User fees for trash

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Alderman Isaac Carothers has contacted the city OMB to ask them to investigate charging for trash pickup. The current no-fee pickup system acts as a $160M annual subsidy from large buildings (which pay for their own pickups — condos are supposed to get reimbursed, but we don’t) to single family houses and small flats. Similarly, not charging a user fee for trash pickup misses an opportunity to use prices as an incentive to reduce waste, as many cities — most famously Seattle — have begun to do by charging for each bag picked up.

Make money not so fast

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If anyone actually wants to get into these businesses, I’d be happy to write up a business plan — for a commission, of course.

  • Many declining rust belt cities are filled with gorgeous turn-of-the-century buildings: Victorian mansions, of course, but also industrial lofts and sometimes even Deco skyscrapers. These are exactly the same kinds of buildings that have become so scarce in many other cities (notably in booming Sunbelt cities which had little building stock to begin with, but also in economically healthy northern cities like Chicago, Minneapolis, or Toronto) that developers have resorted to building copies of said buildings. Prices may have, in fact, risen so high that it may be economically feasible to barge entire buildings, or at least fa�ades thereof, from one city to another.
  • One downside of having such dense concentrations of ethnic businesses within certain neighborhoods is that the rest of town is strangely bereft of good ethnic restaurants. Sure, Chicago is laden with excellent tacquer�as, and noodle shops (or their South Side counterpart, the circa-1960 chop suey stand) are an entrenched presence on most retail streets. But where are the Indian restaurants? More particularly, where can I get curry in Wicker Park, land of vegetarians and wannabe Brits?
  • Similarly, not all travelers want to stay downtown. B&Bs are a charming option in many neighborhoods, but come with their own constraints: they’re hard to find and don’t offer as much flexibility as many people need. A few strategically placed neighborhood boutique hotels might do a good trade; again, Wicker Park is an excellent option, since it’s between O’Hare and downtown and offers most of the usual hotel services in close proximity. One potential lender might be Corus, which financed The Standard Hotel in a decidedly marginal location south of downtown LA. Of course, lining up an operator is usually the most difficult part. The Northwest Tower is without any real economic use but offers tremendous views. The stupid cell-phone store on the ground floor could be booted, or the adjacent storage building converted to the usual ancillary uses (lobby, restaurant, bar, meeting rooms). Or maybe a striking new “entry pavilion” could be built nearby (next to the tracks, on those short lots on North?) with the “tower” room elevators accessed by keycard only.
  • Needless to say, I’m intruiged by the possibility of densifying under-used sites, like parking lots in urban neighborhoods. A little bit of ingenuity and skill can wedge twenty new townhouses atop a small parking garage on what was a half-acre parking lot. Or, to put it another way, strip malls could accommodate a lot of new residents — all the projected population growth of Orange County, California [PDF] over the next 20 years, for instance. Underused parking lots, both public and private, flank dozens of rail stations citywide, even at some of the busiest stations: Chicago & State, Division & Milwaukee, Fullerton & Sheffield, Chinatown, 95th. Some of the freeway median stations offer great opportunities for decked development, especially as land values rise; Halsted-UIC, 35th (as part of a Comiskey Village entertainment area), and Jefferson Park come to mind.

Parking glut downtown

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From Roeder’s column in the Sun-Times:

NEED PARKING? Yes, there are a lot of unsold condos in the downtown area. But that also means there are unsold parking spaces, and some developers are eager for cash. So the auction firm Rick Levin & Associates Inc. has been hired for a multi-property auction of parking spaces… Most will be sold regardless of price, a sign of seller desperation.

Funny thing is, he mentions buildings where the condos have sold just fine — in particular, 111 E. Chestnut, immediately behind the Escada/H&M/Borders block of Michigan. (Other parking spots have recently sold at 340 W. Superior, 910 W. Madison, and other otherwise successful developments.) Obviously, this means that the unsold parking spaces have no market value, because people living downtown don’t always want to drive downtown.

It’s time to let the market, not outmoded zoning regulations, decide whether residents want parking or not. Each auctioned parking space is a $30,000 hit to the developer — money which could developers could put to much better use by writing down affordable housing or sprucing up sidewalks. Beyond that, even many of the parking spaces that are sold are sold at a substantial discount to the actual construction cost. The new downtown zoning cuts residential parking requirements by up to 45%, but that’s just a start.

Green Zebra reviews in

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Well, there go my chances of getting a reservation at Green Zebra anytime soon: plaudits from The New York Times food section and Crain’s in the same week. From the Times: “To date, there have been barely a handful of vegetarian restaurants in the United States that would tempt the average nonvegetarian; most might as well post a ‘meat-eaters keep out’ sign on their doors… But a new restaurant, Green Zebra, offers what amounts to four-star vegetarian food almost exclusively. In business since April, it is not in New York or San Francisco but in Chicago, a city best known for its steak houses and hot dogs (which are piled so high with pickles, lettuce and tomatoes that everyone jokes that they are the citizenry’s primary source of vegetables).” Writer Mark Bittman goes on to compare the food to French Laundry, Charlie Trotter’s, and Jean Georges

RIBA urges architects to embrace New Urbanism

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In a further sign that the British establishment is going whole hog for new urbanism, the Royal Institute of British Architects‘ president, George Ferguson, issued a call for architects to come out of their shells and embrace the label of “urbanist,” alongside “(in alphabetical order!) architects, developers, engineers, environmentalists, landscape architects, leisure consultants, planners, politicians, sociologists, surveyors, technologists, transport consultants or urban designers.”

More from The Guardian, including a follow-up letter from Richard Rogers, who doesn’t understand that new urbanism “transcends style” (in the words of the Charter).

We don’t need no affordable housing

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A group opposing “fair share” housing legislation has sprung up on the North Shore, according to the Tribune (in an article by Trine Tsouderos, who covers development in the suburbs). Rob Faurot from Wilmette, president of New Trier Neighbors, says: “Our answer is if you want those sorts of things and the home values in the town that you live are too expensive . . . the options are you have to move somewhere else or you have to make more money.”

Oh, sure. It’s really easy to just “make more money.” If that’s the case, then, Mr. Faurot, can we raise your taxes so that the rest of us can shoulder that social burden for you?

More vocabulary lessons for Japanese visitors

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In the vein of Yoshihiro Hattori‘s shooting death in 1992 when he didn’t understand the word “freeze” comes this, from the Trib:

A 60-year-old Japanese passenger on a flight leaving O’Hare International Airport caused a bomb scare late Sunday afternoon when a passenger saw him write the words “suicide bomb” on a piece of paper… the Japanese national, who was on the plane on business, was only writing words he didn’t understand so he could look them up later with a dictionary, O’Hare police Sgt. Philip Deerig said.

Retail street frontage brings big bucks

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The relatively small, entirely street-fronting retail complex at 730 N. Michigan will sell for the equivalent of $1,150 per foot. Granted, it’s an unparalleled location, but the price — more than ten times higher than the national average for retail — also points to the incredible sales per square foot figures being posted by the flagship tenants. Each of the stores draws thousands of shoppers a day directly off the street and into spaces far more generous than any available inside a mall. (Incidentally, CompUSA has threatened to leave its large, top-floor space at the complex.)

Down on State Street, Mills is exhibiting some preliminary architectural renderings of its Block 37 development. The going idea, unveiled last summer, is a phased development with different uses at each corner and ground-level open space in the center. Retail would focus at ground level and below ground; the tremendous excavation needed to build the proposed airport express station will open up a few levels for a subterranean mall.

A retail-only corner opposite the Reliance Building would both let the sun shine on Reliance and strengthen State’s traditionally strongest corner; residential at Randolph would complement three existing residential towers nearby (the Heritage, Block 36/Art Institute, and the forthcoming Smithfield tower). It appears, then, that Mills is rejecting any major big boxes for the site, including department stores — the smaller parcels required by the phasing just won’t fit anything with a 20,000 sq ft footprint. Theaters are listed as a possible use, but given their tremendous space demands I’m not sure whether that will happen. Similarly, I’m not sure where they expect the parking to go. Nor do I quite understand how they intend to phase construction of the underground mall, unless that (and, presumably, the retail building fronting State/Washington) is the first phase.


One tenant targeted by the city in early discussions with Mills was REI — hoping to follow the success of REI’s flagship in Seattle or the Coldwater Creek flagship in Denver. (Illustration from Mills Corp. site)

In strip mall news, The Fresh Market, a staple of my North Carolina childhood (I would spend much time sniffing the bulk bins of coffee), has announced plans to move into suburban Chicago.

40% or 767% more dense?

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In a dramatic illustration of how infill construction often just barely keeps pace with Americans’ insatiable demand for more living space, a three-story, 15 unit apartment building near the lakefront in Lakeview will soon give way to another apartment building — 40% more units (a total of six more) but nearly eight times taller (23 floors).

Incidentally, the through-block site will allow the developers to choose an address on Stratford, which has a more properly Anglo name than Cornelia. Cornelia, Elaine, and other femme street names in the area seemed more appropriate when the neighborhood was gayer, I suppose.

Bubbles

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The South Fork of the South Branch of the Chicago River, more commonly known as Bubbly Creek for its legendary pollution, merits a cover story (by Alby Gallun) in Crain’s this week:

“It doesn’t look like the most appealing river at that stretch, but as money comes in, the people are definitely going to fight to make sure it’s cleaned up,” says [Shawn] Reddy, who paid $1.2 million for a 6,600-square-foot house that’s being built right next to the notorious waterway in Bridgeport.

A cesspool of rotting livestock carcasses back when Chicago was Hog Butcher for the World, Bubbly Creek still gets a bit smelly in hot weather. The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago dumps millions of gallons of untreated sewer water into the 6,600-foot channel during heavy rains, and the sewage has nowhere to go because the creek has no current. The creek still bubbles, caused by gasses from decaying riverbed sediment floating to the surface.

And thus a strange little piece of Chicago’s environmental history goes: so filthy that much of it (the section south of Pershing) was simply obliterated, now lined with townhouses and parks and promises to magically clean it up. Interesting to note, though, that the current bubbliness comes from modern-day pollution and not offal from a previous century.