CHICAGO | General Developments

[HowardL]

Originally Posted by ardecila

... snip ... (think Karen Lewis). ... pins ...

I try desperately not to.

[r18tdi]

Originally Posted by ardecila

Politically, lots of people find value in putting Chicago's crime rates on blast.

Yes and yet another reason I'm thankful we lost the 2016 Olympics. Every Chicago shooting would be worldwide news.

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by r18tdi

Yes and yet another reason I'm thankful we lost the 2016 Olympics. Every Chicago shooting would be worldwide news.

Definitely, and I bet it would be more than what Rio is getting right now, even though Rio has a worse homicide rate than Chicago (apparently it was about 19 per 100K last year - but in 2007 it was around 35 per 100K). According to my Brazilian friend though - lots of unreported homicides all over the country.

[emathias]

Originally Posted by marothisu

Yes, your last statement here is the biggest for me. I've been running Chicago crime numbers for the past handful of years. Crime is down a lot - even in this recent spike as I have shown in other posts. It's just funny to me how nobody in the 90s or even early 2000s was saying anything about shootings and homicides, at least nationally - but now they are even though there's a TON less shootings now versus the 90s. Still a long ways to go, but the national media almost paints a picture that things have gotten worse in Chicago instead of better. Every single crime category is down even compared to 10 years ago.

Shootings this year are much worse than last year. They're still better than 10 years ago, but the percentage increase year over year is horrific. There is also a huge spike in open-air drug dealing in the River North area for reasons I really don't understand. I've seen blatant dealing in the open, I'm offered drugs nearly every night, and I even saw shouted-out hawking of drugs next to the Red Line Chicago Ave station - "Weed, Kush, Newports!" I bought a Newport off him just to see what it was like to buy something off a drug dealer. Newports aren't illegal, although I believe selling singles of them is. He seemed a little annoyed that I was actually buying a Newport off him and that I wasn't using that as cover to place a bigger order. He'd probably have given me the Newport for free just to get this normal-looking white guy away from his corner, lol.

[Mikemak27]

Originally Posted by emathias

Shootings this year are much worse than last year. They're still better than 10 years ago, but the percentage increase year over year is horrific. There is also a huge spike in open-air drug dealing in the River North area for reasons I really don't understand. I've seen blatant dealing in the open, I'm offered drugs nearly every night, and I even saw shouted-out hawking of drugs next to the Red Line Chicago Ave station - "Weed, Kush, Newports!" I bought a Newport off him just to see what it was like to buy something off a drug dealer. Newports aren't illegal, although I believe selling singles of them is. He seemed a little annoyed that I was actually buying a Newport off him and that I wasn't using that as cover to place a bigger order. He'd probably have given me the Newport for free just to get this normal-looking white guy away from his corner, lol.

PLEASE, please, please call the police on this guy next time! The shooting last week at Clark and Division was over a druggie owing another druggie money. We don't need another shooting becuase of trivial things like this. Not to mention, this area is packed with innocent bystanders throughout much of the day.

[Hed Kandi]

..

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by emathias

Shootings this year are much worse than last year. They're still better than 10 years ago, but the percentage increase year over year is horrific. There is also a huge spike in open-air drug dealing in the River North area for reasons I really don't understand. I've seen blatant dealing in the open, I'm offered drugs nearly every night, and I even saw shouted-out hawking of drugs next to the Red Line Chicago Ave station - "Weed, Kush, Newports!" I bought a Newport off him just to see what it was like to buy something off a drug dealer. Newports aren't illegal, although I believe selling singles of them is. He seemed a little annoyed that I was actually buying a Newport off him and that I wasn't using that as cover to place a bigger order. He'd probably have given me the Newport for free just to get this normal-looking white guy away from his corner, lol.

I completely agree with you that they're much worse this year and it's alarming. Just saying that the media is acting as if it's worse than the 90s. I've been offered drugs in River North, at least around Hubbard, for as long as I've lived in the area (a little over 7 years). I can remember being offered pot on one of the first days I moved to Gold Coast in 2009 and also seeing a man in his 40s or 50s choking a lady outside of the McDonald's courtyard around the Chicago Red Line stop. Haven't seen anything like that in the last handful of years or even close. Those drug dealers have always been in RN around Hubbard & State - the cops don't do anything about them though.

[marothisu]

Hey guys. I merged in two of my new construction maps into one. It now has data between 1/1/2014 and 7/5/2016 in one map. Check it out - it's pretty interesting as there's so many in some blocks close to one another. Circle means teardown while square means vacant/parking lot. Blue is a single family home, red is multi family, gray is mixed use, green is retail/commercial/business, etc. All of this is on the map and you can click on the left hand side to get more info on what everything means.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/ed...VJTREPhqG1PLB0

[prelude91]

Originally Posted by marothisu

Hey guys. I merged in two of my new construction maps into one. It now has data between 1/1/2014 and 7/5/2016 in one map. Check it out - it's pretty interesting as there's so many in some blocks close to one another. Circle means teardown while square means vacant/parking lot. Blue is a single family home, red is multi family, gray is mixed use, green is retail/commercial/business, etc. All of this is on the map and you can click on the left hand side to get more info on what everything means.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/ed...VJTREPhqG1PLB0

This is really cool, thanks for sharing!

[emathias]

Originally Posted by Mikemak27

PLEASE, please, please call the police on this guy next time! The shooting last week at Clark and Division was over a druggie owing another druggie money. We don't need another shooting becuase of trivial things like this. Not to mention, this area is packed with innocent bystanders throughout much of the day.

I just know that one of the street people I talk to in my area says he was brothers with the victim at Clark/Division. He said to be cautious around any young new faces in River North because they were likely dealers pushed south by additional police presence near Clark/Division following that fatal shooting. He said older people are mostly users, younger are mostly dealers. I've since had others confirm that advice.

All I know is that last year I knew there was at least one powder cocaine dealer who worked weekend nights near clubs (I only ever saw the same guy), and random people willing to hook you up with weed and you could find pills (esp. Xanax) near the McDonalds at Chicago/State. This year I feel confident I could score powder cocaine, crack cocaine, heroin or weed within about half an hour if I were so inclined. I have to believe it's partly because of the city's change in enforcement strategy early last year, but it feels like there are other reasons, too, like maybe a general breakdown in morale on the police force leading to less vigilant enforcement all around. And I look like I could be a cop most of the time, so if *I* feel like I could score that easily I imagine people who actually look like regular drug users (and are) are having the time of their lives.

I wonder how or if all this is going to be impacted as all the new towers start to be populated next year.

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by prelude91

This is really cool, thanks for sharing!

Thanks! I think it shows some interesting trends. There's a ton of tear downs especially in areas like Roscoe Village. I kind of want to add 2013 data - Chicago's economy started to recover a little bit in that year sometime.

SPEAKING of which, the preliminary data for May is now out for employment data from the BLS. The city's unemployment rate is back down to 6.1%. The low unemployment rate since the recession was September 2015 at 5.8% and February of 2016 was at 7.2%. Let's compare some numbers of May 2016 versus September 2015:

Unemployment Rate: +0.3%
Unemployed Persons: +5282
Employed Persons: +28,654
Persons in Labor Force: +33,936

However, compare it to February when the unemployment rate was 7.2%
Unemployment Rate: -1.1%
Unemployed Persons: -14,813
Employed Persons: +20,573
Labor Force: +5760

Unemployment rate for the MSA is listed at 5.4%, down from 6.8% in February and the same as November 2015. Regardless for the city, even compared to October 2015, there are almost 30,000 more employed persons in the city and nearly 35,000 more people in the labor force. Really interested to see what the June numbers will say, even if just prelim

[maru2501]

I have had homeless-looking fellows twice approach on foot on hubbard recently pitching "blow"

it was probably baking powder or whatever, but anyway...

[marothisu]

Anybody know if this was at one time a theater (in Kenwood area) on 43rd? There's something in the zoning meeting next week about providing a small parking lot for it - for a proposed 299 seat live theater. It was most recently a church. Good to see stuff like that coming to Kenwood area.

https://www.google.com/maps/@41.8168...7i13312!8i6656

[SolarWind]

July 6, 2016

[pilsenarch]

^Glad to see they are getting that transit center completed... too bad they couldn't have combined it with an office tower above...

[Via Chicago]

Originally Posted by pilsenarch

^Glad to see they are getting that transit center completed... too bad they couldn't have combined it with an office tower above...

doubt any office tower would want idling CTA buses outside their door all day. beyond that, im not sure how they could have fit it all.

[Mr Downtown]

It's not hard to find Canadian examples of an office or even a residential tower over a ground-floor bus terminal. However, this was an opportunity to be seized before the market would get very excited about such a site in Chicago. The adjacent parking garage offers the better redevelopment opportunity.

[J_M_Tungsten]

I guess I don't know much about that transit hub. Is it making buses more efficient in picking up/ dropping off people, and getting on to/off of the roads? I know it's the construction for now, but I feel like that area has always been a clusterf#*k

[Steely Dan]

here's some potentially promising news, let's hope something comes of it:

Group says food manufacturing hub would mean jobs and new life for historic district
Robert ChannickContact Reporter
Chicago Tribune

A proposal seeks to turn a century-old monument to Chicago's industrial past — three massive city-owned buildings near the old Chicago Union Stock Yards — into a bustling, modern food manufacturing hub.

The city has tried for more than a year to sell the six-story brick fortresses along West Pershing Road near Ashland Avenue. Now the Center for Neighborhood Technology wants the city to consider a more specific redevelopment, one it says would pump jobs, revenue and life back into the historic Central Manufacturing District on the South Side.

While some are skeptical, it might also provide a spark to return the district — a sprawling hodgepodge of warehouses and half-empty buildings — to its glory days as one of the earliest planned industrial parks in the U.S.

"Manufacturing is still one of the keys to the economic future of Chicago," said Stephen Perkins, senior vice president for the nonprofit Center for Neighborhood Technology. "The Central Manufacturing District is a way to create a 21st-century industrial park."

full article: http://www.chicagotribune.com/busine...706-story.html

[pilsenarch]

I guess I was suggesting that rather than just building the transit center, the city could have put out an RFP to gauge interest with added subsidies... the site is definitely large enough for an office development...