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Originally Posted by ChiPhi
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And I can't imagine why the apparel mart would put any money into addressing the Kinzie entrance - there is nothing there but a storage place and it is cut off by a viaduct on one side and a bridge on the other. Moreover, I don't really see how this project could serve as an impetus for that. Plus, I imagine that that area is a loading dock / warehouse-type area given the fact that there is a loading dock and it is in the basement. Does anyone know what is down there? If its just mechanical I really can't imagine that will ever get better. Plus, if something were to be changed about the building, I'd choose the color of that cement (which hundreds of thousands if not millions of people see per year) over the Kinzie entrance (which a few locals deal with).
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Have you been on Kinzie lately? It has a LOT of pedestrian traffic. The K2 developments and Riverbend or whatever it's called and the place across from it, that building at Grand, EnV, they've all changed that street immensely in the past few years. Now you have that big residential building going in on Hubbard, and a thousand units in this Wolf Point thing, plus the last K2 building going in by Kedzie and the Kennedy. Then there will be the 200 N Canal thing. And that corner of Canal and Kedzie will eventually go residential, to, I bet. Throw in Wolf Point and you'd be talking about something like an additional 3,000-4,000 more people within a five minute walk of there, with it being one possible route between half of that population and the nearest Brown Line station and a significant portion of that population walking to work in the Loop or near-Loop. You already have solid retail on Kedzie east of Orleans, so it's not a stretch to think it could get pulled west of there.
Posters on here made fun of me for suggesting that triangle parking lot at Kinzie and Kingsbury as a plaza, but seriously people, I ride my bike on Kinzie to work and no only is it jammed with cars, but it's loaded with pedestrians. you can't completely rid the Apparel of the loading docks, but I'd think there are things that could be done to make it more interactive. There is retail directly against that wall on the Orleans level, it just has no windows. At the very least they could put a staircase up to Orleans on that side, one that doesn't look like a mugger-trap like the current one on the north side of the street does.