Oh well. My dream site for an indoor public market, the old Cook Bros. warehouse (now called Cameron Tower) at the end of Fulton Market (Ashland & Lake, basically) is being converted to condos instead. Office condos, actually, but still condos. It’s a highly visible site just outside downtown with a good building: 44,000 feet (an acre!) on the first floor, 14′ clear ceilings, and 100 parking spaces in the back, plus a loading dock directly on Fulton.

A whiny post at YoChicago (the blog that’s subsumed “Loft Living”) complains about service on the #70. (Well, it is a crosstown half-section route and you’re boarding at the eastern end…) Anyhow, my response avoided the whole “well, technically Millennium Park funds came from a segregated TIF account not available for use elsewhere,”* but does dig on density.

bq. Mass transit requires a _mass_ of people to transit, and much of Chicago unfortunately doesn’t quite have the mass. The least crowded parts of Manhattan are still denser than the most crowded parts of Chicago—and even most of Brooklyn and Queens pack in as many residents as “overcrowded” Chicago neighborhoods like Lincoln Park. If you want NYC service, try moving to the one part of Chicago that approximates NYC density: namely, downtown. Or else we can hope that good developers will build so many new condos that we’ll have enough density to sustain really great transit—except that the annoying NIMBYs who want [dog] parks and parking lots instead of new neighbors will keep that from ever happening. Oh well.

(Millennium Park: the park received TIF special taxing district funds, not general tax revenue, and can only be spent on economic development activities downtown; MP certainly counts, as it’s substantially raised property values and thus could eventually pay for itself. Central Loop TIF funds could have gone to CTA capital improvements downtown, possibly freeing up cash for capital improvements elsewhere in the city, but not for operating. Furthermore, the park is operated by the private Conservancy, not the park district. On the other hand, sales tax revenue generated by new retail sales to tourists attracted by MP — and yes, they do actually come to see the park [CAF reports that half of tour participants on its park tours are from out of town], or at least extend their shopping to the Loop from NMA — probably ups CTA’s tax base, so it’s probably at best a wash.)

William Mullen in “the Trib”:http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-060306evolution,1,1449899.story?coll=chi-news-he writes about the Field Museum’s latest permanent exhibit, a step-by-step overview of that most misunderstood of natural history subjects, evolution:

bq. “I respect religion and other people’s beliefs,” said [biological anthropologist Robert] Martin, “but I am a scientist, and we are a science museum. We establish what we know from observable evidence.”

bq. Almost certainly it will be one of the museum’s star attractions, if for no other reason than _it remains the museum’s main dinosaur display_ , one of the most popular draws it has. The exhibit is free with normal museum admission fees, but tickets will be issued to help direct the expected large crowds.

bq. [T]he exhibit formally is named “The Kenneth and Anne Griffin Halls of Evolving Planet” after the two major donors backing its installation. The Griffins, both major hedge-fund entrepreneurs, donated $5 million to the exhibit’s financing.

Thank god that our side (the science side) is pretty good at educating whizzes like Ken Griffin — who might be the city’s second biggest employer of mathematicians — who are also willing to stick up for good science. It’s a bit strange that he chooses this venue to make a big philanthropic splash, but all the better.

Chronic under-assessments with little basis in reality, a confusing multiplier system that penalizes some and confuses all, and a sky-high but phantom tax rate — sound familiar? The property tax system in Philadelphia looks a lot like that in Chicago, except they’ve got it easy — lower overall rates and no mind-bending system of playing favorites among land uses with obscure, completely arbitrary “multiplier values.”

Yet the fix that civic groups and an independent tax reform commission have proposed is an actual, fair fix: fair revaluation back to market values, a lower overall tax rate, limited buffer mechanisms, and a shift toward land-value taxation. Indeed, one civic group actively rejects the assessment-cap system that has so many fans in the Illinois legislature:

Assessments must keep pace with changes in value or the system will become even more unfair. Rate reductions or tax deferments are better tools to help homeowners.

Unfortunately, TRAC has made it known that they think the “ultimate solution” to the “property tax problem” (really more the property _value_ problem) is a Prop 13-style abolition of periodic assessments, in favor of fixed-at-sale assessments. This is a volley in the coming generational war: older, established, often wealthy property owners want to slice their own tax payments sharply. The unspoken other half of that equation: deep cuts in government services (schools’ primary funding in Illinois comes from property taxes), coupled with dramatically higher taxes on the young, new arrivals, and anyone unfortunate enough not to have been owned the right place at the right time. The racial overtones: wealth, especially property wealth, is far more racially concentrated in White hands than even income — especially since African American and Latino neighborhoods pay “the segregation tax” of lower property values — while public services in entrepot states like California and Illinois disproportionately benefit non-white children, in particular.

Meanwhile, as any Californian can attest, Prop 13 hasn’t slowed gentrification in the least. Of course, gentrification without the tax bills — maybe that’s what TRAC wants, after all. One generation after Prop 13, some original homeowners have tax bills one-tenth of their younger neighbors’. Dan Z in the Bay Area (from email discussion) argues that Prop 13 merely enhances the monopolistic, anti-density tendencies of entrenched homeowners:

By freezing the assessed value of their homes and thus freezing their property tax rates, Prop 13 creates an odd situation where long time homeowners feel all of the benefits of a housing shortage without feeling any of the pain… Outrageous home value appreciation gives long-time homeowners magnificent equity wealth without hurting them on a day-to-day basis with higher property taxes. I can’t help but wonder: if their property taxes were skyrocketing, maybe they wouldn’t be so hostile to new housing which would bring prices under control… Insulating people from the negative consequences of their actions (in this case fighting new housing) tends to cause them to act very selfishly and strangely.

Warren Buffett tried to speak up about how obscenely silly Prop 13 is by pointing out that he pays $2,264 a year in tax on his $4 million vacation house in Laguna Beach — less than I pay on my condo, and less, Buffett pointed out, than a working, “non-billionaire” family living in a $300,000 house in the Central Valley exurbs. That family “faces real estate taxes materially higher than those borne by this nonresident billionaire on his $4 million house in Laguna. This family, because of Prop 13, has been selected to subsidize me.” Even more disgusting: since commercial property owners can pay for legal help to create tax loopholes and prevent revaluation, the commercial properties that in Cook County pay the lion’s share of the property tax burden will be able to shove their taxes back onto homeowners under such a system.

An article by Lee Green in the LA Times Magazine last year (17 April 2005) paints this picture:

Many of the best and the brightest in economics, law, public finance, public policy, planning and tax theory believe that Proposition 13 — born out of homeowners’ anger over rocketing property taxes and government indifference — has caused or contributed to some of the state’s most pressing problems. Granted, it didn’t unleash the economic Armageddon prophesied by its opponents, and we certainly can’t hold it responsible for the state’s current fiscal fiasco, which owes its existence to executive and legislative mismanagement several magnitudes greater than anything Proposition 13 could conjure. Still, the measure’s untoward consequences — from the disempowerment of local government to the decimation of a once-proud educational system, unequal taxes on equal properties and yawning tax loopholes for business — demand a rigorous reexamination of Proposition 13 and its legacy. In tax lingo, a reassessment.

Lay all of the above over Illinois’ severe structural deficit — an antiquated state and local tax system critically wounded by the crises of the Nixon-Reagan years (deindustrialization leading to slower and narrower growth, metropolitan fragmentation and stratification, the elimination of federal aid) — and it’s a recipe to eviscerate a government that’s levying a tax burden that’s actually quite middling by national standards.

“In Boston, everyone you meet is in school and studying something interesting. In Chicago, everyone you meet works, selling something boring.” — Jeff B

I sometimes forget how much my initial impression of Chicago was mediated by arriving as a student.

Blair Kamin writes in the Trib of the new cornice crowning the Carson Pirie Scott building:

bq. From the 12th floor, behind windows that are now properly recessed, you witness firsthand Sullivan’s ability to create exquisitely layered spaces. There, just outside the windows, are the elements that form the layers: the rounded columns and their delicate bands, the lush column capitals and the dazzling ornament of the overhanging soffit. Here, precisely as Sullivan intended, the ornament seems to grow naturally out of the building rather than being slapped onto it like a postage stamp.

His next column offered a description of the Field Building (LaSalle Bank headquarters), my not-quite-daily shortcut to LaSalle Street:

bq. It is at once a visual feast and impeccably restrained. Signature Art Deco zigzags animate everything from the fluted columns that line the corridor to the outlines of the clocks accenting the bridges that join the north and south balconies.

Oh, and the principal architect of the Carson’s job, Gunny Harboe, has apparently separated from AECOM and will move in next door to my office. Odd thing is, the Marquette is a jewel of history surrounded by a bunch of (mostly) mediocre monuments to corporate Modernism. And surely he had an in on the “Sullivan Office Centre” space on the upper floors of the Carson’s building, where the views are undoubtedly better. (However, the full-block floorplates there are probably huge and the smaller spaces narrow-and-deep.)

“I didn’t know that, but sticking it to the man makes this all the more sweet,” said Jerome Hicks, taking a long drag on a Dunhill cigarette. “I can say without guilt, if you don’t like it, go somewhere else.” — quoted by Charles Sheehan in the Trib, 19 January

The greedy zillionaires running multinational giant Reynolds American have apparently decided that harvesting $15.6 billion a year by slowly strangling millions of people to death isn’t enough. No, they’ve discovered a new twist on insidious evil: they’ve “gone local,” crouching behind a made-up brand name — Marshall & McGearty, who in real life are a corporate chemist and an ad-man, respectively — to create a corporate simulacrum of the idealized Ye Olde Tyme Corner-e Tobacconist-e Shoppe, hawking “custom blended” cancer sticks for $8 a pack.

“Reynolds, a subsidiary of Reynolds American Inc., plans to test the idea and see how the brand does before potentially expanding the concept.” (AP/N&O)

And where is the test market for this cynical marketing ploy, the first place where gullible and stupid American consumers will be suckered into literally trading their lives for corporate marketing hoo-hah? Why, Wicker Park, of course. And in a fit of good timing, the lounge coincidentally opened just as the deal-with-it-later smoking ban passed the City Council, resulting in a shower of free publicity.

Bleaugh. Good thing that the many local demolitions have left behind big piles of spare bricks. C’mon, let’s welcome them like we welcomed Starbucks — a corporation, mind you, a third smaller than RJR (measured by annual revenues).

And oh, it turns out that RJR’s largest shareholder is British American Tobacco. Together, RJR and BAT (which merged their American operations in 2005) sold $70 billion in cigarettes in 2004, making BAT bigger than McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Starbucks, Nike, and the Gap combined.

From The Daily Northwestern:

bq. Archana Sriram suffered facial fractures, a broken jaw, a hip fracture and a broken leg after she was hit by a yellow Hummer at the intersection of Lake Street and Sherman Avenue, she said from the hospital Monday… “EPD says they can’t look up registered yellow Hummers in the area, only license plates,” Sriram said. “Hopefully people can keep their eyes out.”

A few new mid-market, “loft” style hotel brands have emerged in recent months, which got me thinking about the Northwest Tower’s (“coyote building”) reuse possibility as a boutique hotel with convenient access to O’Hare and downtown, fantastic unobstructed views, and a hip neighborhood ambience. It’s not like I know any adaptive-reuse hotel developers, but it was interesting enough to investigate.

If the assessor’s estimate of 37,200 sq ft of building on 4500 sq ft of land is to be believed, the structure could optimistically house 60-70 rooms on floors 3-12 with reception and a bar on one and two. (There’s just not space for a full-service hotel’s requisite restaurant, deluxe lobby, and pool.) Even though hotel rooms average 300-400 sq ft apiece [and their buildings ~500 sq ft per key] the building’s narrow angle creates problems: the sharp corner, obviously, but less obviously because it has an awkward core lined up against the back wall, which cuts back even more on perimeter space.

Compare that to the Reliance Building, home of the just-barely full-service Burnham Hotel: 62,700 sq ft of building on 4700 sq ft of land, and a much friendlier rectangular layout. The economics don’t really work under 100 rooms; Kimpton requires at least that, with the 122-room Burnham among their smallest properties. The Standard Hollywood has 140 keys, and Starwood’s aloft is targeting 125-175 keys. (Starwood says 90-180, and its aloft prototype has 136 keys in 66,000 square feet, but the full-service W Waikiki counts a mere 51 rooms.)

Adding the neighboring Hollander fireproof warehouse [street view] (24,000 sq ft of building on 5121 sq ft of land, plus niceties like alley access and a loading dock for those laundry trucks) makes the layout infinitely easier but adds challenges: on one hand, its warehouse-height floors don’t line up with the Tower’s, and it’s never given indication that it’s for sale (even as property values have zoomed); on the other, it’s likely sturdy enough to sprout a substantial (if expensive) addition above, provided zoning could be secured. Such an addition could reorganize the tower’s inconvenient core while also adding rooms, although it still leaves the question of what to do with the mismatched third through fifth floors. The two lots just past it — a single story building and a parking lot — also seem ripe for redevelopment. Indeed, the tower and a total of six lots are all now listed for sale by their owner, MCM.

Of course, the whole deal would some kind of parking solution. Ideally, enough capital and organization could materialize to build a shared off-site structure safely away on Elston or Western, but that could complicate what’s already looking like a head-splitter of a deal. Or else the site could participate in some kind of neighborhood shared-parking authority.

Unfortunately, it appears that two major hotel developers with extensive rehab experience in Chicago (Sage Hospitality and Kimpton) both target larger, sometimes much larger projects — most of Sage’s development projects are around 300 rooms. Continental Property and ECD both have aloft hotels in the works locally (O’Hare, South Loop and Lincolnshire, respectively) but don’t do rehabs. Preservationist bête-noire John Buck also has an aloft license, but no local projects. Rehab or hotel expertise could be imported from another city, like Streuver Bros., Eccles & Rouse, but a local partner still seems necessary.

[update 12 December 2007]

Tidbits like this are why Chicagoans love Tom Skilling: “Long term weather records reveal that, on average, as many days of sub-32 (degrees) and sub-zero cold are on the books by Jan. 18 as are likely to occur from this date forward in what remains of the cold season.”

As inane as that might seem at first glance, it interestingly follows the winter solstice, after which we can at least look forward to longer days, by exactly 28 days (one lunar cycle). It also now gives us warmer weather to look forward to, and another milestone to cross off during the darkest days of our character building winter.

Crain’s reports that Whole Foods is examining “two properties on the west side of Kingsbury Street just south of North Avenue” for “an 80,000-square-foot store, roughly the same size as its Austin, Texas, flagship.”

A look at the site shows two vacant parcels behind the “small shopping center”:http://smith-field.com/northkings.html housing Old Navy, the Art Store (or whatever it’s called these days), and Design Within Reach. However, that’s a good block behind North Avenue and squeezed between Kingsbury and the river (with new development required to grant an access easement), with no visibility whatsoever — not that a destination retailer like Whole Foods might care, given the success (after initial problems) of nearby Trader Joe’s or its well-hidden River North location.

Relocating Whole Foods from that early strip mall might provide an opportunity for that developer to redevelop, consolidating parking entrances and improving access while increasing GLA and building under the city’s newer, more pedestrian friendly design guidelines.

Another interesting possibility: the landlord at North & Kingsbury is Smithfield Properties, which also has a development interest (along with Gordon Segal and Mid-America Retail) in the block-plus Homemakers/Expo site — with a vague plan for a 28-story residential tower on the vacant south half of that site. We’ve seen how much Whole Foods likes retail spaces below residential towers, as evidenced by recent openings/plans in Alexandria, Brooklyn, Chicago, Evanston, Manhattan, “Milwaukee”:http://www.jsonline.com/bym/news/apr05/317234.asp, Miami, “Minneapolis”:http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2005/11/condomania_stri.asp, New Orleans, Oakland, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, even Sarasota — accounting for nearly a fourth of all new stores. (Interestingly, “Milliken,”:http://www.millikendevelopments.com/Overview.html the developer of the equally large Minneapolis location, also developed the Charter Award winning Safeway in Lower Queen Anne and later a Whole Foods MXD nearby.)

Pilgrim Baptist Church, the original “KAM synagogue”:http://egov.cityofchicago.org/Landmarks/P/PilgrimBaptist.html, has been gutted by fire. This was one of Adler & Sullivan’s most important early works, contemporary with the Auditorium Building and sharing its Richardsonian heft, perfect acoustics, and interiors that blend air, light, and gravity.

“Photos of the damage”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/pilgrimbaptistchurch/ are up on Flickr.