On the Track of a Trail

posted by Richard Gill

Some bridges, such as this one above Wood Street, are badly deteriorated.

On Saturday, June 20, an organization named Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail hosted a walk/run/bike event to publicize their effort to create an urban trail on the right-of-way of a long-inactive railroad line.

Informally called the Bloomingdale Line, the railroad is elevated on retained earth-fill embankment, running east-west along its namesake street, at about 1800 North. The trail would essentially replace the track on the embankment from the Chicago River to about 3800 West. Neighborhoods traversed include Wicker Park, Bucktown, Logan Square and Humboldt Park. The neighborhoods seem to have adopted the railroad line and its structures.

CTA's Blue Line crosses above the Bloomingdale Line, just west of Milwaukee Avenue.

For most of its existence, the Bloomingdale Line was an industrial freight branch of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railroad. Some twenty years ago, ownership was transferred to the Minneapolis, St. Paul & Sault Ste. Marie Railroad. The Canadian Pacific Railroad is the present owner.

In the past few decades, many hiking/biking trails have been established on former rail lines in rural areas under various programs, such as Rails-to-Trails. The Bloomingdale Trail would be one of a few rail-trails right inside major cities. Saturday’s event was timed to help celebrate the June opening of New York City’s High Line, a path on an abandoned freight branch on the west side of Manhattan.

One developer on Damen encroached on the right-of-way. This practice is now prohibited.

The Friends caught a break in the recent stormy weather; it was a beautiful hot, sunny day. So, with camera in hand, I set off on a two-hour walking excursion along a segment of the Bloomingdale Line.

Homeowners have planted flowers and vines at the retaining wall. This is on Hoyne Avenue.

Lined with greenery, alleys and walkways along the retaining wall take on a bit of a European look.

As I walked, I was reminded that despite Hyde Park’s amenity envy vis a vis the North Side, at least we don’t have to struggle to acquire a trail. The best one in the city is right on our doorstep.

Nice mural work east of Western Avenue.

The Friends' literature dutifully said walkers ought not to climb up onto the trackway. The admonishment was largely ignored, and no doubt is ignored in general. I saw local residents jogging up there. These friendly folks seemed to be living on the track.

MAC Properties and Hyde Park -- Kansas City

posted by chicago pop

That's Not the Del Prado:
The Bellerive Hotel, Kansas City, Missouri

If and when Off-Off Campus does an improv routine touching on Hyde Park's second-largest landowner, MAC Properties, there's a one-liner they'd be foolish to pass up:

Eli Ungar: "I liked the Hyde Park neighborhood so much, I decided to buy another one."

In point of fact, things didn't progress in quite that order. Ungar's MAC Properties began acquiring residential properties in Chicago's Hyde Park at about the same time, in 2005, that it began to do the same in Kansas City's own historic Hyde Park neighborhood.

Vernacular Kansas City Two-Flats

The similarities between the two Hyde Park neighborhoods are curious. Both are linked to the larger city by a system of boulevards inspired by the City Beautiful movement. Both neighborhoods were platted in the mid- to late-19th century, and both are adjacent to smaller developments called "Kenwood." Both were annexed to their larger metropolitan neighbor after a few decades of municipal independence. Both are a mix of gracious, 19th century homes on broad, leafy streets, and taller 1920's residential hotels, with smaller 3-story apartment buildings sprinkled in between. Both are racially diverse, and both have suffered from urban decline.

And now, both neighborhoods are home to Eli Ungar's MAC Properties.

MAC's object in both neighborhoods, to quote MAC's Peter Cassel, is to develop "contemporary apartments in classic buildings." In practice, that translates into a $30 million project renovating vintage 20's transient hotels, together with smaller apartment buildings, and bringing them to market as middle-range rentals targeted at middle-class professionals.

In Chicago, examples of this strategy are the Del Prado, Windemere, and Shoreland Hotels. In Kansas City, it is the Bellrive and four similar buildings on Armour Boulevard.

The Bellerive's Casbah Room in its Glory Days

A local paper detailed the glamorous heyday of the Bellerive in the Roaring Twenties.

The ornate red-brick structure was Kansas City's fanciest apartment hotel when it was built in 1922, boasting a parade of famous guests: opera diva Ernestine Schumann-Heink, actress Mary Pickford, silent-film actresses Lillian and Dorothy Gish, contralto Marian Anderson and writer Edith Sitwall. Even Al Capone stayed there... Stars like Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Tommy Dorsey, Liberace, Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis performed at the hotel's swanky Casbah nightclub. Partly because of its past and partly because of its neobaroque architecture, the Bellerive made it onto the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.

That didn't keep it from falling victim to the declining fortunes of Hyde Park in general, which like those of it's Great Lakes sister, set in after World War II. It's a familiar story.

By the end of the Second World War, a profound change had occurred in the area. Many of the original owners had died or moved to larger communities, with newer addresses of quality. The large old homes were converted into apartments and sleeping rooms. The neighborhood began a long, slow decline which continued unchecked until the 1970's.

By the early 2000's, four the the five old hotels on Armour were vacant, and the Bellerive was traded from developer to developer as plan after plan fell through. The neighborhood was being polarized between affluent homeowners in the 19th century homes on smaller side streets, and the concentration of low-income renters in subsidized housing along Armour. Not long after MAC acquired the property, vandals began raiding it for copper pipe.

Renovation Underway at an Old Hotel on Armour Boulevard

By 2010, MAC hopes to have turned the situation around. Of the 3,000 plus rental units in the Hyde Park neighborhood, MAC has approximately 250 units in service, and 400 in development. The neighborhood has received MAC warmly, with neighborhood groups advocating strongly for MAC in negotiations with the Kansas City government in 2006 and 2007.

Speaking of the Armour Boulevard Hotels, a representative of the Hyde Park Neighborhood Association told a reporter in 2006, "The precedent that needs to be dumped is that this is an area for subsidized housing. These buildings need to be brought back and brought back now. Everybody agrees it needs to be a mixed-income neighborhood."*

Sullivanesque portal of a non-MAC neighbor on Armour Boulevard, the Newbern (1922)

Another representative of the Hyde Park group agreed with MAC in 2007 that the "neighborhood has maintained that the key to saving Armour is opening it to free market housing."** This view ultimately swayed city hall, convincing the relevant tax agency to wave certain fees for a 17 year period in the expectation that MAC's investment would help revitalize a centrally important part of Kansas City.

Renovated Lobby of a Hyde Park MAC Property

Stairwell of a Renovated Hyde Park MAC Property

As with Chicago's Hyde Park, MAC has made the bet that Kansas City, a growing Midwestern city with a healthy downtown just 3 miles away, home to a number of corporate headquarters, a major university, and a hospital complex, would support a growing market for middle-class renters in a neighborhood where they would add a much-needed demographic balance.

The scale is smaller in Kansas City, and there are no plans for major new developments like Solstice or the Village Center site. The neighborhood politics in Kansas City are also less convoluted, with the prominent neighborhood groups recognizing that an improvement in the housing stock -- or simply the preservation of Hyde Park's urban fabric, as opposed to clearance -- will benefit the entire community.

A MAC Building Near the Bellrive Hotel

So Hyde Park now has a sister city -- not Paris, Florence, or London, but good old Kansas City, Missouri.

* "Armour Projects Set Back. Five Building Renovations Stumble over Fee Wavers and Tax Abatements." The Kansas City Star, December 2, 2006.
** "Project to Redevelop Buildings is Revived." The Kansas City Star. February 21, 2007.

NIMBY's Corner: Deconstructing Hans

posted by chicago pop

It is characteristic of Hyde Park that the campaigning around Doctors Hospital continues to take place after the vote itself has been decided.

Fifth Ward Alderman Leslie Hairston's letter to the Herald urging 39th Precinct residents to vote "no" appeared the day after the election. A week later, a letter from precinct resident Hans Morsbach appeared, making the case for why you should have voted "yes" 8 days before, or should have morally supported those who were able to do so.

The reason for this exercise in chronological acrobatics, however, is fairly obvious: an issue of major import to two wards, two neighborhoods, and an entire section of Chicago was left to the judgment of some 600 people, of which 254 actually decided the matter, voting by a margin of 20 to ban the sale of liquor at the Doctors Hospital site.

Hans Morsbach, therefore, needs to convince the rest of Hyde Park that this was the right thing to do. The odds, however, are pretty good that if put to a vote by anything other than the 39th Precinct of the 5th Ward, the dry referendum would have failed by a large majority.

One again, a vocal and well-organized minority have taken control.

But taking control was the easy part. Convincing everyone outside the 39th Precinct that they were right to do so might be a little bit harder.

Let's have a closer look at Hans Morsbach's apologia pro vita sua of Wednesday, November 12, 2008.

****

Morsbach: "The opponents of the referendum suggested that we are unreasonable neighbors standing in the way of a much-needed development, and putting a higher value on our own conveniences than on neighborhood interests."

Comment: Agreed.

Morsbach: "A hotel largely designed as an overflow for downtown facilities would not serve Hyde Park well."

Comment: From the beginning of this controversy Morsbach, as well as Allan Rechtschaffen, have assured us all that they were deeply studied in the market dynamics of the hospitality business on the South Side of Chicago and could therefore make recommendations as to the proper scale of any hotel on Stony Island.

The problem is, they've offered no evidence to back up their statements as to the proper scale of a profitable hotel, or what the market in this area could support.

As only the latest example, Morsbach claims without any evidence that Marriott intended this hotel to serve an "overflow" purpose. Yet even if this was indeed the intent, why would this "not serve Hyde Park well"? The presumption is that the economy of Hyde Park ought to be limited to a one square mile area, and that this isolated condition is economically desirable. We've been arguing against this idea from day one.

Morsbach: "A study has shown that there is no reason that the existing limestone-and-brick structure cannot be used."

Comment: Has anyone besides a few activists actually seen this study? Can they tell us how much the design of the preservationist alternative diverges from the parameters presented by White Lodging, and what features of the original Marriott would have been compromised (in terms of size, facilities, construction or operations costs)? Such a weighty pronouncement calls for some public facts, not just Hans Morsbach's say-so.

Morsbach: A hotel would "burden our infrastructure."

Comment: This is classic NIMBY-suburbanite whooey. How would the White Lodging Marriott burden what infrastructure?

Sewer mains? Power grids? Road surfaces? Cellular towers? The CTA? Metra station facilities? The traffic lights on Stony Island? They don't tell us, and it's not clear they have any idea.

City infrastructure in most places is underutilized, especially inner city infrastructure, and has been for generations. An entire school of thought has developed around this idea at Northwestern University School of Education and Social Policy. A city like Chicago was built to deal with lots of people.

By arguing that major urban areas can't handle intensive use, Morsbach is rehearsing 70s-era anti-urban romanticism, one that runs counter to well-documented arguments that dense urban areas are in fact the most energy-efficient types of settlement pattern and should therefore be encouraged as a strategy of slowing climate change.

Cities are designed for more burden to infrastructure per unit area than any other type of settlement. There are fewer people living in the 5th ward now than there were 50 years ago,which means that there is less of a burden, if any, on existing infrastructure.

Morsbach: "There should be a place for visitors and students to park their cars without a lot of hassle. Providing adequate parking is imperative."

Comment: Parking is indeed something that needs to be planned carefully. But Hans hasn't always used such high-minded rhetoric; previously he has made it clear that he wants to be able to park his car in front of his house: "I like to park my car near my house on Harper." (Hyde Park Herald reported on August 1, 2007.)

Morsbach, like most of Hyde Park's old guard, is unreflexively automobile-oriented and density-phobic, without realizing that the latter is a partial cure for the former: as we have conveyed on this blog numerous times, urban density in fact diminishes car use. Beyond that, he gives no evidence for his inference that "parking" (in a private lot? a city lot? on the street? in a garage? in front of his house?) would become more difficult on Stony Island or anywhere else.

In fact, Rechtschaffen, who criticized White Lodging for not providing a parking study (which they did, though the University chose not to release it to the public), clearly had already made up his mind that parking and congestion would be "a disaster" without having viewed any analysis of the issue. (Hyde Park Herald, LTE, September 10, 2008)

****

In a recent article on Hyde Park in Crain's, it was mentioned that Morsbach has been in business in the neighborhood since 1962.

Back before 1962, Hyde Park was a fairly happening place, and strangely enough, it had a lot of hotels. Then things changed, it became not-so-happening, lost its old hotels, and in the aftermath of Urban Renewal and the attempt to make the inner city into a suburb, an entire generation of residents got used to it that way.

Unfortunately, what they got used to was an historical aberration.

Now that things are beginning to revert to the mean, they're fighting the norm with everything they've got. It may keep them busy in the short run, but in the long run, they're going against the tide.

Learning to Love Density: 53rd St. Visioning Workshop Pt. 3 -- Saturday November 15

posted by chicago pop

The third in a series of workshops dealing with development dynamics on Hyde Park's 53rd Street retail district will take place this coming Saturday, November 15 (see flier below).

Hyde Park alum and Metropolitan Planning Council VP for External Relations Peter Skosey helps to explain what the whole things is about, based on a similar workshop done in the Lawndale neighborhood.

Check it out in this video:

Like the previous two 53rd Street workshops, this one will be based on a series of exercises meant to visualize and make tangible the abstract and ominous-sounding notion of "density." Using a method developed in Minneapolis called the Corridor Housing Initiative, the idea is to help people "connect community visions with market realities" through a series of exercises that demonstrate the variety of forms that density can take, and the market constraints that face developers in urban projects.

Logistics below:

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."

Developing Harper Court: What Evanston Can Teach Hyde Park

posted by chicago pop

Optima Towers, 1580 Sherman Avenue, and Borders Location
13-story, 105 Units, Mixed-Use. Completed 2002.

This blog began with a bit of overheard conversation, so it seems appropriate to continue the tradition.

Back in the day, nearly a decade ago, I was living in a flat in Hyde Park's doppelganger neighborhood -- Rogers Park -- and working up in Evanston. Across the hall was a colleague who was doing the same. We both confronted Evanston just moments before it began its transformation. "It's a nice town, but it's just kind of boring," said my neighbor, shortly before moving to Wicker Park.

No more.

As most people know, Evanston has reinvented itself. The interesting thing is that what happened in Evanston could happen in Hyde Park.

Now that the Harper Court parcel is finally up for redevelopment, there is potential to develop these assets in a way that helps reverse decades of relative decline in Hyde Park's struggling commercial district. Just like what happened in Evanston.

As of 2005, the benefits of Evanston's approach were measurable. Downtown Evanston has increased the total number of retailers in its central district by 27% since 1997, boosted total retail sales by 11.2% between 2000 and 2003, has added to the housing stock while keeping its parking requirements lower than surrounding suburbs.

As a result of increased business activity, Evanston has been able to lower its taxes to levels not seen since 1971. Though similar values would not accrue directly to Hyde Park, they are indicative of the improved health of the local economy, some portion of which would be captured by the 53rd Street TIF, and, when this expires, by the local school districts.

Sherman Plaza
25 stories, 253 Units, 1,600 Car Parking Garage, Mixed Use, Completed 2006

Evanston as Example of Smart Growth

The Evanston build-out is considered by progressive urban planners, such as those who prepared the EPA report from which much of the data below is taken,* to be a model of successful smart-growth, transit-oriented development (TOD). It is now a case-study used to demonstrate a few things about how to redevelop urban centers around a commercial district well-served by transit -- exactly the situation that describes Hyde Park's Harper Court and east 53rd Street.

1. It is possible to add density to a district without significantly increasing traffic congestion. This is possible when:
   
2. Full advantage is taken of existing transit infrastructure by placing density within walking distance of transit stations, or using innovative transportation solutions to link to transit from further away.
3. Entertainment and a 24/7 district are the anchors of "downtown" redevelopment.
4. A successful project will be market-driven and demonstrate close cooperation between multiple actors -- municipal authorities, citizen's groups, master developers, Federal and State funding and regulatory agencies, and merchants. And perhaps most importantly:
5. There is a market for walkable, high-density urban environments. The long-term trends are shifting towards this type of real estate, despite the current market downturn.**

By 2005, many of the goals of Evanston's nearly two-decades old planning process had been achieved. They included the addition of 2,500 new housing units, 2.5 million square feet of new office space, the addition of a 175 room Hilton Hotel, construction of Evanston's first high rise in 20 years, the building of a new 1,400 space parking garage, and -- at the center of it all -- a new multimodal transportation center at Davis Street, which facilitates 1,477 weekday transfers between CTA, Metra, and Pace riders, and is used by over 1,000,000 transit riders annually.

Davis Street Station
Federally Funded and Completed in 1994
Source: http://www.chicago-l.org/stations/davis.html

Evanston, a fairly affluent inner-ring suburb, nonetheless had to deal with a dying commercial core and rising taxes well into the 1990s. It was able to revive its downtown and improve its financial standing by leveraging its urban assets -- multi-modal transit access, a safe and vibrant 24 hour district supported by high residential density -- to effectively compete with low-density, low-tax suburban municipalities.


Evanston as A Model for Hyde Park: Parallels and Limits

There are a few very large differences between Hyde Park and Evanston that should be noted at the outset. Hyde Park is not a municipality with the power to collect taxes, issue bonds, and fund major public goods like the new Evanston Public Library. And unlike Evanston, Hyde Park is not a gateway to a string of wealthy northern suburbs, but is surrounded by considerably poorer neighborhoods.

But there are real parallels that make it worthwhile to look closely at how Evanston was able to turn itself around, and ask if the same strategies could be replicated in Hyde Park. The parallels can be grouped into the categories of disadvantages and advantages.

Like Evanston, Hyde Park proper has relatively few large lots open for development. This offers a strong incentive to develop for density, to build up where it is difficult to build out. Like Evanston, Hyde Park is moderately isolated from major expressways and airports (unlike certain suburban localities), has suffered from population loss and stagnation, and has experienced severe erosion of its commercial center.

On the positive side, both communities are attractively situated on the shore of Lake Michigan, which has historically been a zone of higher-density development. Both lie at comparable distances from downtown Chicago (Hyde Park is 2 miles closer). Both communities are known for their diversity, though Hyde Park is considerably smaller (Evanston has 74,000 residents to Hyde Park's roughly 50,000). Both communities are well served by north-south heavy rail lines. Although Hyde Park has no CTA rail link within its borders, it does have several heavily used bus routes, and more convenient access to Lake Shore Drive.

Evanston and Hyde Park, of course, both host major private universities, both of which play large supporting roles in the local economies, and both neighborhoods are known for their charming architecture, walkable layout, and notable historic districts.

Finally, although Hyde Park is a city neighborhood and not a revenue-gathering municipality, it is conceivable that the revenue-gathering 53rd Street TIF District, at the direction of a focused and determined 4th Ward alderman, and with the active support and foresight of Chicago planning agencies, could help spark, finance, and manage the multiple partnerships that any significant development centered on Harper Court will require.

Century Theater Complex, 1715 Maple Avenue, with Adjacent Parking Garage

Making Room for the Market, Nudging Smart Growth

Planning for Evanston's downtown renaissance spanned two decades. It drew upon multiple funding sources, and required consistent leadership and community commitment over time. It required accommodation to some conventional market realities, such as the construction of a large and subsidized parking garage for out-of-town visitors, and the use of subsidies to encourage emerging market trends, such as the preference for walkable living environments with easy access to public transportation.

All of this could stand as a model for the redevelopment of Hyde Park's Harper Court.

Further, the example of Evanston should immediately put to rest an either-or vision of development in Hyde Park that argues for either absolute community or absolute market control of what goes on. As for the market, it must certainly "lead" as it did in Evanston and the evolution of the eventual retail and service mix.

But markets are most effective when the goods, services, and instruments of exchange have all been standardized, and investors know exactly what they are getting. The real estate market, for example, knows very well how to finance and build suburban shopping malls and suburban subdivisions. It has much less familiarity with inner-city, mixed-used, transit-oriented projects, and therefore needs encouragement.

On the other side of the either-or, the fear that the University will control development for its own purposes should also be put to rest. The days of Urban Renewal and large Federal block grants administered by the University are gone. The University itself does not have the expertise to pull off urban mixed-use development that is transit oriented, although it is an essential player. Likewise, the "community" alone, however represented, will need to compromise and work together with market-driven actors who need to make a profit.

In urban redevelopment, partnerships are the name of the game. No one actor can go it alone. That means making yourself attractive to at least some developers. We'll see if, given the conspiratorial world-view of many more vocal old timers, this is something that can happen in Hyde Park.

*See Cali Gorewitz and Gloria Ohland, Communicating the Benefits of TOD: The City of Evanston's Transit Oriented Redevelopment and the Hudson-Bergen Light-Rail Transit System [pdf]
**See survey of relevant market research in Christopher B. Leinberger, The Option of Urbanism: Investing in a New American Dream, Chapter 5.

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.

Harper Court Survey: Women Under 40 Say 'Yes' to Everything

posted by chicago pop

Preferred Performance Activity at the New Harper Court
(Ashley Dupré Spring Break 2005)

Who would have thought that the stodgy HPKCC would produce a survey that conformed to every frat boy's fantasy? Or the legal script being used by defense lawyers for Girls Gone Wild producer Joe Francis?

Truth can be stranger than fiction, gentle reader. The results of the "Community Priorities for Harper Court Redevelopment" survey are in and the biggest news is this: almost twice as many survey respondents were female as male. Most of them were between 19 and 39. And they said "yes" to virtually everything.

While this may certainly be fantasy material for the geezer types who write letters to the Herald, it also has the less arousing effect of draining the survey results of much useful meaning. Especially when we know that in our frigid little corner of lakefront reality, let alone in any healthy relationship, the headline statement on this post rarely holds.

No one says "yes" to everything, as much as we might like them to. So something must be up.

For survey results to be meaningful, they have to indicate relative preferences, and be designed to do what survey-makers call "force discrimination." This has nothing to do with national guardsmen or Brown vs. the Board of Education. It's about making people think about trade-offs, and forcing them to establish hierarchies among what may be competing or conflicting desires. You do it by giving them a choice between two or more options.

Lake Park between 52nd and 53rd, ca. 1956
(before the HPKCC helped tear it down)
Archival Photofiles [apf2-04028], Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

Basically, the way the survey was set up, people were not asked to choose between one package of goods, and a second package of goods that may not "fit" with the first. Say, for example, making Harper Court a space port for luxury moon shots, or a floating casino. Can't be both at once, even if people might want both when asked about either option separately.

Take the first 4 questions of the survey. Survey respondents were given 4 possible goals for Harper Court and asked to rank them from 5-1, very important to not important. Respondents ranked 3 out of 4 of the goals as very important, with the majority chosing "important" for the fourth goal.

The same thing happens with urban design. Everyone wants to "make the landscaping welcoming, with trees, seating, and flowers." Everyone also wants to "strengthen the pedestrian character of 53rd Street." Everyone even more wants to "provide well-lit ambiance at night."

It keeps going. Everyone and their mother wants a "multilevel parking garage to serve Harper Court and the Hyde Park business district." Everyone and their activist granola neighbor with the 6-foot vermiculture tower wants HC to be "accessible day and night, with improved transit and handicapped access." People only started to get a little apathetic when asked about "planned and separated access for service vehicles and delivery," and I don't blame them.

The most telling product of this flaw emerges in the most interesting data: "Development Components," or, what kinds of stuff do people want to see in a new Harper Court? The big categories are, by a long shot, restaurants (61% very important), public space (51% very important), a movie theater (39% very important), followed by retail amenities. All of this fits with the overwhelming preference for making Harper Court a "destination," which it currently is not.

Here's the rub. No one expressed preference for any of the other things you need to make a successful urban development with restaurants, retail, and a movie theater. Those other things are what give you density, and density, as the sponsors of the December 2007 53rd Street worskhop and Aaron Cook are both aware, is absolutely fundamental to any successful commercial redevelopment of Harper Court.

The things that would get you density -- a hotel, office space, new housing, were all ranked by a majority as "not important."

That's a problem. Because you can't get the good stuff without all the boring gray stuff like condos and offices. It won't wash, no one will build it. If anything, preferences like these might suggest to a builder that this community doesn't really want change after all; they want to keep their public space, a handful of restaurants, and a few languishing curio shops.

That's clearly not the case, but this survey didn't manage to bring it out. Its primary failing, by not forcing discrimination, was to fail to hold the issue of density front and center and make people connect the dots between what they want, and what they need to get it.

In that respect, the survey was a failure, and certainly did less to make the connection between the realities or urban economics, and the unconstrained wanderings of consumer desire.

Ashley Dupré Does Pro-Bono Gig For HPKCC Board Meeting

Universities as Urban Redevelopers

posted by chicago pop

University of Pennsylvania's 2.8 million square foot, $800 million Cira Center redevelopment project broke ground in late 2007

An article in last week's Wall Street Journal (EEEEK!!! CAPITALISM!!! SOMEBODY KILL IT!) raised an issue that might seem like old news to residents of neighborhoods surrounding the University of Chicago: Universities have an enormous stake in the economic and social vitality of their environs (WSJ, Nick Timiraos, February 27, 2008).

Universities, increasingly, are extending their reach to off-campus development in an effort to give their surrounding areas and town centers a vibrant and modern feel. In the process, they are becoming major drivers of economic development after concluding that their fortunes are directly tied to those of their cities.

That's been known for decades around here, and not always in a positive way. But what is striking about the new wave of university-driven urban redevelopment is the scale of the efforts on the part of such institutions as Case Western Reserve, Columbia, University of Maryland at College Park, and, most spectacularly, Penn. Also notable is the more recent ability of these institutions to partner with private sector actors to finance their projects.

UM College Park is plunking down $700 million to build an entertainment center (including a hotel!) Case Western Reserve is "developing an arts and retail district in a neighborhood on its campus border", while Penn, which for decades has struggled to hold fast against the forces of urban decline, is orchestrating a $2 billion partnership for "office towers, apartments, a hotel and restaurants" on a 42-acre site adjoining its patch of West Philadelphia already more vibrant than it was a mere 10 years ago.

Penn, together with its development partner Brandywine, "hopes to put a 40- to 50-story office tower and a 25- to 30-story residential tower on the site to complement its Cira Centre development, attached to 30th Street Station."

Safety in depressed urban areas is cited as one reason for many of these initiatives, but the prime mover is the close interrelationship between a flowering University culture and a vibrant city environment. And the impact of this relationship on faculty and staff retention.

[I]nstitutions are recognizing that, along with lucrative financial packages and strong academic reputations, they need to have attractive and exciting college towns to lure top faculty and students.

Although the recent credit crunch will most likely slow down all of these plans, at least in the near term, the era of Universities financing redevelopment out of their own pockets seems to have passed -- at least in the cases cited.

Developers are eager to join ventures with colleges, which they see as providing a steady stream of business. "Universities are fairly reliable partners," says Sal D. Rinella, president-elect of the Society for College and University Planning, who argues that universities are recession-resistant: "As the overall economy gets worse, higher education enrollments tend to go up."

Anything on a similar scale around here would most certainly spark cries of an "urban renewal redux". But would this reaction be justified? Urban Renewal was a federally-funded program; most of these ventures set up some kind of partnership with the private sector, assisted by local municipalities with tax abatements and other incentives, with the overall aim of attracting jobs rather than blocking decay, and of boosting density rather than reducing it.

Projects such as Penn's seem to be geared to bringing in a more diverse job-base, which is something that requires more than building new dormitories. If there's one thing that would help the near south side of Chicago, it would be the addition of several major employers. But more students can't hurt either.

We'll see how the University of Chicago's own South Campus Plan shapes up in comparison to the cases mentioned above. Could Chicago pull off a Cira Center project? Would anyone let it? Does Penn have anything like the "61st Street Pact" made ages ago with Woodlawn neighborhood organizations, by which it penned itself in? And does Chicago have the experience operating as a partner in such large scale projects?

The experience of Drs Hospital -- ill-conceived, ill-received, and ill-pitched -- does not bode well in that regard. But it may be a sign of the future nonetheless.

Time will tell. There is so much university-driven city development going on in America's older cities now that, at the very least, some know-how from these projects may eventually cycle back to the Midway.