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Originally Posted by mcdj
Ok, I also don’t want to be flanked by two major pedestrian corridors that access a transit hub, and watch the neighborhood go from neighborhood to footraffic superhighway, with all the trash, noise and crime that brings.
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First, except on game/concert days, it's unlikely that even 3000 people will pass to or from that hub each day. It simply doesn't serve any big origins or destinations. But a central city is indeed a place that brings a variety of people together, not all of whom live on your block. For hundreds of years, we've coped with that reality using techniques like garden fences, living spaces a half-floor above grade, or doorman buildings.
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I also want to know what the project means for real estate values for the current residents.
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That they'll go up. Remember that developers only build projects like this for the high end of the market. The more such people we have living in the South Loop, the less we're seen as some iffy urban pioneer area.
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I also want to know what environmental impact the project will have on Northerly Island and Burnham Harbor. And the air I breathe.
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Nothing noticeable, except some more people who'll get to look at them. If autos were to stop getting cleaner, theoretically the couple thousand new trips at buildout could have a nonzero impact on air quality. But it's easy to see that internal-combustion engines will only be a fraction of the vehicles on the road when this is even half done.
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I also want see how the construction trucks get to the site, despite the ban on trucks on the LSD and the promise from the developer that trucks would not be coming from the west.
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CDOT simply issues permits for the construction trucks to use LSD, as they do for any other lakefront construction project.
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I also want to know how the CFD, CPD, and the schools will scale up for the onslaught of thousands of new tenants crammed into a sliver of dirt.
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CFD will send a truck when someone burns the toast, just as they do today in Museum Park. CPD will send a squadrol when one of the residents goes off her meds, just as they do today in Museum Park. Have those trips been so frequent in your experience that they've made the area unliveable? As for schools, highrises don't tend to have many school-age children. Because this development will have thousands of square feet in building bases to fill, it very well may be the spot for the new neighborhood high school we all want.
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I also want to know why we need ANOTHER “mixed use” project, when we have Soldier Fileld, Wintrust, the outdoor concert venue at Northerly Island, and McCormick place in the same spot. They’re even using the Soldier Fileld parking lot most of this summer for Cirque Du Soleil.
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I'm not sure what you mean. No event venue was discussed last night.
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They’re describing the mixed uses spaces as a destination place. But it’s just gonna be another 5 Lettuce Entertain You/Boka restaurants, a Whole Fools, and a movie theater/concert space, because there are none of any of that anywhere else.
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Could be. I'm not optimistic about an indoor mall, and real restaurant rows form on streets like Wabash with small funky spaces. But in this country, we tend to let property owners take the risk that they may not get the tenancy they want, rather than have a Ministry of Retail that decides if new retail space is justified.
Hey, at least you didn't mention your views. There are things I don't like about this site plan, and there are big doubts about it ever happening. But "the neighborhood won't be exactly the same forever" is a pretty weak objection. You knew when you moved in that Central Station owned the air rights, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that building over Weldon Yard would require high density.
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