CHICAGO | General Developments

[Mr Downtown]

Originally Posted by brian_b

the gas leak in the South Loop yesterday shut down the single vehicular access point to Dearborn Park for close to 3 hours?

Yup; I was standing at 9th & Plymouth telling drivers how to sneak out through the 801 garage (after convincing the building manager, who demanded a security guard at both doors). In truth, there was no reason to not let drivers through on 9th, but fire and police will not be questioned about their decisions because they're saving lives, dammit and mere citizens couldn't possibly understand why the commuter train or expressway has to be completely shut down for hours while they play CSI.

I wish I could figure out what strategy would persuade my neighbors to support additional access, but decades of trying to talk sensibly about urbanism to folks who think strangers=crime has left me pretty doubtful.

[Baronvonellis]

Hey, that's great you were able to do all that out of college, sounds like you had a great understanding of finance and business at an early age. That's great your family has done well too. Not everyone has such a great natural business sense I think. I'm still confused about how much it costs to buy a house? All the different loan types, downpayments, closing costs. With a rent I know exactly what it costs. If I wanted to get a $300,000 condo how much do I pay a month? How much do you have to save for a downpayment? Then there's taxes, and maintenance as well.
I spoke to a realtor once, but I felt she was really biased since obviously she was just trying to get me to buy right away, and not listen to what my issues were.

Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright

I was fresh out of school and had saved up $5,000 and just used an FHA loan. To qualify for that size of loan you only needed like $30,000 a year in income. I also had a sizable chunk of student loan debt.

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by tjp

Even people who do that work are going to need "freebies," though, when it pays $12 an hour with no benefits.

The contractor I use pays his crew $165 for 8 hrs of work. That's over $20 per hour, and these are all Mexican immigrants

[Via Chicago]

Originally Posted by Baronvonellis

Hey, that's great you were able to do all that out of college, sounds like you had a great understanding of finance and business at an early age. That's great your family has done well too. Not everyone has such a great natural business sense I think. I'm still confused about how much it costs to buy a house? All the different loan types, downpayments, closing costs. With a rent I know exactly what it costs. If I wanted to get a $300,000 condo how much do I pay a month? How much do you have to save for a downpayment? Then there's taxes, and maintenance as well.
I spoke to a realtor once, but I felt she was really biased since obviously she was just trying to get me to buy right away, and not listen to what my issues were.

How much house you can afford is going to depend on a wide variety of things. How much do you earn? What debts do you have? How much do you have saved to put down? Is it enough to avoid mortgage insurance? How much do you have saved as an emergency fund beyond the down payment? Are you looking at condos or homes? If condos, each will have their own HOA fees as well. If homes, what kind of shape is it in/what sort of immediate repairs will it need, and how many are longer term?

There are lots of online housing calculators out there. Also, just because you get approved to buy (hypothetically) a 300k condo, dosent mean you HAVE to spend 300k (and probably most people would be well served to live within/below their means).

[Higher&Higher]

@Mikemak27 Thanks for the warm welcome and yes my family had the idea of buying a house on the North Side, but this was about 3-4 years ago when the prices were starting to increase dramatically, so we ended up buying a house over here at West Englewood because the houses over here are unimaginable cheap.

@LouisVanDerWright Most of the Hispanic population migrating to West Englewood I believe is coming from Marquette Park, which is right next to West Englewood and happens to be mostly all Hispanic. But surprisingly where my family and I are meeting all these other Latinos is at the Food 4 Less at Ashland & 71st. When I go there with my mom, we obviously stand out, since it's mostly all African Americans shopping there. So when we see other Latinos, we actually greet each other and also happen to ask around where we live. I know it might sound weird, but when you live an area where you feel like you're the only one, you're going to try and find others with similar backgrounds as you. So I've heard a lot of stories of where these Hispanics are coming from, I've heard families that came from the 40ths, Little Village, and even Pilsen. So this shows how things are shifting in Chicago.

@urbanpln Thanks for understanding and I hope you're enjoying living in the South Loop

@marothisu It might be. I know when we bought our house over here although it was finished, my family and I wanted it to look more modern, so we installed can lights, bought new lighting chandeliers, torn down an entire room to make the kitchen bigger, installed new hardwood flooring, and updated the house siding. So some just might be new homeowners updating their houses at their own will and others might be like you said.

[Ryanrule]

Originally Posted by brian_b

Not to change the subject too much, but did anyone else notice that the gas leak in the South Loop yesterday shut down the single vehicular access point to Dearborn Park for close to 3 hours?

Seems like a pretty big liability there.

/tiny violin for that place.

[mattshoe]

30 Apartments Pitched Near Western Blue Line Stop On Edge Of Bucktown

https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/2016...ge-of-bucktown

It would be great if Pipeworks stayed at this location and opened up a brewpub, their beer is great and Western could use something like this near the Bloomingdale Trail

[r18tdi]

Originally Posted by mattshoe

30 Apartments Pitched Near Western Blue Line Stop On Edge Of Bucktown

25 parking spaces. Seems a little high these days.

[sentinel]

^Nice little building, great find.

Would be sad if Pipeworks didn't stay there, but it seems like they want to stay in the area, so it may work out in the end.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by mattshoe

It would be great if Pipeworks stayed at this location and opened up a brewpub, their beer is great and Western could use something like this near the Bloomingdale Trail

pipeworks is probably my favorite brewery in the city these days. i just can't stop drinking lizard king.

[k1052]

Crains is reporting that the new McDonald's HQ presented tonight will be 600K square feet and nine floors.

Que West Loop Neighbors exploding heads.

[ChickeNES]

Originally Posted by k1052

Crains is reporting that the new McDonald's HQ presented tonight will be 600K square feet and nine floors.

Que West Loop Neighbors exploding heads.

As part of the increased zoning for the Harpo Studios site, Sterling Bay would pay more than $4 million into the Neighborhoods Opportunity Fund

So that's now three proposals in the West Loop taking advantage of the Neighborhood Opportunity Bonus/Fund. Is this the start of a torrent, not just for West Loop but for the rest of the city?

[the urban politician]

WLCO and the other West Loop people just need to get over this fantasy that their burgeoning district is going to remain this quaint, cute little elvish village where parking is aplenty.

[msu2001la]

West Loop NIMBY's are going to flip their shit over 9 floors, even though there are condo buildings at 6-7 floors right next to that site.

[k1052]

Originally Posted by ChickeNES

So that's now three proposals in the West Loop taking advantage of the Neighborhood Opportunity Bonus/Fund. Is this the start of a torrent, not just for West Loop but for the rest of the city?

I think that remains to be seen but I'm optimistic. Not surprised at all to see the West Loop developers jumping on this immediately given the local issues with obtaining more density through traditional means.

[rlw777]

Couldn't make it to the McDonald's HQ meeting but found someone posting images from the meeting on twitter

tweet 1

tweet 2

[rlw777]

Here we go from the Twitter links above

[J_M_Tungsten]

Not bad. Fits in well, and still, look at all of those parking lots!

[Via Chicago]

Wish the design was a bit more cohesive, but more or less what I expected

[Randomguy34]

Originally Posted by rlw777

tweet 2

Wow, only 300 parking spots for 2,000 employees. Obviously, 300 by raw count is still a lot, but by percentage that's a significantly smaller amount that their old office, which makes sense since they're moving to the city. I find it hard not to believe that McDonald's will convince the city, specifically Rahm, to invest in transit for the West Loop.