CHICAGO | Wrigley Field Redevelopment News

[Investing In Chicago]

Originally Posted by Via Chicago

guys this isnt in defense of the stupid taco bell. i think our default mode should be to demand better of our built environment when aggressively bland garbage is thrust on us, not to say "hey its better than a taco bell drive through! case closed!". i think we are capable of setting higher standards for our neighborhoods

"lotline-to-lotline, street-fronting, multi-story retail building" is kind of a bare minimum design requirement and i dont think is really something to rest our laurels on when the above proposal is the outcome. its generic and uninspired beyond belief

In theory, I agree there should be some baseline standard of design, and I also agree this wouldn't meet whatever standard would be in place. However, this is also an as of right developement, and doesn't need any zoning change, So how would some design authority committee oversee these types of projects? Also as someone who deals with the zoning committee on a somewhat regular basis, we need less barriers to build in this city, not more.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Via Chicago

guys this isnt in defense of the stupid taco bell. i still think our default mode should be to demand better of our built environment when aggressively bland garbage is thrust on us

"lotline-to-lotline, street-fronting, multi-story retail building" is kind of a bare minimum design requirement and i dont think is really something to rest our laurels on when the above proposal is the outcome.

i never said anything about resting any kind of laurels on anything. it's just your bog standard urban commercial low-rise infill building. it's also extremely likely it's just a placeholder design until actual tenants are lined-up and given their chance for design input. the only merits we can really judge it on right now is whether or not it ticks the right urban design boxes (lotline-to-lotline, sidewalk-fronting, no surface or accessory parking, no curb cuts, active street facing uses, etc.)

however the final design eventually shakes out, this development shows all signs of being a tremendously VAST improvement over the current suburban stand-alone taco hell in a parking lot currently on site.

i also took issue with your comparison of the proposal with schaumburg. there isn't one single building in the entire municipality of schuamburg of this urban building typology. not one. but there are several suburban stand-alone taco hells in a parking lot in schuamburg, so if anything is reminiscent of schuamburg in all of this, it's the fast food shit-box currently on site.

[JK47]

Originally Posted by Via Chicago

its generic and uninspired beyond belief

Then it'll fit right in with the other buildings under construction. Honestly, I'm more interested in seeing a successful commercial pivot in the area than some cosmetic improvements on a project that fills in a massive sinkhole in the built environment.

[Via Chicago]

i just struggle to understand how this "look" has become the retail default. id even have less of a problem with it they at least picked ONE fricking facade material and stuck with it rather than playing this dumb "here is one huge managed property that we are trying to trick you into believing is actually 3 separate retail buildings, even though any rube off the street can clearly see through this poorly implemented disguise, especially since its been done ad nauseum and the facades are meshing into each other for no discernible reason". the proportions strike me as all off too. and none of these designs are ever human scaled...theyre cartoonish in a slightly surreal and uncomfortable sort of way. who actually enjoys spending time in neighborhoods built up to look like this? i dont understand who actually LIKES this, and yet its everywhere

our cities are all beginning to look alike, and not in a good way, and its disheartening and frustrating.

and then when we DO have unique properties threatened in our city, everyone rushes in to say "its ugly tear it down!" and i kind of just feel like giving up
https://chicago.curbed.com/2017/8/1/...chicago-arcade

[Handro]

Originally Posted by Via Chicago

i just struggle to understand how this "look" has become the retail default. id even have less of a problem with it they at least picked ONE fricking facade material and stuck with it rather than playing this dumb "here is one huge managed property that we are trying to trick you into believing is actually 3 separate retail buildings, even though any rube off the street can clearly see through this poorly implemented disguise, especially since its been done ad nauseum and the facades are meshing into each other for no discernible reason". the proportions strike me as all off too. and none of these designs are ever human scaled...theyre cartoonish in a slightly surreal and uncomfortable sort of way. who actually enjoys spending time in neighborhoods built up to look like this? i dont understand who actually LIKES this, and yet its everywhere

our cities are all beginning to look alike, and not in a good way, and its disheartening and frustrating.

and then when we DO have unique properties threatened in our city, everyone rushes in to say "its ugly tear it down!" and i kind of just feel like giving up
https://chicago.curbed.com/2017/8/1/...chicago-arcade

But isn't that just how building cities works? Outside of specific buildings, parks, plazas, geography, etc. that give a city its unique character, cities all over the world have similar streetscapes if they were built around the same time/region. Hell, a random street in any Spanish city could be a random street in any Italian city in many cases.

Just like many of the quality "historic" (read: old) stock here in Chicago circa the 1920s look pretty similar to cities like St. Louis, Kansas City, etc. I'm sitting in Ravenswood right now looking out at Montrose and I could just as easily be looking at a street in Queens, NY.

Random commercial infill is just random commercial infill, and usually not the type of thing developers want to spend big money on a starchitect to design. Builders have been borrowing styles and techniques from other builders since building was invented.

I agree that there is an unfortunate homogeny of urban America taking root right now, but that I think has more to do with cultural tides than architectural ones. And it's not crazy to think that in 100 years even that will seem like a blip to anyone looking to the past.

[Steely Dan]

^^ man, talk about mountains out of molehills.

with the 1 million actual problems facing chicago, please forgive me for not possessing the ability to lose any sleep about the fact that this:





is proposed to replace this:

[the urban politician]

I think some of you whipper snappers just forget how far we've come. Prior to the early 2000's they were building strip malls everywhere, and they probably would have proposed one here.

[Investing In Chicago]

Plus we'll no longer have to look at the parking ramp on Eddy that can be viewed from the surface lot.

[maru2501]

I just want taco bell after the game though

[Investing In Chicago]

Originally Posted by maru2501

I just want taco bell after the game though

Guessing you are being sarcatstic, but on that note, who can eat that crap? it's barely edible, sober or intoxicated. Taco Bell is bad, even by publicly traded, profit driven, "food" companies.

[maru2501]

actually not really. I do go there after a lot of games

for example when the cubs lost to the yankees in a 6-hour, 18-inning game in May, it was open after it, and I walked in. It was safe because there was a security guard with a visible gun. I ordered the chicken burrto I wanted to soak up the beer from Nisei Lounge and the game, and then I walked home.

Now I can go to this thing and get a $23 bloomin onion? if it's even open.. booooooo

sox park has 452 acres of parking lots around it. Go build it there

[710cl]

I'm split. The new proposed building is "meh". Taco Bell is terrible (this one especially), but gosh darnit, it's MY terrible, so I'm sad to see it go. That said, I totally, 100% understand why it's going.

I can say this for most of Wrigleyville, as a matter of fact. Funny how that works. Still a great place to day drink in the summer, though.

"Sure, it's a great place if you like getting puked on etc. etc. etc."

[Kumdogmillionaire]

And here I was thinking that some of the comments/arguments I make with people here were melodramatic, juvenile and pointless. Good riddance with that taco bell

[emathias]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

...
Commercial neighborhood buildings in Chicago built in 1905 look a lot like commercial neighborhood buildings in Battle Creek, MI or Hodunk, Kansas built in 1905. This notion that groundbreaking architecture is somehow missing in Chicago these days and that we are witnessing a "fall from grace" compared to buildings a century ago just gets so old.
...

The point you make here is a good one, one people are prone to forget in their drive to demand only international-quality design that will one day be picked up and placed in some huge architecture museum on the Moon.

[gallo]

This renovation of an auto repair shop is also being proposed across from Wrigley:

Source: Crains

[Rizzo]

The auto shop conversion has nice scale to it. The mall development is just this heavy handed mess in the background

[aaron38]

But something that could have been much better done as part of the larger development behind it. All the holdouts are realizing now how much they screwed up.

[gallo]

At least it preserves aome of the finer grain

[MayorOfChicago]

Why on earth did the autobody hold out? I'm sure they were offered MUCH more by the huge development for that. Sports World on the corner....the focal piece corner lot right across from the marquee - I'm sure they were offered a mint for their shell cinder block building.

[Rizzo]

Originally Posted by aaron38

But something that could have been much better done as part of the larger development behind it. All the holdouts are realizing now how much they screwed up.

What do you mean "much better done?" The development is generic mixed use bs like New City. If anything, the autoshop has greater development potential than ever.