Crain’s this week included what might be the ultimate in real estate pornography: thirty pages devoted to $1-million-plus houses. Included was a list of every single sale in the six-county region that topped $1, $1.5, or $2M (broken down by area), and photos of a few representative samples. Now, I personally can’t even begin to understand the appeal of suburban living, but I can understand why someone else paid $1.7M for this horsey-set estate:

What I don’t understand is $2.7 million (yes, one million more smackeroos! that’s a three-mile-high stack of 200,000 sandwiches!) for this overgrown snout house:

…and it’s on Denali Ridge Drive, in aptly named far-west exurban Plainfield, miles from nowhere but right up against the freeway to Joliet. Probably named after the middling (but huge) SUV, not the Alaskan range, of course.

(Photos by Brett Kramer for Crain’s Chicago Business)

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According to a WSJ article by Sheila Muto, Chicago beat New York on one retail count: 17.6% of all new bank branches built nationally in the past two years were built here, vs. 16.2% there.

In the past two years, banks in the Chicago metro area alone added 488 branches — more new branches than any other area in the U.S. During the same period, 447 new bank branches opened in the New York metro area [out of 2,765 branches nationwide, according to a survey from First Manhattan Consulting]…

“I can empathize with civic leaders that fear a run of vacancies,” says Steve Reider, president of Bancography Inc., a banking-industry market-research firm. Some banks are reluctant to retrofit a former bank location to fit their own design criteria, which can be as expensive as building another bank from scratch, he says. And with the exception of a jewelry store, he says, “there’s not a lot of demand from retailers for a space where a good chunk of it is taken up by a cast-iron and concrete vault.”

William Presecky reports in today’s Trib on an IDOT commissioned survey of far southwest suburban residents that revealed little passion for new freeways, and a sanguine view of growth:

Critics of the expressway are heartened by the survey results, which show “building new freeways or expressways” ranked fifth among the “top five solutions” chosen by respondents as the best for relieving traffic.

According to the poll results, 57 percent cited widening existing roads as the best solution to traffic congestion. Improving intersections, signals or turn lanes was ranked second with 34 percent, followed by better coordination and planning (28 percent) and building other new connecting roads (25 percent).

Building new freeways or expressways garnered 21 percent, according to the results.

“This survey dramatically reinforces our position that IDOT should focus on improving existing roads and adding new connections to meet current and future traffic needs,” said Jan Strasma, chairman of Citizens Against the Sprawlway.

Water quality was the top concern related to the effects of transportation improvements, followed by cost to taxpayers, air quality, loss of natural areas and loss of farmland.

Seventy-five percent said traffic congestion will get much worse in the next 10 years and many believe that residential construction and economic development have not been effectively coordinated with long-term transportation planning, Powell said.

The Trib recently carried a story by Russell Working on a steel museum that’s been proposed for the former Acme Steel site on the Calumet River, way down on the south side. A coalition formed by the steelworkers’ union has purchased the structures from a scrap dealer, but the legal status of the land is questionable. Alderman Pope has his doubts about the plan, particularly regarding the location — which I share, having looked in vain for a way to see these up close. (I’ll try again this summer.)

Still, the museum would be a nice complement to the ongoing plans to create an industrial heritage corridor for the Calumet region.

Representatives of Chicago’s Steel Heritage Project envision exhibits that would teach the public about steelworkers’ lives and their unions’ struggle during tours of the old Acme Steel Co. Chicago Coke Plant at 11236 S. Torrence Ave.

Chicago’s Steel Heritage Project is a non-profit that includes groups ranging from the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois to the United Steelworkers of America. The Calumet Heritage Partnership, an umbrella group of environmental, nature and historical organizations in the southeastern Chicago area and northwest Indiana, is acting as the fiscal agent.

Of the $250,000 cost, the project has raised $65,000, which will more than cover the down payment. The largest donation, $40,000, came from the United Steelworkers of America. The Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois named the facility one of the state’s 10 most endangered historic places and gave a $10,000 grant toward the project.

For steelworkers, the project is a means of preserving a common heritage of hard work and a struggle for rights. In its heyday, there were 85,000 steelworkers on the industrial belt of Lake Michigan running from the mouth of the Calumet River to Burns Harbor, Ind., said Sadlowski, who is the retired director of United Steelworkers of America District 31.

Any hope that the 355 extension would result in anything other than typical suburban sprawl (accompanied by the usual economic-development backstabbing) swallowing up huge swaths of Will County farmland are already disappearing under an advancing slab of cement. Okay, so the proposal sounds more like a “lifestyle center” than an enclosed mall (that dying breed, even here in the frigid north), but it’s sprawl nonetheless. Stanley Ziemba reports in the Tribune:

A regional outdoor shopping mall larger than the one in Oak Brook is being planned for land now used for agriculture near U.S Highway 6 and Cedar Road in New Lenox.

Village officials said Thursday they are negotiating with a major commercial real estate developer for the development near a planned interchange along the Interstate Highway 355 extension under construction…

The development — which could include a half-dozen or more major retailers and dozens of smaller retailers, restaurants, theaters and other amenities and attractions found in upscale malls — could be larger than Oakbrook Center, the west suburban mall that opened in 1962, which is about 2 million square feet…

Earlier this week during the village annual breakfast meeting at Lincoln-Way Central High School in New Lenox, Smith said the developer already has a contract to buy 280 acres near the proposed Interstate 355 interchange. Because the site is not near homes, no major outcries from local residents are anticipated, he said.

The construction of the center could be completed by the time the U.S. 6-Cedar Road interchange is finished in 2007, Lowman said.

The 12.5 mile Interstate 355 extension, linking Interstate Highway 55 near Bolingbrook with Interstate Highway 80 in New Lenox, long has been viewed as a potential catalyst for economic development within and near the communities of Lockport, Lemont, Homer Glen, Bolingbrook and New Lenox.