^ Mr. Downtown is a "card carrying member" of some rail enthusiasts club, but otherwise makes it clear in every transit oriented discussion that he is absolutely against every single possible rail expansion, and always argues that improved bus service can solve everything... :rolleyes:

I'd love if some of these people actually lived an urban lifestyle. Then they would realize how absolutely ridiculous it is to provide that much parking in a retail center in the middle of a very dense, urban environment.

Seriously, has anyone in Chicago at all heard of one of these:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3380/...8f2c02961b.jpg

^ I mean, I first bought something like this in Queens. Note: not Manhattan, but in Queens. You wheel this thing to the grocery store, pack it with groceries, and take it back home to your apartment. It's really not rocket science...

^ Anyway, all things considered this is a small deal anyhow - the parking is underground (a commendable +, of course) and I'll assume the driveway access won't be too bad either, so whatever, if it's what the developer wants then as long as it isn't actively harming it's surroundings with poor design then power to them. I'd rather see better and higher utilization of existing pavement in the area, but if there's gonna be parking off-street this is about as good as it'll get.

I may not drive if I live in Aqua, but if I live in Trump or any of the other nearby towers, you better bet I'm not hauling my groceries through Illinois Center and across the river. There will also be a Three Forks restaurant, which presumably will get some share of the parking, maybe held in reserve for valet operations.

I don't know why anybody is surprised, to be honest. The whole concept of Lakeshore East/Illinois Center is to segregate pedestrian activity onto a level above that of auto circulation, which allows for an excellent pedestrian environment that remains largely unaffected by auto traffic. If I had my druthers, the upper-level roads (Randolph, Upper Columbus) would all be narrowed to a 3-lane cross section with parallel parking, and the reclaimed space used for landscaping.

:yes: :yes: :yes:

Yeah, seriously , we have, has anyone in cul de sac Kenosha? I use mine often in non-winter months, in winter I admit I can be lazy, nonetheless your snarkiness especially from an exurban urban wannabe apologist is unnecessary

Great comments everyone on all points of the parking at the VMC at LSE. As Three Forks will be a destination restaurant, I assume a notable portion of the parking will go to them (including valet parking as mentioned by ardecila above). I've been to the Three Forks in Dallas, group events (40-50 pp) are commonplace there; so their concept goes beyond the ala carte customer.

I'm guessing the parking was required to get the permits to move forward with construction. Does anyone know what the city parking code is for 105,000 sq. ft. of retail? Our answer may be there.

^Racine, not Kenosha. Let's stay factual in our snarkiness.

Mr Downtown has not one but two granny carts (he prefers his folding canvas Versacart® to the metal one). But they're not much fun when there's ice and snow on the sidewalk. And grannies are pretty much the only folks for whom a week's worth of food fits in the cart—there's no dog food, diapers, two-liter pop bottles, or cases of beer involved.

As for parking at this center, I'm sure Roundy's doesn't want to think of its only downtown store as just the good-enough commissary for folks who live within walking distance. Undoubtedly they dream that people from buildings all around the central area will be attracted by their unique offerings or service.

^ Call it what you will.

But when presented with an urban environment in the past, I have lived such a lifestyle. I've walked and carried my groceries in Philly, in Washington DC, and in New York (not exactly tropical climates)--I think I have earned the right to be a bit snarky to people who, in an otherwise dense & walkable environment, still make excuses to drive their cars everywhere. Regarding the granny cart, I have lugged that thing around and gotten my groceries with it. If I still had such an option now I would certainly do so.

Btw, I have still used the granny cart, even here in Racine. We actually don't live so far from the grocery store and have used it on a few occasions, despite the otherwise auto-hell-burbia surroundings that I am forced to live in right now..

I love having a car in the city. I'll take 15-20 minutes to get somewhere over 45-60 minutes to get there via CTA any day (hitting the town for dinner/movies/drinks excluded of course). However, I would hardly be bothered to drive to a grocery store that has underground parking. Have you seen what a disaster the Target parking situation is on Roosevelt if it's a busy day? That garage, while not underground, may as well be for how compact it is. Extremely frustrating parking situation, and it even impact traffic on Clark and Roosevelt. Of course it could just be my short temper for people that drive like morons when they're parking.

I'll take the huge surface lot at the Roosevelt & Canal Dominicks, thank you very much.

^ Yeah, I'll have to agree here. Parking and driving are here to stay, and I think the best that the city can do is to not allow accommodating the auto to deface the built environment, as had been taking place for the many decades after WWII.

Surface parking in the dense city ultimately kills itself. I was on Broadway in the Edgewater neighborhood the other day and ran into a little strip mall. It was a zoo! There was no parking anywhere, people were honking, and there was a general irritability about the situation. That was a real life example of the concept of induced traffic--you built more parking, more cars will come, and lo and behold there is not enough parking. The business perhaps may have been better off if no parking had been built to start with..

^If the parking were priced appropriately (i.e. apparently it needed to be higher than zero in that location), the excess demand wouldn't be an issue. Of course, it shouldn't be a stripmall next to a rail rapid transit line to begin with.

Exactly. The city would be so much better and more livable if it were all built like Roosevelt & Canal. I hope they tear down the pumping station or Tribune Building to build a surface lot so you can drive to Michigan Avenue. :rolleyes: Come on kids, let's pile into the car and visit the exciting asphalt district!

That Target garage works fine. It's busy, but it's supposed to be busy and saturated at peak times, otherwise it's been inefficiently overbuilt for it's urban location.

You do realize that if all urban residents lived your lifestyle with your preferences, the city would be completely unrecognizable from the city you currently love to live in driving to surface parking lots, right? If everyone drove downtown, you'd have to tear down half the buildings and replace them with parking garages of the same size, to say nothing of the 3 new expressways needed to get them there at peak times.

Anyone heard of this before? I'm having a hard time figuring out where this is supposed to go. They're purposefully vague, only saying that it is located along Lake Michigan on the south side and providing a pretty useless map. That said, my guess is somewhere on the USX site, probably north of McCaffery's proposal.


http://www.archdaily.com/54523/nunnm...gl/#more-54523
Project Name: Nunnmps
Location: Chicago, Illinois, US
District: South Chicago
Use: Office
Site Area: 50,000 sqm
Bldg. Area: 16,000 sqm
Gross Floor Area: 16,000 sqm basement/below ground; 48,000 sqm office/above ground (64,000 sqm total)
Bldg. Coverage Ratio: 32% (0.3)
Gross Floor Ratio: 128% (1.3)
Bldg. Scale: 3 Stories above Ground, 1 Storey below Ground
Structure: Basement and ground floor: concrete; upper office: steel frame
Max. Height: 60 m
Landscape Area: 46,000 sqm
Parking Lot: 400 + 40 cars
Design year: 2009, ongoing

For their latest project, an IT security and service office, Cheungvogl worked to create a deep connection with the site. The office, Nunnmps, borders Lake Michigan in an area of Chicago that is close enough to the city center yet rests on the outskirts in an undeveloped site with vast views of the skyline. “The design development grew as naturally as the terrain overtook the site in the absence of human inhabitation over the years. Through uninterrupted silence, the site is covered with layers of shimmering grass and matured trees. We want to retain and capture the natural quality of silence,” explained the architects.

The studio spaces are lifted high above the ground, providing a sense of privacy that the highly confidential spaces require. The spaces are wrapped with translucent ETFE that absorbs glare and harsh direct sunlight, creating a thermal buffer zone between the external and internal spaces. The room temperature is regulated by chilled ceilings and chilled beams.
http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/1...ungvoglnun.jpg
http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/4...ngvoglnunf.jpg
http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/8...ungvoglnun.jpg

Well, those look like Hyde Park highrises in the background, so this must be a site in South Shore. I don't think it can be Lakeside (the South Works property) because the developers have already deeded a 300-foot strip to the Park District.

The shoreline and road configuration matches the South Water Filtration Plant at Rainbow Beach, making me think this was merely a thought exercise.

^That's crazy.

301 N LaSalle - Mar 29
Tyvek strikes.


Cat on a bright tin roof.


Pedestrian bridge - Mich to Wabash - Mar 30






One of the welders told me that Wrigley owned the property and needed to fix th bridge before they could sell it.

it's not that you're nuts, it's just that we live in a backwards time when a 20 min walk is viewed as outrageous for walking to a grocery store.

not to mention that there are closer grocery stores to Trump tower and residents who'd be embarrassed by crossing Michigan Ave with a granny cart.

btw Mr. Downtown, you've got to go shopping more than once a week, unless you never eat vegetables ;)

No doubt there are questions about whether this will ever materialize or even if it is a current proposal (their website says design work is still ongoing). But IMO it looks like there is/was a real client unless this background info is all fake:

Remember, this firm is based in Hong Kong so that's quite a journey to take for just a thought experiment.

Bingo. That's really the crux of it.

I think the garage is fine as well for the Target about 90% of the time. But when it's shopping season, stay away from the entire general vicinity if you're in a car. Clark gets backed up, and so does Roosevelt. Maybe it'll be better this year if some of the overflow people decide to park (and are allowed to) in the Roosevelt Collection. That other 10% of the time, though, is what keeps me away from there. It's just a traffic hassle and there's nothing I would buy there that I can't get elsewhere that's less of a headache for me. But that's just me.

As far as my lifestyle, I live in Bronzeville and work just North of Chicago Ave. I go to the gym at Roosevelt & Canal (which is a much more highly functional garage than Target's, btw) and do most of my day-to-day shopping right around that area because it's on my way home. I have a car and drive largely because I'm at work nearly 10 hours a day every day and need the efficiency of it to be able to get other things done. Could I take the train instead? Of course. But the car saves me an absolute minimum of an hour of my personal time every single day.

I think a lot of the arguments and discussions about planning and design that take place on these boards revolve around what people consider to be the "right" kind of lifestyle for living in a city. I went to and lived at IIT for four years while working part time in the loop and never had a car the whole time. I took the train everywhere. I never needed a car and never much wanted one. But I still also mapped out my personal traffic patterns based on what was most efficient for me. And that's the bottom line about why I drive now. It meets my needs better than not driving. I lived the no-car lifestyle for as long as it worked for me. It doesn't now and so now it's different.

At the end of the day, I think that's the way most everyone will treat that grocery store at LSE. I highly doubt many people living in Aqua are going to take the time to go down to the parking garage, get their car, and drive over to that store, just to go into another parking garage, and do the same going back, when they could just walk and probably take the same amount of time overall, unless of course they're really loading up on a huge amount of groceries and need the vehicle.

Overall, though, high volume destination stores have to have parking. They can't afford not to have it if they want to be able to attract the highest number of customers possible. That being said however, LSE isn't exactly a destination location for drivers. Anyone not living over there is probably pretty hard pressed to figure out how to even get there to begin with. So I'm going to doubt that you're going to see that area flooded with vehicles headed to the new grocery store.

Harry, I tried to google info about the pedestrian bridge that you took some pictures of and could not find any. Do you have any additional info, such as dimensions or anything like that?