Quote:
Originally Posted by SamInTheLoop
^ There is much, much more room for development east of the expressway than you seem to think. Much more. A lot of folks get that wrong, thinking there's only a handful of development spots left. They always do, every cycle. While it's of course true that there are less sites now than there were last cycle, and less sites then than the cycle before (and next cycle there will be fewer than today), there is still much more room for redevelopment than you think. This is also actually also the case with cities that have more mature, more fully built-out CBDs than Chicago does. Manhattan is a fantastic example, among others.
I'm not sure why you seem to think I'm saying that the Fulton Market office buildings under development are as large as the typical new Loop tower. They're clearly not, nor would you expect them to be. However, in aggregate, they still qualify as a concentration of significant office development in an off-prime, poorly planned location with respect to transit access.
It would be a different story if the Loop (loosely-defined let's just say east of the expressway - to the contrary, I think Madison/Des Plaines is a decent office site for sure....not as good as a few blocks to the east, but still decent enough) were as supply-constrained in reality as you imagine it to be. It's just not, however.
Smart growth would be where a city directs office development to efficiently use current transit infrastructure (in any event, but particularly in an era in which significant new transit investments are very challening and time-consuming to pull off), not to direct a whole bunch into a less well-served/accessible area, and say let's build it out over here, let it play out/the market work itself out/transit play catch-up or whatever, and then even larger towers will need to be built in the Loop at some point later on, where there actually is sufficient transit infrastructure (or, the best we have, anyway) today. That's the opposite of smart.
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I mean, you've driven home this point over and over again, but at some juncture you just have to give it up.
The cat's out of the bag in Fulton Market. Companies are there, more are coming, more towers are getting built, and it's still pretty damn good with transportation access although all is understood that it's not as perfect as the Central Loop.
The money has spoken. Anybody who doesn't like it at this point is just whining.