Quote:
Originally Posted by Nowhereman1280
I don't know where you are looking but rents in LP tend to hover around $2 a square foot in LP. My friend had t 500 sf studio for $800 a month there last year. Wicker Park is in the exact same range. Wicker Park is starting to get more ridiculous especially because there aren't SRO's there like there are in LP.
That's not true at all. Wicker Park was a shit hole until about ten years ago when it started developing. Hell I remember when it was no good and I've only been living down here for 6 years or so. Wicker Park was like Humboldt Park up until then: a few bright patches, but mostly overrun with gangs.
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You either have a very high opinion of Humboldt Park, or a low threshhold of what constitutes a shithole.
But here's a short history of development in Wicker Park.
I moved in around '83. The area from Armitage to maybe Evergreen, Damen to Marshfield was pretty much gang free.
Not because of anything we did. The gangs of the 70' had more in common with the sharks and the jets than with the crips and the bloods. This area had been the turf of the jousters, one of the last of the white street gangs. When they faded from the scene, no one came in to fill the void.
There were still a lot of factories around and the population was a loose mix of working class, artsy types and sweat equity rehabbers.
They were all lured by a relatively safe neighborhood with low housing prices.
By '85 development started with infill construction Mostly junk frame and vinyl single family homes (think Speilberg village)
That was to be expected. You could buy a vacant lot back then for $8-10 grand. By 90 those vacant lots were getting rare and they were bringing $50 grand.
They weren't selling these houses to artists
Most of this was east of Damen, but there was a lot of speculation on the west side by block buster realtors.
Early 90's was all townhomes and loftominiums. Ludwig drum, Langendorf Clothing. Townhomes north of Ludwig, at Damen and Potomac, and in the triangle between North, Milwaukee and Elk grove ave.
Most of the artists (who hadn't bought early) were gone or huddling together for warmth. Most sweat equity boys had taken a payday.
By the mid 90's development had crossed the Damen Divide. But property values had escalated to the point that the only way to make money was to max out density. This was the heyday of the condominium. They sucked up all that and moved into the vast untapped source of FAR, commercial zoning.
From 2000 on it was all about 4 story mixed use. The low hanging fruit went quick and they were buying out going businesses with unused floor area potential and dozed them. By '05 to get a profit in the residential districts, they were tearing them down two at a time and plunking down McMansions,
At what point could the area be called hot? You guys can argue about that.
But the Stones played the Double Door in 97'. In '08 Investers paid $18mil for the Noel State bank and 5 vacant lots.
Through all of this, Milwaukee south of the Walgreens looked the same as it did when I moved in.
This is finally starting to change.
Maybe it was landmarking, or maybe it took this long for development to get down there, but most of those places hadn't painted their woodwork since VJ day.