CHICAGO | General Developments

[intrepidDesign]

Originally Posted by lawfin

Link does not work. What is SB 4? Iknow SB 44 is the cigarette tax

There seems to be a problem with the URL for some reason, in any event.
Here's the link again Link

SB4 gets rid of tax incentives for tv/movie production companies to film in IL.

[lawfin]

Originally Posted by intrepidDesign

There seems to be a problem with the URL for some reason, in any event.
Here's the link again Link

SB4 gets rid of tax incentives for tv/movie production companies to film in IL.

Well I really hope this development happens we need reuse of some of our old brown fields on the south and west side esp if Chicago ever really want to see sustainable population growth again.

This development is also under .5 miles to a Metra stop and about that to an Orange line stop.
What is that neighborhood Mckinley Park?North LAwndale?

[ardecila]

Technically it's North Lawndale. Glad to see somebody's re-using the old Ryerson mills. Those buildings are massive... easy to see from the Pink Line or BNSF.

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by intrepidDesign

SB4 gets rid of tax incentives for tv/movie production companies to film in IL.

^ Well, I hope the City and State don't blow this. This is a huge development for the city

[Beta_Magellan]

A few months ago the Chicago Reader had a good story about Chicago’s film incentives—it’s a mixed bag, since promoting a film industry’s very difficult, and though Chicago’s existing media industry and workforce profile makes building an industry here more viable than in other places offering these incentives, industry trends don’t look good for the sorts of productions that Chicago’s best suited to promote. Here’s the link:

Who Wants to Be Hollywood East?
An expert in government subsidies for film production says it's a "race to the bottom."
By Deanna Isaacs


Last week, with a deal pending that would turn the mostly empty Ryerson steel plant on the west side into a film production studio, I talked to Cornell University professor Susan Christopherson. The potential buyers for the property want financial help from the city and the state, and Christopherson has been studying film-industry subsidies for a couple decades. Her major paper on the subject, "The Creative Economy as Big Business," will be published in the Winter 2010 Journal of Planning Education and Research. In it, she and coauthor Ned Rightor conclude that government investment in studios is almost always unwise, locking the public into production subsidies that mostly benefit huge—and distant—global corporations.

Without subsidies it's likely that there won't be enough business to cover the overhead, they say, unless the studio owner is also a producer who can keep the facility busy with in-house projects. The proposed new studio on the Ryerson property would be operated by Cinespace, a Toronto firm that has a successful 20-year track record in the facility business but doesn't make its own films.

Especially now, when so many traditional jobs have been lost, "everybody wants to be Hollywood east," Christopherson says. It's "sexy meets desperation." More than 40 states are actively vying for movie production business, upping the ante on subsidies in what she calls a "race to the bottom." For places without the necessary infrastructure and professional workforce it'll never be more than a costly fling—the subsidies will drain more tax revenue than they generate.

Read more at http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago...nt?oid=1241625

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by SamInTheLoop

Roosevelt University's proposed Athletics Facility in the South Loop on Wabash is on the Plan Commission's agenda this week...

Did anybody happen to take a snapshot of this thing? We have only had partial renderings here so far.

[aic4ever]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

^ Well, I hope the City and State don't blow this. This is a huge development for the city

Screw that. That idiot greek is already in. If he wants to flush his millions away, so he can go flush more millions away in another town, so be it. Neither the City or the State can afford to bankroll a business that can't afford to stay in business on its own. It's stupid, and the whole practice of the government, and the City in particular, being held hostage by these businesses for TIF money, grants or tax breaks, has got to stop. It only furthers the worsening of an already awful business climate that keeps small new businesses from even wanting to try to be in business here, and leaves the only market available to big business with cronies in government. This can only work for so long until the small and mid-sized companies that really support things just decide to make a living elsewhere.

[Ch.G, Ch.G]

Originally Posted by aic4ever

Screw that. That idiot greek is already in. If he wants to flush his millions away, so he can go flush more millions away in another town, so be it. Neither the City or the State can afford to bankroll a business that can't afford to stay in business on its own. It's stupid, and the whole practice of the government, and the City in particular, being held hostage by these businesses for TIF money, grants or tax breaks, has got to stop. It only furthers the worsening of an already awful business climate that keeps small new businesses from even wanting to try to be in business here, and leaves the only market available to big business with cronies in government. This can only work for so long until the small and mid-sized companies that really support things just decide to make a living elsewhere.

Yeah, I think I agree. It's like this story writ large.

[george]

Poetry Foundation

[the urban politician]

^ Thanks for all your photo updates today, George

[J_M_Tungsten]

Are there any plans to improve the area around the Marshall Field Garden Apartments in Old Town? The houses opposite of the apartments are literally about a million dollars each. I don't understand why they would develop such expensive housing directly across from a housing project? Just curious.

[wrab]

The Chicago Tribune
Northwestern wants to tear down Goldberg's Prentice Hospital; preservationists have other ideas
by Blair Kamin
From Sunday's print edition

As Rahm Emanuel prepares to takes office May 16, the first big historic preservation battle of his mayoralty is taking shape: Northwestern University is gearing up to tear down the old Prentice Women's Hospital, designed by Bertrand Goldberg, the architect of Marina City, and replace it with a new medical research building.

If the university wins city permission for demolition, it could be wrecking the boldly sculptural, brilliantly engineered high-rise at the very time the Art Institute of Chicago is celebrating it as part of a major exhibition of Goldberg's work. “Bertrand Goldberg: Architecture of Invention,” opens September 10 and runs through Jan. 8, 2012.....

Read complete article here.

[Mr Downtown]

Originally Posted by J_M_Tungsten

Are there any plans to improve the area around the Marshall Field Garden Apartments in Old Town? The houses opposite of the apartments are literally about a million dollars each. I don't understand why they would develop such expensive housing directly across from a housing project? Just curious.

Sounds like the area has already been improved. Why does "improvement" require the removal of any people who can't afford million-dollar houses?

[J_M_Tungsten]

Originally Posted by Mr Downtown

Sounds like the area has already been improved. Why does "improvement" require the removal of any people who can't afford million-dollar houses?

Come on now, you know that's not what I meant. Its definitely not as safe to walk down Sedgwick as it is Wells. Very little retail, and given the proximity to the brown line stop, one would think the area might be different.

[wrab]

Crain's Chicago Real Estate Daily
Auction scheduled for former Motor Club building
By: Alby Gallun March 25, 2011


Crain's) — A bankruptcy judge has approved an auction of the former Chicago Motor Club building after a plan to convert the East Loop tower into a 189-room Virgin Hotel fell apart.

Local auction house Rick Levin & Associates Inc. plans to sell the Art Deco office building at 68 E. Wacker Place in a June 23 auction, about eight months after the owner of the vacant property filed for Chapter 11 protection to stave off foreclosure.....

Read more here.

[denizen467]

^ Posted this in the high-rise thread. Note my question re the adjacent lot - I think it is correct?

[wrab]

^ Right - the vacant lot included with the Motor Club Building sale is to the West of the building, not to the East.

[wrab]

Originally Posted by george

Poetry Foundation

Intriguing.....

[emathias]

Originally Posted by J_M_Tungsten

Come on now, you know that's not what I meant. Its definitely not as safe to walk down Sedgwick as it is Wells. Very little retail, and given the proximity to the brown line stop, one would think the area might be different.

Wells Street has such a draw, and then you have that empty lot at the SW corner of North/Sedgwick, and that car-oriented strip mall on the SE corner, I just don't think Sedgwick will have a chance until those get redeveloped into something not only more pedestrian-friendly, but with interesting retail. I really don't think it's the Field homes that are holding the place back - across the street from there is a horse stable, which I'm pretty sure is even less appealing to commercial pedestrian traffic than the public housing is.

I tell you what, though, if those stables ever leave, the redevelopment of all those related lots sure better be some nice, dense TOD-style housing and/or commercial units. It is such a prime area and proximity to public housing or not, it would be a horrible waste of tax revenues to put up the type of SFHs built south of there 10-15 years ago.

[M II A II R II K]

Artist Jan Tichy plans to memorialize Cabrini-Green as it falls.


http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago...nt?oid=3475071

The Chicago Housing Authority plans to start tearing down the vacant building at 1230 N. Burling next Wednesday. If that happens—the demolition has already been postponed once—March 30 will be a historic day. The 134-unit apartment complex scheduled to go under the wrecking ball is the last of the Cabrini-Green public housing high-rises.

Cabrini-Green is the stuff of legend and infamy, and discussion about what it meant is sure to go on and on. The place has come to epitomize the folly of urban renewal—and maybe of modernism itself, which, some argue, has been dying a slow death since Saint Louis's Pruitt-Igoe projects came down in 1972. Cabrini-Green was the scene of the 1992 thriller Candyman, the 70s sitcom Good Times, and the political theater of Mayor Jane Byrne's three-week residency in 1981. People everywhere associate it with crime, drugs, gangs, squalor, broken elevators, and violent death.

But for tens of thousands over the decades since the first Cabrini residences were built in 1942, it was home.

To commemorate the end of Cabrini-Green and call attention to its role as a haven, a group including Prague-born School of the Art Institute faculty member Jan Tichy, social worker Efrat Appel, and 25 SAIC student collaborators is preparing Project Cabrini Green—an art installation that combines LED and sound technology with short stories and poetry on the themes of home, housing, and community.

.....