Four new stripmalls!

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The highlight of today’s Plan Commission meeting: four new strip shopping centers, all with a moat of parking in front, many with “green roofs.” (Agenda item 12, which was left off due to a typo, was a Target.)

Why does black parking lot + green roof = green? Wouldn’t there be a much greater environmental impact, at much lower cost, if the parking lot were green (pervious surface, at least, or maybe no parking at all!) and the roof were black, or white, or silver?

Urban renewal exhibit coming to town

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The Center for Urban Pedagogy is apparently bringing its fantastic “Urban Renewal: The City Without a Ghetto” exhibit to Chicago in late March. Mess Hall, a space under the Morse L, will host it. I spent a few hours at the tiny Storefront for Art & Architecture a few months ago, engrossed in the exhibit; it strikes a great balance with excellent exhibit design and content that is aimed at the right level, using the right words. Although there’s certainly a leftist bent, the peculiar political situation that drove urban renewal is explained.

May be a Real Chicagoan

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“Score: 85 points out of a possible 166 points. If you’re under 25, you may still be a Real Chicagoan. If not, you need to get out more.” Well, that’s somewhat reassuring — I am under 25 and have lived here a scant six years. Even the revised, non-geezer Real Chicagoan Quiz from Eric Zorn at the Tribune still rewards people who listen to commercial radio. (Why?)

Appealing legislation

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Illinois has passed a “builder’s appeal” act, similar to “fair share” legislation nationwide [40-B “anti-snob zoning” in Massachusetts or Fair Share/Mt. Laurel laws in New Jersey]. The legislation is weaker than 40-B — it gives credit to municipalities for well-laid plans, even if there’s little chance of implementation — but the spirit of the law is undeniably important.

The “builder’s appeal” tack on fair and affordable housing is doubly interesting because it, like New Urbanist code reform projects, seeks quintessentially liberal ends through deregulatory means. That’s a cool way to bridge the political divide and to curry political capital with the building-trades crowd.

A palace for a cult, perhaps?

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The four-story, 24,000-foot building at 1309 N. Ashland Ave. — housing the offices of some Polish honor society — is for sale for $1.9 million. It’s best known for its standing-room auditorium, which was called the Centrum when MP Shows was booking there. (I saw Godspeed You Black Emperor there, which was appropriate given the frayed edges of the space.) But what reuse potential is there for function rooms, offices, and auditorium?

To see the listing, click here and enter MLS # 03140419.

Reconstruction

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According to Citylink, construction on the North Avenue Streetscaping Project is supposed to begin today. No sign of it outside, though. The streetscaping can’t do much, since North is a state highway (route 72); even the street trees added will be on bulb-outs in side streets alongside the road, not along the actual road. Thus, the drawings looked kind of boring. We’ll see what it ends up looking like, though.

Metro board game

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At a party last night, I had a chance to play a 1970s board game called Paris Metro (approved by the RATP!). It was frustratingly designed — simply get around town, between various tourist destinations outlined on little cards, with the annoying inclusion of dice and thus chance — but the board was lovely. There was no date on the board or box, but the map predated the demolition of Les Halles.

Oddly enough, I can’t find any web references to this game. All I can find are references to a later board game of the same name, about the construction of the Metro.

Koolhaas at IIT

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I visited IIT on Wednesday and snapped photos of the Rem Koolhaas-designed McCormick Tribune Campus Center. It’s an island of Kool exuberance in a somnolescent sea of sober, rigid Miesian boxes.

Of the many photos I’d seen (especially those in Metropolis Magazine this month), none made any sense as a collection, nor showed students actually using the building. Sure enough, though, the photos don’t “connect” because the building doesn’t; the many sharp corners hide plenty of things. The distinct lack of furnishings (partially because the building was wildly over budget) gives it an empty feel, even if it’s well used. The urban design is so-so: although the urban context is hardly inspiring, the building does only a bit better at engaging the sidewalk. For a long stretch along State, the building’s sunken a good eight feet; the south entrance is set back behind a lawn (it was reportedly cut short to save funds); and hallways line many outside walls, which provide neither interesting views from the outside nor light for the building interior.

Yes, you can buy Mies t-shirts — made by American Apparel, no less.

While I was on the South Side, I picked up David Harvey’s Paris, Capital of Modernity at the Seminary. It’s almost too pretty to leave on the bookshelf; it would deserve a temporary spot on the coffee table — if only I didn’t have three dozen other books vying for a spot there already.

Property tax: even Daley’s wrong

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“Daley said higher assessments, due to increasing property values, will result in property tax increases in Chicago of 10 percent to 50 percent this fall. If relief isn’t offered soon, families may be forced out of their homes, he said… Daley called on the General Assembly to impose a statewide cap of 7 percent on the annual increase in residential assessments.”

First, no one’s going to get a 50% increase in their tax bill — unless, of course, Daley has a secret budget hidden behind his back that figures tax rates will go up that high. (Hm…) Second, the 7% assessment increase would be a boon to my neighbors and me, but someone will have to pay the price. If taxes on the trendy north side plateau, the difference will have to be made up by higher tax rates for everyone — but especially in decidedly un-trendy parts of town.

The legislation will raise already bloody rates in south Cook County, where resegregation has slammed property values with the “segregation tax.” Already, property tax rates in Ford Heights are 314% higher than in Inverness, and 247% higher than in Chicago. Do we really want to exacerbate this situation?

(On a side note, I had to go through this 83-page file, listing tax rates for all of Cook County’s 1,000+ taxing districts, just to find those numbers. Man, does this place ever need tax reform of a different sort.)

Trillion dollar giveaway

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Another slogan for a class-warfare Democratic campaign ad: “George Bush wants to raise your taxes so that he can give away one trillion dollars [flash $1,000,000,000,000 on screen] to millionaires.”

Half of the $2.2 trillion cost of extending the Bush tax changes by 10 years will go to the nation’s wealthiest 5%. Meanwhile, as others have documented, state and local taxes are rising, and payroll tax increases are definitely in the offing to pay down future deficits.