Results for “louis selden”

Poverty pimps? What about Sterling Bay and Related? Chicago has tons of land that is developable and shovel-ready. The announcement in Crain’s this morning of two new office buildings in River North—that aren’t asking for TIF money—confirms this.

As a Chicago and Illinois taxpayer I’m tired of getting fleeced on deals like this that "can’t go wrong". Pat Quinn told us about how many jobs he was saving by pouring hundreds of millions into saving Sears in Hoffman Estates. Sears is bankrupt now. A huge subsidy to Motorola Mobility would unlock many times that on research. Never happened. The Cubs would leave town without a stadium subsidy. They didn’t. Sterling Bay tells us how they’re going to build "infrastructure" and if it isn’t enough to handle all the traffic it generates they’ll likely do the right thing and fix it. If you believe that, I’ve got a high-speed railroad to St. Louis I’d like to sell you.

As stated before, this forum is full of contributors would have you think that they’re laissez faire Libertarian-types. How many times have I read comments such as "Let them build it NOW!" or "NIMBY’s suck!", and the countless diatribes against anti-market aldermen?

But place some slick renderings of shiny towers in front of them and they turn into Sandernistas who want government to pick winners and losers. Welcome to Chicago where even the free market advocates don’t believe in free markets.

If these projects can’t stand on their own then too bad. Personally, I’d rather see scrapyards than the abundance of surface lots and one-story buildings that mark dozens of acres in and around downtown.

There’s the intention, then there’s reality. Originally, IMO, I thought The District and LCA were to be like one constantly open center with the multiple restaurants, bars, shops, stores, and so on that was to be open on the inside as well.
After viewing 4 events there, all it is is another Illitch stadium/arena. The few restaurants are open from the outside, and they have limited hours to boot. All access points to get to the inside are only open on event days. Shops to purchase RedWings or any Detroit memorabilia are closed when they run concerts (things that aren’t RedWings or Pistons…). So it’s pretty much like moving Joe Louis Arena northeast a few blocks and made a few restaurants closer. Parking is more expensive and insane.

A sad commentary on the present status of things. The well-built and handsome old Marie Apartments building was demolished by the owner to build this unimaginative, unaesthetic, architecturally wanting, cheaply build and just downright ugly building. It is especially a shame because there are so many vacant lots all over the "midtown" area, including plenty on Selden Street, where a new structure could have been built.

Precisely, anyone who thinks that because of one Chicago mayor, the city will be in the same league as Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, or St. Louis, is absolutely clueless.

Chicago with either Lightfoot or Preckwinkle is quite likely to start a rather rapid slide to becoming a dying Midwestern city, as all nearly are: Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, Indianapolis, St. Louis, and so many others are not healthy demographically or all that healthy fiscally, and economic development wise. The ignorant people who run the CTU, and SEIU love nothing more than to kill development in Chicago by demagoguing TIFs. The CTU which is run by radical morons who love fat multi-year contracts with pay raises above inflation, fat pensions that are underfunded, and the SEIU, also run by radical morons, are two of the worst unions in the U.S., although I am more sympathetic to the SEIU membership than that of the CTU, who are well paid, and under worked, and I support a much higher minimum wage since corporate America is largely either on welfare, as are Walmart, Amazon, and others that extort public subsidies from municipalities, and often pay little-to-no corporate income tax in the U.S. because they legally offshore their revenues. The investors with literally billions of dollars of unrecovered money invested in Chicago’s real estate should be very, very nervous right about now. Lightfoot is likely the next mayor, and she is far more sensible, and less sleazy than is Preckwinkle so that might be some solace, but each Chicagoan, regardless of age is in for a $10,000 hit in rising taxes, mostly property taxes, over the next several years for fat, bloated, and gamed public pensions, not to mention the hundreds, and hundreds of millions in settlements the criminals in the Chicago Police Department are costing us.

I’ve noticed that Curbed writers appear very excited about the prospect of tearing the "Joe" down. Sure it has no useful purpose anymore and very few people will lament over its passing. However, my thing with the writers’ excitement deals with the fact that there are no set plans to build anything immediately after Joe Louis Arena is torn down. If something was to immediately be built that would transform the area and be a boon to the city, then that’s what I would be excited about when talking about tearing down the Joe.

It was done in St Louis too to better connect the Arch grounds to downtown. They did a great job.

Atlanta needs to do this now.

Why would you need to look at St. Louis, when you can look at Wrigleyville on the other side of town to see the potential for development? Even before the Ricketts started their major overhaul of the stadium and the surrounding area, Wrigleyville provided probably the best example in America of how stadiums can be sown into the fabric of a neighborhood. Even with the new developments I still believe that Wrigleyville is probably one of the best examples of what distinguishes stadiums in urban settings from those in suburbia surrounded by a sea of asphalt.

Fact of the matter is, when people hear chicago they think crime. THAT IS OUR #1 PROBLEM, FULL STOP. Fix that, you fix population loss, and steady 1-2% pop growth solves almost all the city’s financial woes. Get chicago’s population back up near 3 mil (especially working single contributing populations, rather than non working dependents like seniors and children), the tax base is 10% larger, theres your extra 3-4 bil in revenues for pensions.

Detroit has lost over 65% of its population and still shrinking, Cleveland has lost 70% and still shrinking, St louis has lost 70% and still shrinking. chicago has lost about 23% and is actually growing slowly. Its not apples and oranges people. Not even close.

Poppped this into Google Maps, and looks like it’s a 12-minute walk from the United Center.

So what happens next, as development knocks on the UC’s front door? Do Reinsdorf and Wirtz finally see the opportunity to make some more money and sell a few of those parking lots, while building a couple of 7-10 story parking decks on two remaining lots so as not to lose capacity? Do we think we’ll ever see the parking lots go? There is so much potential for major development around the UC, similar to what’s been done at Busch Stadium in St. Louis and elsewhere.