Quote:
Originally Posted by the urban politician
Marothisu, thanks for your perspective. I note many similar things in the Devon corridor, albeit less focus on late night activities (S Asian societies just don't tend to do late night stuff).
Yet new developments there are also rare to get off the ground. For example, a building that burned down there several years ago continues to remain a weedy lot.
Are lenders just hesitant to support development in these areas? Could it be the conservative, Midwestern mentality that still has a difficult time embracing diversity?
I'm not going to opine about racism here because to some degree there is justification for this hesitation. I'm recent years there have been South Asian developers who have committed fraud and fled the country, and I'm sure lenders were burned by this. Those butt-faces unfortunately bring a mentality that 'being overly clever for the sake of being clever' is the route to success. I wonder if a newer generation of S. Asian investors raised in the US, and adjusted to America's straight forward way of life, can demonstrate more reliability to the lending world? And of course with Chinatown there is See Wong, who has had his own difficulties.
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I agree that Devon is also one of those areas that could be developed even more, but I think the answer is even more obvious. Well, I think there's two answers
1) Closeness to some areas - While West Ridge has a lot of people there, to be an even bigger destination, you draw people in from all over. Something Chinatown does is benefit from being so close to the downtown area.
2) Public transit and time of day - Now, it can be not too difficult to get to Devon as you take either the Red or Brown line and then bus it up there, but I think a lot of people are semi discouraged by it. My last girlfriend was from a country in SE Asia with a lot of Indian influence (I went to the country - best Indian food I've had by a mile, though I haven't been to India yet). When I told her about Devon, she was incredibly excited. Midway through the bus ride after a 30+ minute train ride, she was exhausted. Not everyone is going to be like this, but just a story. The other problem with it is the late night service of buses. There are a lot of late night things there I know of, but even from the red line on a Saturday, the bus isn't running even at 1am. You have to wait until 4:30 or 5am to get it. The brown line? Same thing, and the line stops running early enough for it to be a late night option for someone upon the Brown Line.
I think Devon is good for the areas around it, but to expand even more, I think either the buses to there would have to run later in the night, or the Brown Line would have to expand north on Kimball up to Devon (not right at California, but it's close). I think areas like "Koreatown" (what's left of it) and the newer Middle Eastern area around Kedzie and Kimball Brown Line stops benefit a little more.
As far as SE Asian investors go - I guess it depends on the country and all. One of the things I will say and I've hit on before is that companies' reluctance to spend a few thousand extra to provide someone with a VISA (or extend it) actually has some unintended consequences for our city's economy. In the case of my ex girlfriend, from SE Asia, who was here - nobody would sponsor her after awhile. Her family in SE Asia? Wealthy. For American standards they were deep in the 1%. Her father, an already successful international business founder and CEO, wanted to form business (restaurant, lounge) in Chicago as a way of giving an investment to his daughter. He was also going to buy an investment property in the form of apartment/condo building and get someone to manage it in Chicago for him. What happened? Pretty much a refusal to sponsor and it had nothing to do with merit. It had to do with them not wanting to spend a few thousand dollars. When she offered to pay for her share of it, they told her they didn't know what to do because they'd never done it before. A lot of firms were like this and wouldn't do it.
She also had a good number of friends from her country here (good number for one person), who pretty much all came from wealthy families as well. I know that a few of their parents wanted to do what my ex girlfriend's dad wanted to do - establish business in Chicago. Most of them couldn't get sponsorship either and returned to their home countries. No businesses formed whatsoever as a result because they couldn't stay in the US and their families didn't want to make a business where no family would be around.