CHICAGO | General Developments

[South Side]

Originally Posted by spyguy

This is nice looking forward to it

[BWChicago]

That McDonald's is unfinished, it should have the swoosh, signage, and awnings.

[Rizzo]

Originally Posted by george

The newly rehabbed McD's at Chicago & Damen.
Take your pick, urban modern or ugly fugly.

Nasty. They should have stuck with their 2004 designs. All that EIFS should stain up in no time. They'll be in no rush to repaint. They could have refaced with brick veneer with a match to masonry on their other franchises.

[Tom Servo]

Am I the only one who kind of loves the ugly communist feel this McDs has?

[lakeviewer]

[QUOTE=SamInTheLoop;5535769]Wow - not sure how I missed this one. Very exciting stuff.....
So, who is the new owner of this parcel?? Hoping it's someone that can really come in and execute quickly....I'm not sure how you could miss with an infill like this in this type of dense neighborhood. I love how (after some earlier delays and slower-going projects), Mariano's is really being aggressive with their launch into the city....they've understood there's a huge untapped existing urban consumer demand for a product like theirs. From what I've seen of their stores thus far, it's definitely a more pleasant experience than a solid majority of competing options.


Not sure how to post pics, but here is a link to the renderings from the south east lakeview group:

http://selvn.org/images/PDF/VDTA-Pre...AL02-PartA.pdf

http://selvn.org/images/PDF/VDTA-Pre...AL02-PartB.pdf

[BWChicago]

The overall site plan looks like a definite improvement, but I think the facade treatment of the previous plan was better - more broken up, nice setback on the residential. http://yochicago.com/crains-fund-to-...030-site/8835/ The new facade is a little on the Tetris side.

[down2earthguy76]

[QUOTE=lakeviewer;5541135]

Originally Posted by SamInTheLoop

Wow - not sure how I missed this one. Very exciting stuff.....
So, who is the new owner of this parcel?? Hoping it's someone that can really come in and execute quickly....I'm not sure how you could miss with an infill like this in this type of dense neighborhood. I love how (after some earlier delays and slower-going projects), Mariano's is really being aggressive with their launch into the city....they've understood there's a huge untapped existing urban consumer demand for a product like theirs. From what I've seen of their stores thus far, it's definitely a more pleasant experience than a solid majority of competing options.


Not sure how to post pics, but here is a link to the renderings from the south east lakeview group:

http://selvn.org/images/PDF/VDTA-Pre...AL02-PartA.pdf

http://selvn.org/images/PDF/VDTA-Pre...AL02-PartB.pdf

I can't wait for something like this. - I live down the street and this would be amazing to full the eyesore of an empty lot that has been there for six years! The old store burned down the day I move to Chicago and I've been looking at this empty lot since. It should not take this long, especially in a neighborhood like lakeview.

[Rizzo]

The plan looks decent. The back residential building is very nice. But the large blank expanses on the 2-3 floors need to go on the Broadway portion. That view looking south on Broadway is awful. Break it up, introduce a better material, punch some openings.....do something.

Make the roof entirely green. All I see is tons of grey.

[untitledreality]

Originally Posted by Hayward

The plan looks decent. The back residential building is very nice. But the large blank expanses on the 2-3 floors need to go on the Broadway portion. That view looking south on Broadway is awful. Break it up, introduce a better material, punch some openings.....do something.

My thoughts exactly. The residential building looks fantastic, but the perforated screen and blank expanses of the Broadway portion need some serious work.

[denizen467]

Hope people survived/enjoyed their Decembers and are having a fine New Year.

The season also brings us good tidings from Water Tower Place: About a month ago the vehicular cut-through for drop-offs/pick-ups at the Ritz and the shopping center reopened, for the first time in, I think, a decade.

Not sure what brought it on - whether the idea of 10 years has some psychological significance or whether the events of 5/1/11 precipitated it - but it is kind of like a spring bud after a long winter, and hopefully a sign of more flexibility in future projects' layouts. Technically only 1 lane has opened so far, but the other lane is supposedly going to reopen in another month or so.

[ardecila]

VDT project could use a little work, but it's a huge improvement over the old design. It would be neat if they could push out the stainless steel portions over the sidewalk at varying depths.

One downside is the enormous 3-in-1 curb cut at the south end of the Broadway elevation. The old version broke the garage doors into 2 areas. Honestly I don't know why the building needs a special residential loading dock facing Broadway for a building with fewer units than a Chicago courtyard block. If it needs a loading dock at all, it should either use the grocery dock under a timeshare agreement or move to a dedicated dock off of the alley where it can service both buildings.

[the urban politician]

^ Agreed about the 3 in 1 curb cut on Broadway. Something should be done to lessen that

[wrab]

The bridge on Halsted just South of Division has partially reopened.....I'll try to post some pics tomorrow, unless someone else beats me to it.

[Rizzo]

^ LOL, I posted some terrible pictures in the Chicago Transportation thread. Please post yours to make up for them.

[Jibba]

Meeting regarding the extension of Chicago Ave. pedestrian street designation from Wood to Damen went well. Expect that ordinance to pass (and probably soon).

[george]

Especially relevant since the demolition of the proposed Chicago Bowl/ AAA Garage Building.
I was at that meeting, we should have worn our name tags.^

[Jibba]

Ha, yeah we should have. Or have SSP embroidered jackets...

That's an enormous parcel of developable land there. Encouraging (though not surprising) to hear the owner speak in favor of vertical density.

[george]

I agree, it was good to hear he wants to plan something worthy.

[the urban politician]

^ That would be great news to see something impressive go up there.

Damn it, if only banks were lending these days. I think there is enough pent up demand for rentals in the neighborhoods to see a neighborhood rental boom. So for the vast majority of the new rental construction seems to be focused downtown

[Nowhereman1280]

It will happen soon enough TUP. I just was in a meeting with some higher ups at a major publicly traded REIT and they were outlining the fact that there is a huge pool of hot money floating around right now driving prices up and returns down on all sorts of RE. At a certain point the argument for more lenient leverage ratios is going to become irresistible for the banks and the dam is going to break.

I was just talking to lenders the other day about loans and they said the only reason they aren't lending more now is not the business environment, but the hawkish regulators that are scrutinizing the shit out of all their loans during every "stress test" that Obama orders... They'd rather not lend than put up with a load of shit from the government because they decided to make a little riskier loan.