Quote:
Originally Posted by Toasty Joe
yeah, a great start but definitely more fundamental work to do. I feel like currently there is a very specific type of person who would live in the Loop (transient, white-collar, somewhat anti-social), and a lot of that growth has been from that demographic. If there's any hope of it being an actual neighborhood one day, a major step is even losing the local stigma as a lame place to live for people who don't know any better.
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My wife and I are looking forward to moving into the Loop very soon--maybe in Spring. We aren't terribly transient or anti-social but guilty-as-charged to the white collaredness. When we become semi-retired in a few years we want to live steps away from the Art Institute, Symphony, Riverwalk, Millenium Park, Museum Campus, lakefront, Architecture Center, Newberry Library, Cultural Center, Lyric Opera, theatres... Without thinking of it as a retirement community, we think it will feed a very active leisure/cultural niche that can't be met anywhere else in the US--maybe the world. We've lived all over the world (hmm...maybe we are transient) and when thinking about ridiculously easy access to a high quality of cultural life, the Loop seems unbeatable. That said, we have another place where we'll spend winter months--we're enthusiastic, not masochistic.
Obviously we hope for a recovery of business and a vibrant restaurant/bar/entertainment scene, but the cultural institutions and topography aren't going anywhere.