Quote:
Originally Posted by pip
I was riding my bike up the river park/bike trail today, starting at around Argyle and the river going north. Beautiful park and very nice neighborhoods too btw. I got off at Bryn Mawr ave and on that street I was east of Northeastern Illinois Univ and west of the river. That was the most vacant business district street in terms of businesses. It seemed to be mostly vacant Korean businesses. I'm guessing this was once a Korean area after Lawrence declined as one? I did go into a really nice independent, and it is independent certainly, coffee shop. What I don't get is that this area hasn't been Korean in a couple of decades(?) and the neighborhoods are nice all around that street. So why is it so vacant?
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It's a bit of a misconception that these businesses survive on local neighborhood customers alone. The most successful urban shopping districts are destinations for people both city-wide and region-wide. What happened is that the Koreans suburbanized and decided it was more convenient to shop out there (just visited the huge new Joong Boo Market in Glenview) and other groups in the neighborhood are accustomed to shopping in other areas, but not on Bryn Mawr.
Also Chicago just structurally has too much commercial zoning on grid streets relative to population, so only certain streets will really thrive and it's sometimes counter-intuitive which ones. Go to plenty of S Side neighborhoods and you'll see well-maintained homes and beautiful side streets but lots of empty lots and vacancy on the main streets.
Should also point out that the flow of immigrants that kept refreshing these areas and bringing new businesses in has really dried up. We are in a very long dip in immigration levels to Chicago... So in lieu of a new immigrant group coming in and colonizing Bryn Mawr, the city and alderman will have to start allowing new, denser buildings on that stretch AND get used to a future with fewer businesses on the street.
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