Crain’s reports that Crate & Barrel is opening a fourth store at North & Clybourn, replacing its C&B Outlet at the northeast corner with a larger version of its hip CB2 concept. The outlet will move two blocks up the street, to Clybourn Galleria. The Crate & Barrel flagship and Land of Nod children’s stores will remain at the northwest corner.

I’m not entirely sure whether Crate’s presence there has been all that good for the corner’s emergent urbanism. CEO Gordon Segal has substantial ownership interests in three of the four corners of North and Clybourn: every corner but the CTA station, including the land under the Home Depot Expo. A proposal by Segal and residential developer Bill Smith for two 28-story residential towers around the Home Depot has been stalled in court while the developers fight the anti-residential zoning placed there to protect manufacturers between Clybourn and the river. (Interestingly, Smith is also the largest industrial developer on Goose Island.)

Add that ownership to C&B’s substantial customer draw to the area and Segal emerges as the corridor’s biggest player. But the chain’s urban design is simply better than average. The building which now houses the Outlet was the first retail development on North, which was then a sketchy industrial street best known for prostitution. The building is an architecturally graceless stripmall with a small parking lot facing the crucial North & Clybourn corner; most of the bulk is at the eastern edge, along Halsted.

At the North & Halsted corner, the building does fill out the corner with display windows, but the entrance to the Outlet faces the parking. The apartments above don’t have windows facing south — possibly to block any views of Cabrini-Green, just a few blocks south. The presence of two parking-lot curb cuts on such a small site considerably complicates traffic flow at the three-way North-Clybourn-Halsted intersection. Furthermore, I doubt that the parking lot does anything to help business; instead of heading to one of the new parking garages nearby, shoppers jostle for space in the tiny lot out front. Nor does there have to be a loading zone in front; the site backs up to the Brown Line elevated, which would make an ideal loading zone.

By the time the C&B flagship store was designed, the area had become sufficiently upscale to justify higher grade materials. The store filled out the acute angle well, but the entrance again faced the parking lot in the middle of the block. Late last year, an entrance was finally added along North, to capitalize on the growing foot traffic.

A while back, I remember reading something about Segal funding a rehab of the North/Clybourn CTA station — which, thanks to the neighborhood’s changing fortunes, has seen daily ridership double since 1995 (and Saturday ridership go from 0 to 8,000 passengers). Nothing new on that front.