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J_M_Tungsten Apr 13, 2010 3:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SamInTheLoop (Post 4542178)

Anyone have a recent construction shot of this one?

VivaLFuego Apr 13, 2010 3:40 PM

^It's up to around 4 floors of steel framing. As with Rush, this one will be quite massive when alls said and done

Chicago Shawn Apr 13, 2010 3:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Taft (Post 4792995)
IMO, that is an irrelevant point considering that just about everyone on these boards (ok, maybe that is a *bit* hyperbolic) dislikes the sales tax funding mechanism for the CTA.

And beyond that, I don't understand why we should have to choose between funding for the CTA and transit oriented development. If there were any sanity to zoning, building and transit funding in this city, we wouldn't be having an inane discussion about whether it was better to collect sales tax revenue or have density and pedestrian friendly construction near CTA stations.

We can have both. This shouldn't be an either/or proposition. The Kmart has the large lot because this is an auto-centric location and the Kmart may be older then the station itself. But, that Kmart won't last forever.

Kmart has downsized its city holdings in the past, selling off 2 north side stores in recent years, so perhaps this store too, will disapear soon. Its a big opportunity site.

The key is to gather support for the eventual replacement development in hopes that we won't make the same mistake in the future because of NIMBY concerns over parking, density and so forth.

Nowhereman1280 Apr 13, 2010 3:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by VivaLFuego (Post 4793106)
As with Rush, this one will be quite massive when alls said and done

Certainly, I feel like it has the same massing as Merchandise Mart, just at 1/2 scale...

ardecila Apr 13, 2010 6:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chicago Shawn (Post 4793123)
The key is to gather support for the eventual replacement development in hopes that we won't make the same mistake in the future because of NIMBY concerns over parking, density and so forth.

Well, that's part of the problem. Can you imagine the community okaying a redevelopment that isn't some townhouse community?

Mr Downtown Apr 14, 2010 12:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by the urban politician (Post 4793023)
there is something wrong with having a half-empty 50 acre parking lot adjacent to a rapid transit station and somehow calling it a good thing for the CTA.

Sure, but the part I find amusing is how you seem to think a real city works like SimCity; that some city agency can simply move the mouse and remake an area the way they've recently decided would be better.

That Kmart probably opened around 1990 on a site that was previously industrial. The neighborhood was still smarting from the loss of industrial jobs, and new residential in that location was still a pretty iffy proposition. There was certainly no market for highrise or even high-density residential. Kmart will create jobs and commercial-rate property taxes and sales taxes for the city. Seventy new houses might eventually sell, but would only produce residential-rate property taxes, no jobs, no sales taxes, and might present more children to the local school, already overcrowded by the change of the neighborhood to Hispanic. Thanks to a time machine, you enter the room and argue . . . what, exactly? That if they instead choose residential, in 20 years an additional 40 people each day will walk into the CTA station?

BWChicago Apr 14, 2010 1:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr Downtown (Post 4793835)
Sure, but the part I find amusing is how you seem to think a real city works like SimCity; that some city agency can simply move the mouse and remake an area the way they've recently decided would be better.

That Kmart probably opened around 1990 on a site that was previously industrial. The neighborhood was still smarting from the loss of industrial jobs, and new residential in that location was still a pretty iffy proposition. There was certainly no market for highrise or even high-density residential. Kmart will create jobs and commercial-rate property taxes and sales taxes for the city. Seventy new houses might eventually sell, but would only produce residential-rate property taxes, no jobs, no sales taxes, and might present more children to the local school, already overcrowded by the change of the neighborhood to Hispanic. Thanks to a time machine, you enter the room and argue . . . what, exactly? That if they instead choose residential, in 20 years an additional 40 people each day will walk into the CTA station?

The Kmart opened in 1984. It was indeed an industrial site.

Nowhereman1280 Apr 14, 2010 2:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ardecila (Post 4793335)
Well, that's part of the problem. Can you imagine the community okaying a redevelopment that isn't some Townhome Development?

I actually really like those developments. They are some of the best looking new townhomes in the city. I think they will look great in 50 years when a full tree canopy exists and will blend right in with the ancient 2 flats and town homes found throughout the city.

VivaLFuego Apr 14, 2010 4:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr Downtown (Post 4793835)
Sure, but the part I find amusing is how you seem to think a real city works like SimCity; that some city agency can simply move the mouse and remake an area the way they've recently decided would be better.

That Kmart probably opened around 1990 on a site that was previously industrial. The neighborhood was still smarting from the loss of industrial jobs, and new residential in that location was still a pretty iffy proposition. There was certainly no market for highrise or even high-density residential. Kmart will create jobs and commercial-rate property taxes and sales taxes for the city. Seventy new houses might eventually sell, but would only produce residential-rate property taxes, no jobs, no sales taxes, and might present more children to the local school, already overcrowded by the change of the neighborhood to Hispanic. Thanks to a time machine, you enter the room and argue . . . what, exactly? That if they instead choose residential, in 20 years an additional 40 people each day will walk into the CTA station?

These are all good points, but say little about why the K-mart simply had to built in such a pedestrian- and transit-hostile fashion. The siting could have accommodated the present K-mart, Home Depot, and CVS fronting Addison and hugging the corner with Kimball, with parking to the south along Kimball in the no-mans land south of Addison far from where any poor pedestrian might stray. Access could be both off Kimball and with one or two pass-throughs connecting the parking to Addison. This also would ideally entail shared parking facilities, reducing the overall parking requirement due to presumably different peak parking demand characteristics amongst the 3 anchors.

Economically the K-mart et al are fine. But they're a site-planning disaster.

Mr Downtown Apr 14, 2010 1:41 PM

^But the Kmart was built 22 years before the CVS and Home Depot. The only land the Kmart developer had to work with was an irregular parcel stretched east-west along Addison, deeper at the east end than at the west. Had they put the parking lot on the east side it would have made the store configuration very awkward, with the "front end" along a short side. As it is, they had to put the loading docks in an inefficient (and ugly) place along the north side to save the width of an access road around the south side.

Site planners have to work with the site they have, not the site they wish they had.

DonMendigo Apr 14, 2010 1:55 PM

Demo at Diversey & Orchard
 
I don't know if this had been mentioned, but I walked by a demo of 3 story building near Diversey and Orchard last night. This is next to a surface parking lot that is also now closed. I think it was rumored that this location was going to be a Trader Joe's previously. Anyone heard anything?

Chicago Shawn Apr 14, 2010 2:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by VivaLFuego (Post 4794133)
These are all good points, but say little about why the K-mart simply had to built in such a pedestrian- and transit-hostile fashion. The siting could have accommodated the present K-mart, Home Depot, and CVS fronting Addison and hugging the corner with Kimball, with parking to the south along Kimball in the no-mans land south of Addison far from where any poor pedestrian might stray. Access could be both off Kimball and with one or two pass-throughs connecting the parking to Addison. This also would ideally entail shared parking facilities, reducing the overall parking requirement due to presumably different peak parking demand characteristics amongst the 3 anchors.

Economically the K-mart et al are fine. But they're a site-planning disaster.

All very true. But like Mr. D mentioned, these were all built at different times. Chances are the K mart will be redeveloped at some point and perhaps a more urban design can be forced upon the new site user, or they just might adapt to it themselfs. The replacement of the the Kmart on Peterson with a new Target store was a great improvement to the street scape, as the store minimized the area of the surface parking lot and brought a main entrance up to the sidewalk.

The site in question will likely stay commercial, becaue the industrial area to the south is a Planned Manufacturing District, and the city requires PMDs to have buffer zones between them and residnetial areas, to minimize resident complaints about trucks, noise and the other "I can't help it" aspects of industrial uses.

VivaLFuego Apr 14, 2010 3:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr Downtown (Post 4794339)
^But the Kmart was built 22 years before the CVS and Home Depot. The only land the Kmart developer had to work with was an irregular parcel stretched east-west along Addison, deeper at the east end than at the west. Had they put the parking lot on the east side it would have made the store configuration very awkward, with the "front end" along a short side. As it is, they had to put the loading docks in an inefficient (and ugly) place along the north side to save the width of an access road around the south side.

Site planners have to work with the site they have, not the site they wish they had.

Fair enough - I don't know the parcel-specific history there. That said, it's a good example of where actual land use planning would come in handy in some parallel fantasy universe --- the development still occurring in phases but with broad public guidelines for how it would eventually take shape at full build-out. To a large extent such planning could just be done via good old zoning, but the PUD process as it exists has made sure that all those pesky guidelines for stuff like setbacks and access and such could just be ignored when convenient for the right person; an end-run, rather than as a process to engage in medium-scale comprehensive planning. Doesn't mean the site as it exists today should somehow be celebrated as a boon to the city for all that glorious sales tax revenue, as if the only possibilities for that site are current conditions or utter blight.

Mr Downtown Apr 14, 2010 3:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by VivaLFuego (Post 4794133)
The siting could have . . . parking to the south along Kimball in the no-mans land south of Addison far from where any poor pedestrian might stray. Access could be both off Kimball and with one or two pass-throughs connecting the parking to Addison.


Parking in rear
sounds fine in theory, but just won't work for big-box retail. Any kind of retail, actually.

First, well over 90 percent of the customers arrive by auto, many of them in a minivan with kids. To keep them happy, you need to minimize the walk from car to entrance and from checkout to car. You can't ask them to walk an extra 200 feet, through a tunnel where a scary guy might be lurking, to get to the front entrance. If you turn the store around, you have the loading docks and blank rear wall lining the sidewalk on Addison.

Second, only a couple of types of retailers (notably fast food, where payment is separated from access) can afford to keep two entrances open. So you end up with signs on the sidewalk entrances saying "enter from parking."

About the best compromise you can hope for is the one used by pre-1970 supermarkets, having the store hug the sidewalk with parking to the side and a corner entrance serving both. But once the store grows beyond 80,000 sq ft, the parking lot becomes a lengthy void to walk past. In fact, that's exactly the site plan of this Kmart, which so infuriated TUP. Other examples include the Jewel on Chicago Avenue in Evanston, or the recently closed Southport store.

Parking on the roof is great, but that extra cost just isn't in Kmart's business model—and certainly wasn't for an in-city store in 1984.

I, too, am sometimes tempted by the idea of a California-style specific plan, that would try to imagine how a neighborhood would build out and set up the urban design guidelines for how it would all fit together. The problem is the one Yogi Berra aptly described: "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." In 1984, the CVS/Home Depot site was still industrial and everyone hoped it would remain so. More to the point, would we be happy today with 1984 thinking about urban design guidelines and how the city should look and function?

the urban politician Apr 14, 2010 7:12 PM

^ Parking in rear is a joke.

It is a failed New Urbanist scheme in every sense of the word. You have no argument from me there.

The best Chicago can hope for in order to not suburbanize the city's commercial corridors any further is to have more booms like the one from 2000-2009, in which developers build multilevel housing with ground-level commercial space fronting the street. Because in so far as I have seen, we're doing a miserable job (with a few exceptions) building stand-alone retail in the city that doesn't look God-awful, or doesn't face the sidewalks with signs that say "enter through parking lot", as if that's much better than a standard strip mall.

denizen467 Apr 15, 2010 6:03 AM

The Clybourn Red Line station house has been unveiled - or at least the western facade. It looks underwhelmingly bland, like a 2005 outlot bank branch, but it certainly improves on the decades of decay (original quality notwithstanding) that was there before. Here's to higher hopes for Apple quality inside or downstairs.

sammyg Apr 15, 2010 3:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr Downtown (Post 4794503)

Parking in rear
sounds fine in theory, but just won't work for big-box retail. Any kind of retail, actually.

I know it's a completely different situation, but the Home Depot on Halsted and the Best Buy on Clark both have different forms of off-street parking, as does the Dominicks at Damen and Clark.

Quote:

Second, only a couple of types of retailers (notably fast food, where payment is separated from access) can afford to keep two entrances open. So you end up with signs on the sidewalk entrances saying "enter from parking."
The aforementioned Best Buy and the Target at the Addison mall both do this, it doesn't seem to be a big problem.

Quote:

In 1984, the CVS/Home Depot site was still industrial and everyone hoped it would remain so. More to the point, would we be happy today with 1984 thinking about urban design guidelines and how the city should look and function?
I think this is very true, but it's been 26 years, proposals to re-do the area should be considered now that industry doesn't really exist in that area any more.

Loopy Apr 15, 2010 7:10 PM

.

a chicago bearcat Apr 15, 2010 9:25 PM

how do you quantify "work"
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Mr Downtown (Post 4794503)

Parking in rear
sounds fine in theory, but just won't work for big-box retail. Any kind of retail, actually.

First, well over 90 percent of the customers arrive by auto, many of them in a minivan with kids. To keep them happy, you need to minimize the walk from car to entrance and from checkout to car. You can't ask them to walk an extra 200 feet, through a tunnel where a scary guy might be lurking, to get to the front entrance. If you turn the store around, you have the loading docks and blank rear wall lining the sidewalk on Addison.

Second, only a couple of types of retailers (notably fast food, where payment is separated from access) can afford to keep two entrances open. So you end up with signs on the sidewalk entrances saying "enter from parking."

About the best compromise you can hope for is the one used by pre-1970 supermarkets, having the store hug the sidewalk with parking to the side and a corner entrance serving both. But once the store grows beyond 80,000 sq ft, the parking lot becomes a lengthy void to walk past. In fact, that's exactly the site plan of this Kmart, which so infuriated TUP. Other examples include the Jewel on Chicago Avenue in Evanston, or the recently closed Southport store.

Parking on the roof is great, but that extra cost just isn't in Kmart's business model—and certainly wasn't for an in-city store in 1984.

I, too, am sometimes tempted by the idea of a California-style specific plan, that would try to imagine how a neighborhood would build out and set up the urban design guidelines for how it would all fit together. The problem is the one Yogi Berra aptly described: "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." In 1984, the CVS/Home Depot site was still industrial and everyone hoped it would remain so. More to the point, would we be happy today with 1984 thinking about urban design guidelines and how the city should look and function?

there still is the definition of "work" at the core of this discussion
this definition is based on an assumption that big box, car oriented development "works".
Which is an opinion,
(not one that I'm accusing you of holding, Mr. D)
one that doesn't take into account a lot of factors, and is reliant on some big assumptions (low fuel costs to name one)

The problem of this development is the culture in which it was realized. One we must move past it, and that is that. Criticizing the idiocy of transportation and development decisions from the 80s could fill many threads, better to address the base problems, then to criticize the execution.

I'll just try and do better in the future, to foster a society that doesn't demand such backwards justification for place creation, because it's our environment. Not the cars'.

Busy Bee Apr 15, 2010 9:32 PM

Is this a new rendering of Chinatown's Eastern Tower project? I don't recall seeing this one before.

http://wibiti.com/images/hpmain/178/270178.jpg
yochicago: http://wibiti.com/images/hpmain/178/270178.jpg


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