CHICAGO | Lincoln Yards

[Lakeviewguy]

Perhaps it already appears on the blog somewhere. Here is a piece from today's NYT about Hudson Yards in NY. Interesting that the reviewer points out many of the same problems that we see here with large developments.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...gtype=Homepage

[skysoar]

Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright

I can't tell if you are being sarcastic or not, but the challenges of literally building on top of active railroads are wayyyyy greater than tearing down a few industrial shacks, remediating the land, and hopping to it. Sterling Bay should never have expected to buy industrial land and just get to build whatever they want to on it.



Lakefront is indeed solid gold (unless between I-55 and Hyde Park), but you really think it's more appealing to live in the South Loop than to live along the river literally in between Lincoln Park, Wicker Park, and downtown?

I cannot refute your last statement comparing the appeal of the LY development area including Lincoln Park, and Wicker Park communities with the South Loop. I can only add that the South Loop is rapidly trending upward, and with developments like NEMA, and if the new Lakefront proposal becomes a reality, it brings them closer to LY area appeal.

[ChiTownWonder]

Completely agree with the NYT article. The style of these developments are highly suburan in the sence that program is seperated. The West Yards which havent started construction yet is proposed to be majority residential while the East Yards are prinarily office and retail. Its the high density version of the souless copy paste neighborhoods and office parks we hate about the suburbs. Maybe I’m radical, but I don’t support the majority of these projects, especially will all of the financial support the city is providing (to LY specifically). This kind of growth is not organic, its forced. I’m still on board with the 78 and Riverline, because those areas are closer to the Loop, where that huge dominating scale is prominant and celebrated. But LY does not belong between two prodominantly midrise, vibrant, human scaled, and integrated urban neighborhoods.

[BuildThemTaller]

Originally Posted by ChiTownWonder

Completely agree with the NYT article. The style of these developments are highly suburan in the sence that program is seperated. The West Yards which havent started construction yet is proposed to be majority residential while the East Yards are prinarily office and retail. Its the high density version of the souless copy paste neighborhoods and office parks we hate about the suburbs. Maybe I’m radical, but I don’t support the majority of these projects, especially will all of the financial support the city is providing (to LY specifically). This kind of growth is not organic, its forced. I’m still on board with the 78 and Riverline, because those areas are closer to the Loop, where that huge dominating scale is prominant and celebrated. But LY does not belong between two prodominantly midrise, vibrant, human scaled, and integrated urban neighborhoods.

Are you suggesting that building over the air rights of a rail yard was going to eventually come about organically?

The fact of the matter is that Lincoln Yards was a large tract of land that was owned by a large corporation (Finkl Steel) and then bought by another large corporation. It was never going to be subdivided.

[ardecila]

^ Of course not. Whether decking over rail yards or subdividing large parcels, we have lost the apparatus in America for developing large pieces of land publicly and then letting growth happen organically.

The way Chicago's traditional neighborhoods were built, land owners hired surveyors to subdivide the land into lots, and dedicated a grid of streets and alleys, conforming to pretty strict standards concerning street width and lot size/block size. "Dedicating a street" was basically a free move for developers since streets were literally just open dirt paths, but dedicating them provided crucial access to all the other lots and raised their value. Eventually the city taxed everyone to improve these streets and install public utilities - everyone shared the cost.

Today, we expect so much more in the way of infrastructure from the outset - paved streets, two sewer systems, underground power, gas, and telephone lines, etc need to be installed before the city will even allow someone to move into a new community. The public vehemently refuses to pay for this infrastructure in new communities, forcing the cost onto developers. Plus, the cost of such things is much higher than it used to be, thanks to stricter design standards, unionized labor, etc.

I would also argue that part of growing a city organically is that someone has to be willing to live in an unfinished neighborhood with noise, dust, and inconvenience, sometimes for a few decades before everything is built out. In the old days, developers solved this problem by throwing up cheap wooden worker cottages (or brick, if the land was within city limits) and inviting Chicago's working poor to come live. They were happy to find a spacious home and didn't care about the pain points. Today new developments are based around catering to wealthy people, because undeveloped land in Chicago went from dirt cheap to uber expensive, and only the wealthy can pick up the tab... convincing wealthy people to put up with an unfinished neighborhood requires a slick sales job and flashy amenities. All the grittiness of traditional urbanism is carefully eliminated, because it has to be or the wealthy won't buy in.

[BVictor1]

Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright

Thanks, lol. All I have to say is the proposal today along the lake front is exposing just what a lame handout this plan was. If you can build over railyards and pay for a new transit spur and do it with zero subsidy in the South loop then why do we need a handout for Sterling bay with zero transit directly between two of the hottest neighborhoods in the city.

Yeah well deal with it. The developer of the lakefront project said what he said, but whether it happens is a different story.

[PKDickman]

Originally Posted by ardecila

^
Eventually the city taxed everyone to improve these streets and install public utilities - everyone shared the cost.

That's not entirely true.
At least until the 1980's, street improvements and sewer improvements and the like, were billed by special assessment to the properties benefiting from those improvements.

[TR Devlin]

According to an article in Forbes last month, the Kennedy is the second most congested highway in the country. Here’s the top five:

1. New York City: Cross Bronx Expressway from Bruckner Expressway to Trans Manhattan Expressway;
2. Chicago: I-94/I-90 from I-55 to I-294 (the Kennedy);
3. Chicago: I-290 from I-94 to I-294 (the Eisenhower);
4. Los Angeles: I-10 from I-405 to I-110;
5. Pittsburgh: I-376 from I-79 to Pennsylvania Turnpike;

Lincoln Yards will make the congestion significantly worse. Based on the 6,000 residential units and 23,000 jobs planned for Lincoln Yards, I’d expect it to add around 20,000 thousand cars on the Kennedy every day. Plus thousands more driving thru Lincoln Park. With most of the increase during the morning and evening rush hours.

Will this make the Kennedy the most congested highway in the country? I don’t know. But the people who should be looking at this are the City Planning Dept and/or the City Dept of Transportation. And they don’t seem to want to. Because it’s been decided that this project needs to be approved before the Mayor leaves office in a month. And if you want to get it approved, you can’t look at the negatives.

So what we’ve got is a project where Sterling Bay will make hundreds of millions of dollars and people who drive on the Kennedy or in Lincoln Park are fucked.

God, this is disgusting.

[the urban politician]

But with congestion comes more chances to make money

[The Lurker]

Originally Posted by TR Devlin

According to an article in Forbes last month, the Kennedy is the second most congested highway in the country. Here’s the top five:

1. New York City: Cross Bronx Expressway from Bruckner Expressway to Trans Manhattan Expressway;
2. Chicago: I-94/I-90 from I-55 to I-294 (the Kennedy);
3. Chicago: I-290 from I-94 to I-294 (the Eisenhower);
4. Los Angeles: I-10 from I-405 to I-110;
5. Pittsburgh: I-376 from I-79 to Pennsylvania Turnpike;

Lincoln Yards will make the congestion significantly worse. Based on the 6,000 residential units and 23,000 jobs planned for Lincoln Yards, I’d expect it to add around 20,000 thousand cars on the Kennedy every day. With most of the increase during the morning and evening rush hours.

Will this make the Kennedy the most congested highway in the country? I don’t know. But the people who should be looking at this are the City Planning Dept and/or the City Dept of Transportation. And they don’t seem to want to. Because it’s been decided that this project needs to be approved before the Mayor leaves office in a month. And if you want to get it approved, you can’t look at the negatives.

So what we’ve got is a project where Sterling Bay will make hundreds of millions of dollars and people who drive on the Kennedy or in Lincoln Park are fucked.

God, this is disgusting.

The TRAFFIC! How did we not think of that before!?
I've got a few solutions, tell me what you guys think. First we need a citywide moratorium on new development. We need more deconversions too. Like lots of em. Then we need to start clearcutting old neighborhoods and blazing new expressways through them. We could further slow truck deliveries into downtown by converting the marinas into seaports. That could work right?

[10023]

Originally Posted by TR Devlin

According to an article in Forbes last month, the Kennedy is the second most congested highway in the country. Here’s the top five:

1. New York City: Cross Bronx Expressway from Bruckner Expressway to Trans Manhattan Expressway;
2. Chicago: I-94/I-90 from I-55 to I-294 (the Kennedy);
3. Chicago: I-290 from I-94 to I-294 (the Eisenhower);
4. Los Angeles: I-10 from I-405 to I-110;
5. Pittsburgh: I-376 from I-79 to Pennsylvania Turnpike;

Lincoln Yards will make the congestion significantly worse. Based on the 6,000 residential units and 23,000 jobs planned for Lincoln Yards, I’d expect it to add around 20,000 thousand cars on the Kennedy every day. With most of the increase during the morning and evening rush hours.

Will this make the Kennedy the most congested highway in the country? I don’t know. But the people who should be looking at this are the City Planning Dept and/or the City Dept of Transportation. And they don’t seem to want to. Because it’s been decided that this project needs to be approved before the Mayor leaves office in a month. And if you want to get it approved, you can’t look at the negatives.

So what we’ve got is a project where Sterling Bay will make hundreds of millions of dollars and people who drive on the Kennedy or in Lincoln Park are fucked.

God, this is disgusting.

Great, another clueless suburbanite with 10 posts.

Sounds like they need to get rid of parking in and around downtown in order to encourage people to take public transportation instead.

And if 23,000 jobs adds 20,000 cars on the Kennedy, then it sounds like those jobs are being filled by absolute fucking idiots.

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by 10023

Great, another clueless suburbanite with 10 posts.

Sounds like they need to get rid of parking in and around downtown in order to encourage people to take public transportation instead.

And if 23,000 jobs adds 20,000 cars on the Kennedy, then it sounds like those jobs are being filled by absolute fucking idiots.

The problem is, he’s absolutely correct if Lincoln Yards isn’t well served by mass transit.

You’re not an idiot driving to a job if you have no other meaningful way to get there.

[Randomguy34]

^ Exactly! The true idiots in this situation is the city not investing in a transit plan to connect Lincoln Yards. If the city wants to replicate the success of South Lake Union, then the only effective transit option w/o building a new subway is to have an Ashland, Armitage, North, & Elston BRT + frequent UP-N/NW with free transfer to the CTA.

[ardecila]

There’s lots of ways to skin the cat. I’d argue that only an Armitage BRT and an Ashland BRT are needed for LY, plus the already planned transitway to downtown. If the transitway is a busway, then add an Elston bus (regular bus, not BRT) that can use the transitway south of Cortland.

Long term Metra can be part of the solution as well, but right now the city has no leverage over Metra to run more service to city destinations.

[glowrock]

Originally Posted by TR Devlin

According to an article in Forbes last month, the Kennedy is the second most congested highway in the country. Here’s the top five:

1. New York City: Cross Bronx Expressway from Bruckner Expressway to Trans Manhattan Expressway;
2. Chicago: I-94/I-90 from I-55 to I-294 (the Kennedy);
3. Chicago: I-290 from I-94 to I-294 (the Eisenhower);
4. Los Angeles: I-10 from I-405 to I-110;
5. Pittsburgh: I-376 from I-79 to Pennsylvania Turnpike;

Lincoln Yards will make the congestion significantly worse. Based on the 6,000 residential units and 23,000 jobs planned for Lincoln Yards, I’d expect it to add around 20,000 thousand cars on the Kennedy every day. With most of the increase during the morning and evening rush hours.

Will this make the Kennedy the most congested highway in the country? I don’t know. But the people who should be looking at this are the City Planning Dept and/or the City Dept of Transportation. And they don’t seem to want to. Because it’s been decided that this project needs to be approved before the Mayor leaves office in a month. And if you want to get it approved, you can’t look at the negatives.

So what we’ve got is a project where Sterling Bay will make hundreds of millions of dollars and people who drive on the Kennedy or in Lincoln Park are fucked.

God, this is disgusting.

The Kennedy is an absolute clusterf*ck, but Lincoln Yards won't have a huge impact one way or another on it, honestly. The biggest issue is lack of coherent mass transit, along with a complicated mess of non-grid street intersections in the area (mainly due to the river, of course, but also streets such as Elston.) Lincoln Yards CAN be successful, but there are definitely significant infrastructure improvements that must be made in order to make it happen. Nice thing is, these improvements will help everyone getting through the area, not just Sterling Bay.

Aaron (Glowrock)

[moorhosj]

Saw this in a Crain's article today. I've seen this mentioned a few times on Crain's, but not really anywhere else aside from wish-casting. Does anyone know of any actual movement on a light rail?:

The developer plans to extend the nearby 606 bike trail to the site, build new roads and bridges, and eventually develop a multimodal Metra station and part of a light rail line that would run along the river between the development and Ogilvie Transportation Center.

[SamInTheLoop]

Originally Posted by moorhosj

Saw this in a Crain's article today. I've seen this mentioned a few times on Crain's, but not really anywhere else aside from wish-casting. Does anyone know of any actual movement on a light rail?:

No. It’s as real as Elon Musk’s tunnel to O’Hare.

Lincoln Yards will have plenty of bike racks though, for sure.

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by moorhosj

Saw this in a Crain's article today. I've seen this mentioned a few times on Crain's, but not really anywhere else aside from wish-casting. Does anyone know of any actual movement on a light rail?:

There is money set aside in the Lincoln Yards TIF spending plan to build part of a transitway. Busway vs light rail has not yet been decided, but most likely it will be a busway so that buses can fan out to other transit connections at each end. The actual mode is pretty much irrelevant for top-level planning - a bus and a streetcar are pretty much interchangeable in all respects except the track and power system. Also, a streetcar line can be designed so that buses can share the right-of-way, as in Portland's Tilikum Crossing or Seattle's transit tunnel.

Note that this only partial funding covering some portion of the transitway near the Lincoln Yards site, the city will need to come up with money to build the rest of the transitway south of the Lincoln Yards site. This might come from other TIF districts and will probably rely on other developer contributions from other large projects.

In one sense it is vaporware - there has been no public planning process or detailed plans released. But because the city is so helpless at actually funding and building transit projects, in a different sense this might actually be more concrete than many other transit proposals since it will be funded and constructed by developers who stand to benefit from the improved access.

It appears that some detailed engineering is going on behind the scenes, not just on the transitway but also on speeding up the existing bus routes running through the North Branch Corridor:
http://www.itsmidwest.org/2018-Annua...als_Rinnan.pdf

[kolchak]

I could see this coming a mile away. Get ready for more like it as a less developer friendly mayor (for better or for worse) takes office.

"“The Lincoln Yards development should be a decision for the next mayor and the next City Council,” she said in a Jan. 11 news release. “And it should be a decision made with community input and a full understanding of the impact on population density, schools, traffic and other factors. All of these questions remain open at this time, and until they are answered to the satisfaction of the community, the development should not move forward.”

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...403-story.html

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by kolchak

I could see this coming a mile away. Get ready for more like it as a less developer friendly mayor (for better or for worse) takes office.

"“The Lincoln Yards development should be a decision for the next mayor and the next City Council,” she said in a Jan. 11 news release. “And it should be a decision made with community input and a full understanding of the impact on population density, schools, traffic and other factors. All of these questions remain open at this time, and until they are answered to the satisfaction of the community, the development should not move forward.”

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/...403-story.html

The TIF will go through, with plenty of votes from the aldermen who are leaving office and the aldermen that have secure seats.

Lightfoot can talk all she wants about Lincoln Yards because, most likely, she won't ever be the one making the call. Wait to see how she acts when she really has to decide about a development proposal - like the South Loop one over the Metra tracks, which (supposedly) will not be asking for TIF money.