Quote:
Originally Posted by the urban politician
With Uber and Navy Pier, it's not a terrible place for a hotel. With these new hotels and residences in Streeterville I would expect more retail/restaurants to open up. Alas, the retail is slow to follow. Bockwinkel's is a nice recent addition but it doesn't seem to be doing so well
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It's just not a great pedestrian area. The City would have done the area a HUGE favor if it had split up the long blocks before they all got constructed. If the area between St Clair, Huron, Illinois and LSD was 30 smaller square blocks instead of the 15 long blocks it is, it would have been a much better area. Probably better for both cars and pedestrians, since there would have been better car circulation, and the better routing for pedestrians and more "surface area" for street interaction. I know that several of those blocks would have been impossible to split (like the 680 N LSD building) but even if the city only split up 1/2 or 2/3 of the blocks it would have made a big difference. That park by OBP is good, and people "in the know" can walk through a few other blocks, but it's really too late to spit many of the blocks now. City might encourage NMH to split their giant grass field in exchange for the far of the area replaced by a street being made available for the two small blocks.
Of course in the area around NMH those enormous parking garages don't do anything to liven up the area, either. If people don't like walking in their neighborhood, they'll drive to another one. That's why there's proportionally little retail on the west end of River North, too. I think both areas will eventually get more pedestrians and retail, but it'll be a slow slog since they both have entirely too much parking available to really have a "captive pedestrian" audience right now. Letting any additional residential have zero parking ratio would help, though.
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