

NIMBY's Corner #6: Jack & Jill Sign a Crazy Petition

NIMBY-ism, let us recall, is defined by individuals taking the arbitrary measure of their immediate surroundings as the norm and rule for the rest of us. They usually then sign a petition about it.

What makes NIMBY-watching interesting, aside from it's year-round nature, are the ways in which its advocates present their arguments as common-sensical, when they are usually without much empirical justification.

A case in point is the petition printed in this week's Herald (September 19, 2007), truly a classic of its genre, and intending to convince Alderman Toni Preckwinkle that four strictures should be obeyed in the development of the McMobil site on 53rd Street. The petition is brought to us by a returning guest, Ms. Jill White, who formerly appeared in "Keeping Vacant Lots Vacant," and is now backed up by roaming NIMBY-at-large, Jack Spicer.

In this case, the petitioners are intent to 1) increase congestion by allowing more cars on the block rather than fewer; 2) make the development of new housing less affordable; and 3) bring in fewer new homeowners to pay property taxes to support local schools and shop at local businesses.

Two of the suggested strictures, surprisingly, are reasonable. The remaining two, unfortunately, are ridiculous. Let's take a look at them.

Stricture #1:

The 50 foot maximum height allowance under current law will prevent the excessive blocking of sunlight from nearby homes, keep the increase in population density to a manageable level, and will allow the project to blend well with the existing buildings on either side of the lot. It will also help to keep traffic light, particularly at the risky crosswalk at Kenwood Avenue, and in the alley that connects Kenwood and Kimbark (already frequently blocked by delivery vehicles).

Editorial Comment: All of the stated reasons why the proposed building should be kept to 4 stories/50 feet are arbitrary. The "manageable level" of population density referred to is not specified. Presumably it means not so many as to bug the neighbors who live there now. We've laid out a lot of reasons on this blog why Hyde Park can and should support more household density. This petition makes no reasoned case to the contrary and should not be taken seriously unless it does.

As for the idea of "blending well with the...buildings on either side of the lot," this is laudable in general, but is here being advocated in a partisan sense. Hyde Park is full of 8, 10, 12 story buildings beside 4 stories buildings. Something similar at this site would therefore be quite in keeping with architectural precedents in the neighborhood. Here's a home-made map of where these taller buildings are located in relation to the McMobil site:

Location of Buildings 5 Stories or Higher
in Relation to McMobil Site ("X")

Unless one does some arbitrary height-based jerrymandering, any definition of the "character of the neighborhood" based on a 50 ft. height limit does not unambiguously apply to the McMobil site. It is not justified by the current pattern of land-use in the area.

Stricture #2:

Insisting on at least 1.5 parking spots per residential unit. This will ensure that available street parking -- already strained to the maximum -- will not be further taxed, and that automobile traffic will not increase to a point that it puts the safety of school children crossing the street into Nichols Park at risk.

Editorial Comment: It's rather curious the way school children always pop up in these petitions, threatened by lack of sunlight, cruel and oppressive walls, racing cars, or any number of other NIMBY demons. We would point out, purely as an aside, that congestion tends to slow things down, most likely making it safer for children, and that cars drive faster in lower density areas. But that is beside the point. The insanity here is the idea that parking ratios should be increased to 1.5 spots per unit from the current requirement of 1:1.

In the Code rewrite of 2004, every progressive urban planning organization in the Chicago region pressed very hard to keep this ratio at a maximum of 1 to 1, based on extensive research showing that lower ratios reduce congestion and discourage auto use. Lots of progressive urban planners would have liked to have seen an even lower ratio than that. In fact, the City average is already less than 1:1, as we pointed out in a previous post. So what makes the petitioners think it should be different here, in a dense urban neighborhood served by transit where lots of folks don't even own cars? What NIMBYs don't realize is that these higher ratios guarantee more cars, not less.

The crowning irony of these strictures is that they are very likely to discourage anything from getting built at this site. This shouldn't be surprising, as obstructionism by now is a time-honored local specialty of Hyde Park NIMBYs.

By upping the parking, and downscaling the building, the petitioners have simultaneously increased the developer's costs, and lowered the developer's revenues. Not only this, these strictures discourage what little prospect there already is for moderately affordable new housing, because whatever gets built will be more expensive than it would were the building taller. The developer thus has every reason to build on as much of the lot as is allowed, leaving less room for a back-yard and green space.

So there you have it. As stated above, our petitioners ask us to demand a development that would 1) increase congestion by allowing more cars on the block; 2) drive up the unit selling prices; and 3) bring fewer new shoppers into our neighborhood to support local business and fewer homeowners to pay property taxes to support local schools.

Way to go, Jack and Jill.

Cottage Grove Development

I don't know about you, but it's easy for me to get up to 47th Street and every time I do, I wish there was more there. It's certainly got history going for it, as anyone who knows about Chicago's musical heritage can tell you. And "it's got good bones," as a stroll up or down the nearby mansion districts of Drexel Boulevard, Cottage Grove, or King Drives will convince. Broad boulevards that lead directly to the South Loop, solid public transportation infrastructure, and a spectacular architectural heritage are all tremendous assets for this area.

Which is why recipients of Alderman Toni Preckwinkle's 4th Ward newsletter can't help but be ecstatic over the announcement of the big mixed-use project slated for the corner of 47th and Cottage Grove. If the partnership between the Midwestern regional specialist in mixed-use development, Silken, and the South Side Quad Communities Development Corporation holds up, this could be the biggest reinvestment in the South Side in decades and a spectacular feather in Preckwinkle's cap. It would represent exactly the kind of thing that 5th Ward Alderman Leslie Hairston has been unable to pull off just a few miles to the south, along equally promising Stony Island Avenue, which, admittedly, has not experienced a similar rate of residential infill, nor is starting off from as strong a base in housing stock.

Both Cottage Grove and Stony Island, as well as most of the major east-west thoroughfares (47th, 63rd, 79th) were historically major commercial strips and their geography still favors redevelopment along those lines. This can only benefit the lakefront communities adjoining Hyde Park-Kenwood.

No neighborhood is an island, not even the Ivory Tower community of Hyde Park. Commercial development is much needed in surrounding communities, and this is a win-win for everybody. By bringing services to under-served South-Side communities, we also alleviate some of the stresses that intensive development focused within Hyde Park would generate.

Hyde Parkers would do well, instead of stonewalling the prospect of change and reinvestment, to contemplate the urban landscape surrounding them. Our neighbors are embracing positive, progressive mixed-used developments that are viewed with suspicion just a few blocks south, where the focus is less on improvement of the entire community than in guarding one's own little slice of the urban pie.

Ask Jane Jacobs

Introducing yet another feature on Hyde Park Progress, to appear from time to time, dealing specifically with issues of urban planning and design: Ask Jane Jacobs.

Hyde Parkers seem to know a lot about Daniel Burnham and his 1909 plan for the city, and folks like Jens Jensen and Frederick Law Olmsted. But, given the general antiquarian outlook of The Establishment, this backward looking orientation has not kept up with the most progressive thinking about how cities operate.

Which is why we think the discussion on change in Hyde Park-Kenwood and the South Side needs a firmer theoretical basis. The basic impulse driving Establishment obstructionism is NIMBYism, akin to that found in suburbs (and I repeatedly make this point, the subtext being that Hyde Park is NOT a suburb -- at least it hasn't been one since it was annexed by the City over 100 years ago...). Beyond that, Establishment thinking tends to cling to a line of thought going back through urban critics Lewis Mumford and Ebenezer Howard which tends to be more interested in gardens than in cities.

Jane Jacobs rejected core principles of this tradition. She did so while also providing one of the earliest and most cutting critiques of Urban Renewal. Her credentials as an urban liberal are therefore impeccable. Taking as her model Greenwich Village in New York City, she produced a set of analytic concepts for understanding what a city is that undergird much of the New Urbanism. She understood cities first and foremost as economies that operate on a local scale. This fundamental perception is one that is sorely lacking in current Establishment discourse.

Like Hyde Parkers, she wanted to 'save' her neighborhood, and she did. But she approached the problem empirically, rather than seeking to impose utopian ideals on a messy reality. We need more of Ms. Jacob's sensible and urbane sensibility.

That's why she is our Hero, and we will be asking her spirit for guidance as local issues arise in the neighborhood.

Harper Court: Commercial Death Trap

What would you say if someone told you that their business had experienced a 60% jump in profitability after changing locations? Probably: "Ah, you finally moved out of Harper Court!"

That's exactly what happened to Toys Et Cetera since moving in February 2007. Not only has the move increased revenues for the toy store, it has generated a spill-over effect for neighboring merchants at its new location on 55th St. To quote The Herald ("New tenants in shopping center spark sales", July 25, 2007):

Antwan Chandler, manager for Wesley's Shoe Corral, 1506 E. 55th St., said since Toys Et Cetera moved in there has been a dramatic improvement in business.

So here we have a small business that obviously has solid fundamentals, solid enough to give a boost to its neighbors. What can we learn from this?

Harper Court is the Bermuda Triangle for small businesses. What tenant is going to look at the Toys Et Cetera example and want to locate there? Harper Court currently has all the features needed to scare away shoppers: it is run-down, its tenants have very little relation to each other (someone visiting to buy a burrito might not necessarily want to rent a bike or arrange for a catered event), and its design is outdated and unappealing. Frankly, it's always a little scary to walk around the weird "sunken courtyard," one of those bizzare public space concepts from the 60s that should never have happened.

There is a future for Harper Court, but in its present incarnation it is a commercial death trap.