Un-Fortressing Hyde Park

posted by Richard Gill

In March 2008, a public proposal was made, to open 57th Street to westbound traffic at Stony Island Avenue. The proposal went nowhere. For reasons that had nothing to do with the merits of the proposal, it didn’t get pushed. The time is past due to revive the proposal.

At Stony Island, the westbound side of 57th Street is blocked by a barrier that prevents cars from entering. (Photo above.) This has the effect of making 57th one-way eastbound between Lake Park and Stony Island. The barrier is decked out with signs displaying DO NOT ENTER, and directional signs to re-enforce that order.

Welcome to Hyde Park. You and your car may be permitted to come into our neighborhood, but only if you can negotiate our obstacle course.

The barrier has been there for so long, nobody (including CDOT traffic engineers) seems to know exactly when or why it was put there. Looking for clues, I found that it dates to the paranoid days of “the urban renewal,” nearly 50 years ago. According to the Hyde Park Herald edition of February 1, 1961, 57th Street was closed to westbound traffic at Stony Island in September 1960. The change at that time provoked the ire of many, such as residents at 58th & Dorchester who said the one-way designation required them to drive an extra four blocks, just to get home (It still does).

Since 56th Street is also one-way eastbound, this made it extremely difficult to get into Hyde Park, but really easy to get out. Mission accomplished: Build a moat, create an island, keep “outsiders” out. Even if there was any sound basis for insulating the neighborhood in 1960, there isn’t any now, and there hasn’t been for a long time.

Two public meetings were held (March 5 & 12, 2008), to discuss the proposed reopening of 57th Street. Those who objected to opening 57th Street hammered away with unsubstantiated predictions that the sky would fall. They said 57th Street would be choked with traffic, making life intolerable for both motorists and pedestrians. They offered no basis for that prediction, and professional city traffic engineers who had done an analysis debunked it.

It became clear that the objectors are residents along or near 57th Street who now have a semi-private street and want to keep it that way. Since that was their real position, and it wouldn’t stand up to scrutiny, they resorted to the tactic of bullying and disruption (remember the Point meetings). One of them pushed to the front and seized the floor. That was a sign that they really had nothing to back up their position. This antic wasn’t close to the level of disruption at the Point meetings, but the intent was the same.

So, there we had a handful of people who acted like living along the street meant they owned the street. Does this remind anyone of a recent hotel proposal whose defeat was engineered by a relative handful of people who, when the smoke cleared, simply wished to maintain their position of privilege and to hell with everybody else?

It is time to re-start the street-opening proposal.

Some of the benefits are: more exposure for local businesses; enhanced overall neighborhood traffic flow; easier access to Hyde Park; less circuitousness (with the potential for cleaner air); enhanced safety in front of Bret Harte elementary school with some traffic diverted away from 56th Street: and opportunity for weather-protected direct access for campus buses at the 57th Street Metra station.

Looking east on 57th St. at Lake Park. Signs direct eastbound traffic under the Metra viaduct. The westbound side of 57th is unused and wasted.

The city traffic engineers at the March 2008 meetings said that the proposal is feasible, would result in traffic compatible with residential/commercial streets like 57th, would not compromise traffic safety, and could be implemented with relatively minor and inexpensive signing, marking and channelization. They suggested the change could even be made on a trial basis.

This proposal, which has had local residents’ and merchants’ support (with those exceptions noted above), will also require support by the University of Chicago and Alderman Hairston.

Let’s at least try this idea. Yes, there would be some more people around --visiting, shopping, dining, sightseeing -- but that’s the idea. Hyde Park has begun to emerge from its past as a dull, unwelcoming, and lifeless urban island. Removing the barrier at 57th Street will help that process along, and will make life easier. It isn’t 1960 anymore.

It is time to stop small groups of people from preventing positive and beneficial changes. That would be real Hyde Park Progress.

Hans Morsbach: "I Am [Still] An Old Fart"

posted by chicago pop

About a year ago, Hans Morsbach gave an interview with the Chicago Maroon in which he described himself as an "old fart." ("Uncommon Interview: Hans Morsbach", October 23, 2007. )

For some strange reason the Maroon link no longer exists, but our original riff is here.

Since then, nothing has changed. Morsbach's is one of about 150-170 valid signatures on a petition to introduce the option for an alcohol ban in the 5th Ward's 39th Precinct on the November 4 ballot.

Although he complains about not being able to sell liquor on Hyde Park's 57th Street, and takes full advantage of the opportunity to sell liquor at a location in downstate Illinois, Morsbach doesn't want anyone to sell liquor in the 39th Precinct of the 5th Ward, site of Doctors Hospital.

That is to say, in his own backyard.

If you've followed HPP for any length of time, you'll know that Morsbach recently opened up a restaurant location in downstate Normal, Illinois, where he is raking in liquor revenue from a full-service beer hall near the campus of Illinois State University -- which he laments not being able to do in Hyde Park.

Here's how he described the merits of his new, downstate Medici in the above-cited Maroon article:

It's all about economics. We can have liquor, and it is in a good location close to Illinois State University.

If only students of the University of Chicago were so lucky!

But it gets even better. At pretty much the same time that Morsbach gave everyone a lecture about how the redevelopment of Harper Court would be like a sinful "Second Coming of Urban Renewal," he was taking advantage of a publicly subsidized, municipal land-clearance program in downtown Normal Illinois, setting up shop with his liquor license across the street from -- a Marriott Hotel!

Marriott Hotel Across the Street From Morsbach's Downstate Beer Hall

As with Marriott Hotels, so with booze: both are OK if they are in someone else's neighborhood and are served to someone else's kids.

Here's what his downstate menu has to say about it:

I'd Serve Booze in Hyde Park, But They Won't Let Me!

Humble Hyde Parkers may be forgiven if they, too, dream of something "more spectacular."

Alas, aspiring restauranteurs won't be able to "serve you a glass of wine to enjoy your meal" in the 39th Precinct because Hans Morsbach won't let them.

So Morsbach will be happy to serve you booze, you'll just have to drive 120 miles to get it. He'll take a stand against Urban Renewal in Hyde Park, and the University of Chicago, but not against Urban Renewal in Normal, or Illinois State University.

Residents of the Fighting 39th, you should be proud: those are some principles we can believe in.

Site of the "Second Coming"

Pat Dowell Hates on U of C for Buying Empty Buildings and Vacant Lots

posted by chicago pop

Stop #1 on the Pat Dowell Anti-Development Tour

Chicago 3rd Ward Alderman Pat Dowell just had a NIMBY coming-out party.

Or at least it looks like she is trying to get in the Club. And nothing helps score some NIMBY street cred better than hating on the University of Chicago.

But it's not just hating on the U of C that makes you a NIMBY -- if that were the case, we'd have to include hundreds of College students -- it's how you hate on the U of C that makes you a NIMBY.

To really get street cred as a NIMBY, you have to be stuck in the 60s, the way Pat Dowell accused her 3rd Ward Aldermanic predecessor Dorothy Tillman of being "stuck in the 80s" before walloping her in the 2007 city council elections.

You have to believe, like the greatest Hyde Park NIMBYs, that what happened in the period of Urban Renewal, racial turnover, Civil Rights, and inner city decay formed a template that will forever govern the operation of Chicago politics.

You have to think that the grass-roots organizations that were formed then, over 2 generations ago, if not before (whether the Hyde Park Co-Op, the Harper Court Foundation or The Woodlawn Organization), are still relevant and effective, and that the stories these organizations tell about themselves are accurate interpretations of history.

Most importantly, when you get a chance to build something useful on a vacant lot or empty building, you say "No thanks," and make arguments about why you should be able to control and obstruct the buying and selling of private property.

Buy this land? How dare you!

Dowell makes it very clear what she wants in her letter, sent to U of C President Robert Zimmer, Mayor Daley, and, um, the Hyde Park Herald (August 13, 2008).

She doesn't want the University buying land in her ward.

She says as much, referring to her "expressed reservations about the university purchasing land in the Third Ward at this time."

Dowell claims that the University is being high-handed by not bringing her in on its real estate plans, even though she has made it clear that she doesn't want the University in her neighborhood to begin with.

So why is she surprised she's not in the loop?

Even though NIMBY-ism clearly comes in a variety of colors, it still operates according to the same conservative and self-serving logic, in which paranoid speculations are cooked up on the basis of skewed understandings of changes that happened before a lot of us were born.

The 3rd Ward version of NIMBY-ism -- like one of Dorothy Tillman's hats, it can be taken off a hook and worn by anyone -- comes in a standard package that includes ritual incantations about the "history of the university's relationship with its neighboring communities."

We're all supposed to know what this means, we read about "the history" in the papers, University officials work through their guilt by endlessly admitting that there is a "history", when what this history really boils down to is one incident in Woodlawn that happened 50 years ago in utterly different historical circumstances, and with negative unintended consequences that have left that neighborhood worse off than if it hadn't experienced "the history" in the first place.

The story is this: in the early 1960s, the University of Chicago wanted to use federal urban renewal funds, with the support of municipal condemnations, to bulldoze and redevelop Woodlawn the way it had bulldozed parts of Hyde Park, which would have resulted in the displacement of low-income households the way it already had in Hyde Park.

Big Sky Country in Pat Dowell's 3rd Ward

Local folks mobilized to prevent this. It never happened. Local folks were happy, and then their neighborhood went to hell. Somewhere along the line, at the instigation of The Woodlawn Organization and now-convicted felon and former 20th Ward Alderman Arenda Troutman, they tore down the 63rd Street spur of the El, something increasingly regarded as one of the dumbest decisions in the history of mass transit.

Fast forward half a century: urban-renewed Hyde Park is a diverse community on the upswing, with its fabric more or less intact, anchored by the University of Chicago.

After The Woodlawn Organization achieved its goal of blocking University-led renewal of its eponymous neighborhood, however, it was unable to keep the area from descending into the very death spiral that the University had sought to forestall, losing population, businesses, and tax base over the next 30 years, as middle class blacks followed their white predecessors out the door.

That's a victory? Maybe not, but it provides a useful scapegoat.

This is the myth that Pat Dowell uses to impute Original Sin to the University of Chicago, and to try to score points with 3rd Ward constituents. It's a myth because the times have completely changed, though the racially charged NIMBY rhetoric has not.

My bet is that today's 3rd Ward voters can tell the difference (see Postscript).

The University is not purchasing land with the financial assistance of federal programs, and is not exercising eminent domain, as was done at the time of Urban Renewal. These purchases are not taking place at the height of the Civil Rights movement, when such actions were charged with political meanings and seemed to embody power relations that they no longer have.

Most unfortunately for the Woodlawn Myth of the Predatory University, the 3rd Ward purchases are taking place at the moment of a historic watershed, when inner cities have regained the interest of markets, imaginations, and entrepreneurs, and when smart, equitable urban development is seen to be a key to future sustainable habitation of our planet.

Garfield Green Line CTA Station (rebuilt 2001)

Any major revitalization of the south side wards around the University of Chicago will probably require the capital and involvement of the latter, in some form of public-private partnership that brings jobs to the neighborhood and builds on the efficiencies of existing urban infrastructure.

So let's put away the canned resentment and take advantage of an historic opportunity to get things moving down King Drive.

Either that, or the vacant lots in the 3rd Ward may collect garbage for another few generations.


Postscript

I was standing in the parkway of Garfield Boulevard taking these pictures of shuttered buildings, empty parking lots, and vacant land, when I was approached by a African American man about my age.

"You going to buy it?" he asked, pointing to the lot between King and Prairie.

"No," I said, "someone else already has."

"I hope they do something with it," the guy told me. "What we need around here are more jobs. These people want jobs. That building's been empty for 10 years. Someone needs to do something with it."

So I told him that the University of Chicago bought it, and some other lots around here, but that his Alderman Pat Dowell doesn't want the University to own land in her ward.

The guy didn't have a response to that. What he did say was that "we need development that pushes out the people who don't care about the neighborhood, and keeps the people who do."

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!

A Visit to Morsbach's Downstate Medici Location

posted by chicago pop

A little while ago, we had the opportunity to visit Hans Morsbach's new Medici in downstate Normal, Illinois, home of Illinois State University. Readers may recall that we posted on this development last October. About a month ago, we decided to check it out in person.

The food was pretty good, as was the selection of locally brewed beer, served from the capacious bar that Morsbach can't have on 57th Street. But the most delicious thing of all was the irony that less than 100 yards from the new Normal Medici, co-owned by one of the most vocal opponents of a proposed Hyde Park Marriott Hotel, is ongoing construction on a 9 story, 229 room Marriott Hotel, with attached 43,000 square foot conference center and 500 spot parking deck.

Not in Mors-Bach Yard: Normal's Marriott and Convention Center

This complex is being built on land that was acquired through various means by the Town of Normal, and is intended to be an engine of commerce and activity in the city's older central area, literally right across the street from Morsbach's new Medici.

Normal's "Big Dig"

The new Medici, in addition to offering profitable alcoholic beverages, will most certainly also benefit from the new hotel and convention traffic across the street, all of which has been partially subsidized by the local municipality. Which, as we pointed out in our original post, includes the nice historical recreation of the storefront that originally stood at the site of the Normal Medici.


The good people of the Town of Normal are under no illusion as to what's going on. They are much less conflicted than Hyde Parkers about what they want. It is urban renewal. It involves the use of eminent domain. It has required the displacement of some long-established businesses, the willing relocation of others, and the inclusion of major corporate businesses into the plan. There's an office on the main street that oversees it all.


As we posted back in October 2007,

While this particular project [the Normal Medici] involved no use of eminent domain and condemnation, the Town of Normal agreed to subsidize the Morsbach-Steinman redevelopment project to the tune of "up to 30 percent or $350,000 of the annual interest costs on their first mortgage, provide a $100,000 grant for life/safety work and a $15,000 facade improvement grant." (Bloomington-Normal Pantagraph, September 7, 2005).

Now, none of this would be as interesting as it is if Morsbach hadn't been one of the most vocal opponents of the proposed Marriott Hotel as the site of the current Drs Hospital in Hyde Park, or someone who felt that the threat of redevelopment at Harper Court was an ominous sign of a "second coming" of Urban Renewal.

But let's step inside.



That's a tree from Morsbach's Wisconsin tree farm, inside the restaurant. It's a nice space, with lots of the unique hand-crafted wooden stuff, and there's a helluva lot more light and room than in the Hyde Park location. Plus, there's booze.

To close out, we'll leave you with this tasty little excerpt from the menu at the Normal Medici, which offers an interesting perspective on the restaurant's storied history:


If only the Medici-Hyde Park were as happy to be part of the "refurbishing of this district" -- the one on the South Side of Chicago.

Crossing 61st Street

posted by chicago pop

Keeping Vacant Lots Vacant in Woodlawn?

The University of Chicago has a longstanding promise, made to representatives of the Woodlawn neighborhood to its south, not to expand south of 61st Street. This agreement was made in 1964, 43 years ago.

At that time, there were two Germanies. China was closed to the outside world. Personal computers did not exist.

Is this pledge, and the anxieties to which it responds, out of date?

I have a feeling it might be. But there's no question that the issue is complicated.

After all, there is expansion through the urban renewal methods of razing and displacing, which did happen in Hyde Park, and didn't happen in Woodlawn; and there are other methods of expansion, through erecting buildings on vacant lots that would otherwise remain magnets for crime, and bringing jobs to a community that will help pay for rents and mortgages.

The University can without a doubt play a role in the latter strategy. It certainly requires sensitivity and open communication with neighbors on the part of the University, but it also requires and openness to change south of 61st Street, with change understood to mean that not all of the people in Woodlawn will always be poor, and that the neighborhood might one day approach the balance of household incomes it has known historically.

Take another look at the above picture of a longtime Woodlawn resident taken near her home. The University, in the end, never did expand south of 61st Street. In fact, it didn't do a thing in Woodlawn during the heyday of urban renewal, when it kept itself busy instead bulldozing solid chunks of Hyde Park.

Hyde Park, comparatively speaking, is now flourishing. Woodlawn has vacant lots the size of city blocks like the one above, not far from where Amadou Cisse was murdered.

The picture is taken from Monday's column by Chicago Tribune writer Dawn Turner Trice, who did the service of pointing out that Amadou Cisse was not the only one murdered recently nearby the University; in fact, two women have been found strangled and burned beyond recognition in garbage cans in or near Washington Park.

Trice spoke with two longtime Woodlawn natives who think the Washington Park homicides would have gotten a lot more media time if they had involved University students. They are probably right. The fact that the Cisse murder got such immediate and sustained attention from the media and from police, Trice argues, is part of why there are powerful racial and class tensions between the University and neighboring Woodlawn to the south.

That's certainly true. But things get a little less clear when the column takes a further turn, and as with so many issues in this part of town, brings it back to real estate. In particular, to the Big Bang of urban renewal, to which so many things around here can be traced back.

Like the idea that, instead of helping to get rid of those vacant lots, provide jobs, and partner with local organizations and developers to build market-rate and affordable housing, the University should be kept out. It all sounds very familiar to anyone who pays attention to Hyde Park politics, because in so many ways the terms of the debate were cast at this historical moment for both neighborhoods.

Trice quotes longtime resident Helen Latimore:

"People still see the University as harboring dreams of taking over our property." Latimore said. "Of waiting until Woodlawn is in such disrepair that all they have to do is swoop down and take it over."

It didn't help that a few years ago, the University hired a planning consultant that recommended the University expand south of 61st Street, which it has long said it wouldn't do. University officials quickly nixed the idea. But not before it reignited the suspicions and the mistrust among some Woodlawn residents.

Woodlawn residents, organized into the vibrant community and civil rights activist organization TWO, helped block University-led urban renewal plans in Woodlawn, and eventually elicited a sort of "61st Street Pledge" from the University in 1964.

But then, in the 1970s, long after most whites had left, most of the black middle class left, too. A neighborhood numbering 81,279 people in 1960, Woodlawn declined to 27,086 in 2000, a loss of 54,193. That kind of loss is not unlike that resulting from the incendiary carpet bombing of a large urban area. It constitutes the death of a neighborhood, if not a large part of a city. The number of vacant lots in Woodlawn and other similar neighborhoods attests to this massive depletion of human capital out of the neighborhood.

But without bringing human capital back in, and allowing investment from outside, things are never going to change.

So does this ban on University development south of 61st Street make any sense today, in the 21st century? Woodlawn may be able to fend for itself, with some of the indirect kind of help and support from the U of C described in a 2006 Chicago Magazine article. And, over the last decade or so, the market has finally started to notice Woodlawn; as the Chicago Reporter notes, "Between 2000 and 2004, the number of single- family attached units sold in Woodlawn tripled."

But this movement represents only a slow nudge towards what Woodlawn used to be. It's been hearly 50 years since things began to slide downhill for Woodlawn, and it may be another 50 before it returns to anything like what it was before it became pocked with vacant lots.

Considering that the University never did tear anything down south of 61st Street, maybe it's time to revisit this old treaty that keeps it behind an asphalt curtain.

Hans Morsbach, the New Normal Medici, and Harper Court

posted by chicago pop

Local burger magnate Hans Morsbach has strong feelings on Harper Court. We shouldn't tear it down, he says, because it would be against Hyde Park's principles and ideals.

But when the demolition is going on in someone else's town, it doesn't seem to be a problem. Witness the soon-to-open new Medici Restaurant in Normal, Illinois.

Interior of New Medici, Normal, Illinois

The rendering above portrays the interior of the newest outpost of the Hans Morsbach empire, the beer-and-burger cash cow that will soon open in the hometown of Illinois State University. The building is all-new construction partly subsidized by the Town of Normal as part of a very ambitious and radical redesign of its central business district.

Morsbach is a prime beneficiary of a tear-down and subsidized redevelopment done according to explicit New Urbanist design principles. I've had coffee across the street from the new Medici, and it looks damn good. Too bad this is the exact opposite of what some Hyde Parkers, including Morsbach, want to do with our own dilapidated, low-traffic commercial district at Harper Court.

The plan for Normal, a product of the Chicago new urbanist and sustainable design firm Farr Associates, has entailed the demolition of wide swaths of the downtown area, including numerous buildings built over the last several decades. As with Hyde Park, a new Marriott hotel is slated as an anchor for the redevelopment, along with a children's museum, and a major municipal commitment to bring about an integrated streetfront design that recalls the commercial heyday of the town in the early 20th century.

Medici site, previous building

The image above is the nondescript 1980s era building that was demolished to make room for this, the new home of the Medici, Normal.

New Medici, October 2007

As you can see, the new building was erected with a facade that refers explicitly to the remaining historical buildings in the area. To guarantee this harmony of new and old facades and a pleasant sidewalk experience for pedestrians, the Town of Normal adopted a set of design stipulations, tied to grants and low-interest loans for facade and structural redevelopment. One example of this comprehensive new urbanist approach -- which required sidewalk-fronting facades, and historical decoration -- is the very pleasant building picture above, one of several that help to restore the downtown's historical integrity, charm, and walkability.

So what does Normal have to do with Harper Court, and Harper Court to do with Normal?

Let's ask Hans Morsbach, because he has some very specific ideas about what to do with Harper Court:

I strongly believe the answer to Harper Court's trouble lies in doing a better management job rather than tearing the place down. The rationale put forward for the redevelopment scheme is not credible, no matter how many consultants were engaged to gussy it up. (April 12, 2006)

Morsbach backs up this position by arguing that retail is declining in Hyde Park -- with the curious exception of his stretch of 57th Street -- and any redevelopment at Harper Court -- including a tear down and new construction -- would be fruitless.

Can we assume, as the backers of redevelopment do that a redone Harper Court, larger and more expensive, will somehow do a better job than the current incarnation? ... I seriously doubt that the veterinarian, the restaurants and other establishments will be better served by new and presumably more expensive retail space. More importantly, I doubt that these businesses will find it easy to survive the disruption the redevelopment project imposes on them.

So let's review:

• Hans Morsbach's new restaurant in Normal, Illinois, is in a new building that takes the place of a previous retail establishment that was displaced and demolished. Numerous other long-standing businesses were also displaced, but Morsbach is obviously happy with the new, modern space: as he told the Maroon, "It's beautiful and it's huge."

• The Normal Town Council, after watching their central business district decline for three decades, decided to turn it around. To do that, "consultants were engaged to gussy it up." Morsbach isn't complaining.

• Morsbach obviously expects that "redevelopment [of downtown Normal] ... will somehow do a better job than the current incarnation," and that the redevelopment is better than "doing a better management job." Otherwise, he wouldn't have sunk his money into it. But when it comes to Harper Court, it's apparently better to stick with the status quo, despite the striking case of Toys Etcetera demonstrating that a small business can make money in Hyde Park, just not at Harper Court.

• The most delicious irony is to be found in Morsbach's comparison of Harper Court redevelopment with a "Second Coming of Urban Renewal," when his new restaurant in Normal is a beneficiary of publicly subsidized demolition of major chunks of its downtown, including portions of entire city blocks, as shown below.

Mr. Morsbach seems to care a lot about principles when it comes to renewing Harper Court. But when Urban Renewal arrives in Normal, Illinois, it's a great business opportunity. Perhaps it's time for Mr. Morsbach follow the same business principles in his own neighborhood that he follows in someone else's.

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."

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.

Why Hyde Park Progress?

Why Hyde Park Progress?

Simple. Two comments recently overheard in local cafes sum it all up. From a visiting Bay Area academic: "This isn't much of a neighborhood." From a young faculty member of the Social Sciences Division of the University: "It's great for kids, but is basically boring."

I have a home here, am raising a kid here, and went to school here. I occasionally teach for the University. And I think the neighborhood needs to change. I know there are plenty of people who agree. But these are feelings and sentiments that aren't represented by the "establishment voice" of Hyde Park, which is comprised of the Hyde Park Herald, the Hyde Park Historical Society, and various other caretaker community groups. These groups have a demonstrated record of preserving the status quo. They have a poor record of improving on it.

The residents of this neighborhood who feel these institutions do not represent their voice share a few things in common. Above all, they feel that Hyde Park and its surrounding communities need more retail and commercial amenities. This means an openness to change of several sorts: increased street life, which leads to greater neighborhood safety; greater mixture of land uses, together with increased residential densities in newer developments. Many residents agree that the Establishment paranoia regarding change, outsiders, traffic, and congestion are overblown and can be properly managed.

The current Hyde Park Establishment, which sees itself as steward of the neighborhood's essence, is in fact quite removed from it. Hyde Park was not conceived and built as an autarkic community on the model of Chavez's Venezuela or Castro's Cuba. It has been a part of the City and its economy since the development boom of the late 19th century, and was together with the South Side the home to most of the City's wealth and influence. All of this changed after World War II. Racial and social changes, together with Urban Renewal, cut the neighborhood off from its surroundings in an effort to protect it from decline.

This is the status quo that the current Establishment seeks to protect. It was Urban Renewal that drove out the businesses, dead-ended the thoroughfares, and drained the night-life and urbanity from the neighborhood. This is the heritage of which the Establishment is now the steward, and to which they offer no alternatives. The Establishment derides Urban Renewal; but they are the unwitting stewards of its bucolic legacy. Chicago is nowhere near as densely populated as it used to be. Many of its now deserted South Side thoroughfares were bustling with commerce and public transportation as recently as the early 1960s, as much of the North Side is now. The current condition of Hyde Park is a historical aberration by any measure.

Hyde Park Progress thinks there is space for a voice other than that of obstructionism sounded by "community" activism. Hyde Park Progress is a pro-development voice from within the neighborhood which argues that our quality of life is just as dependent on convenient shopping, 24-hour street safety, and urban vitality, as it is upon plentiful parkland and historical architecture, and wants to make the blending of these a priority, not a distant dream.