CHICAGO | General Developments

[LouisVanDerWright]

^^^ But again, there is a finite demand for office space. There is a finite demand for retail space. There is no such thing as "build it and they will come". If Thor gets this built instead of Spectre or Gr333n or a similar development, then yes, the value of other office properties drops. Sure, more office in an area means more retail in an area, but that's not to say that you are increasing land values. The value already increased which is why they are building office buildings, it doesn't go the other way around. So all things equal in this corner of the city, yes demolishing historic stock reduces the land values around it.

This isn't the same for cinderblock crap like Harpo or H20. Those buildings did not have intrinsic value beyond their use as industrial or semi industrial sites. Historic brick buildings next to downtown are what made the West Loop increase in value, not the fact that people built happy brick bullshit 6 flats nearby. Every historic warehouse you remove reduces that effect. There is no shortage of other sites for office, so there is no downside to preservation in the area.

[Busy Bee]

edit

[Vlajos]

Originally Posted by Busy Bee

I think one could make the argument that those pressed steel replacement doors are a travesty. Compare to originals. This is what passes for historic preservation?

Really? I'm sure, this is not a Federal Historic Tax Credit deal with National Park Service involvement. Doors are easy to replace if you need a fancy new wood door. Maybe you can chip in?

This is a rental I'm sure. That building was saved and looks beautiful compared to what it was. Thanks to LVDW.

I live in a 100+ year old home. We did some extensive rehab and looked at replacing an exterior door with a replica. The price was $10K FOR A DOOR. We didn't do it.

[ChickeNES]

Originally Posted by Via Chicago

my question is, what is the difference between this



and this



why is one deserving of being land-marked for "contributing" to the Fulton landmark district, and the other dosent (even while the second of which literally serves as the focal eastern entry point)? sorry, but that strikes me as a fail. these buildings equally express the same historic warehouse style, in the same exact district, and preserving that continuity is the exact purpose of the district in the first place.

Why not compromise? The western face is nice, as is the facade of the building to the east. Do a facadectomy, construct a clone of the west facade to replace the fairly blank and drab existing wall, and then build the office tower on top.

[pilsenarch]

Originally Posted by emathias

I've been rewatching the Starz series "BOSS," and there's an episode where the owner of a local paper (cast similarly to the Tribune) agrees to a relatively favorable editorial in exchange for "his landmarked tower" being re-evaluated so that he can make alterations to it ...

I was really disappointed when that show was cancelled after two seasons with a number of loose ends still in play.

Originally Posted by Notyrview

I know and totally underrated. My boyfriend, who really knew nothing about Chicago but had a vague idea that its politics were pretty iconic, was totally fascinated by it. I don't know how it couldn't find an audience.

No one was more disappointed than me... not only was it an awesome series, but they used my home for filming of one of the main characters home... they filmed for a few days for the first season and came back for a few more for the second season... and get this, they paid me 12,000 a day! plus other incidentals, like putting us up in the Four Seasons if we wanted, etc...

[BonoboZill4]

What are people's thoughts on a facadectomy for the buildings(plus a face lift) and reintegration into the new building. Sort of like what they did with the Legacy, one building in Toronto I can't remember the name of, and that blue high rise on top of the old stock building in the loop at I think Lasalle and Madison?

Also, that Rascal Flats picture... how did frosted tips every become a thing?

[LouisVanDerWright]

Originally Posted by Vlajos

Really? I'm sure, this is not a Federal Historic Tax Credit deal with National Park Service involvement. Doors are easy to replace if you need a fancy new wood door. Maybe you can chip in?

This is a rental I'm sure. That building was saved and looks beautiful compared to what it was. Thanks to LVDW.

I live in a 100+ year old home. We did some extensive rehab and looked at replacing an exterior door with a replica. The price was $10K FOR A DOOR. We didn't do it.

Yeah, the old doors were literally see-through on that one. I mean you could literally see the light through them, they were basically cheesecloth. I saved the doors on the building to the left myself, personally scrapped 130 years of paint off of them. The steel doors were used because I didn't have an extra two grand in the budget to get new wood replicas built. I spent that money restoring the two art-glass windows next door which cost me $4800. I did spend $1500 on a sold wood 8'x 36" three inch thick solid wood door on my other building down the block though.

Here's the glass before and after:





----







The before pictures are difficult to see, but both of these windows were budging outwards as the lead failed and the smaller one was literally falling apart because the fire had gotten hot enough to melt the lead. We literally just put plywood on both sides of the frame to form something of a box and took it to the restoration shop in pieces. Both were totally rebuilt and we only had to replace 6 pieces of glass out of a total of over 100. Sorry if my preservation isn't good enough for y'all...




PS I also salvaged as much of the original trim 3 piece Victorian trim as possible and used up almost all the scrap wood we got from demolition doing things like making salvage wood shelves or even ripping down old 1x6 underlayment into baseboard. We bought almost no trim for this entire project because we reused or salvaged all of it. My goal on these projects is 100% efficiency of waste, anything that is usable I use. I even sell the old 2x4's or other scrap wood I don't have a use for to people for restaurant build outs. If you've ever been to Paulie Gee's in Logan Square, about 80% of the salvaged wood used for the table, chairs, bar, benches, walls, etc. came from one of my buildings. Even the lathe is sometimes reused like at Paulie Gee's where the contractor used it to create a cool "weave" style wainscoating in the bathrooms. Pretty much the only thing that comes out of my buildings that doesn't get "preserved" in some capacity is the random garbage and horsehair plaster.

Edit: Here's the doors I did save in their 95% complete state. I saved the door jamb, the transom, the brick mould around the windows, I even had custom unibody window assemblies made with the exact dimensions of the original Chicago style wood windows (fixed center pane with a double hung on each side). This building was stripped of the old dental moulding and brackets which I am going to be recreating over this winter at a friend's woodshop. So next spring those pressed metal doors will literally be the only thing on the front of these two buildings that isn't original or an exact replica of an original. Busy Bee can call me when he has paid for the restoration of even one piece of art glass like those.

[Khantilever]

Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright

That's a very NIMBY understanding of economics. No, massive upzoning does NOT raise property values in the long run. There is a finite amount of demand for space, the more supply you add, the lower prices go. So actually Sterling Bay, who owns sites not already occupied by large, dense, historic brick stock, is going to lose land value if Thor is gifted more density. There is no such thing as induced demand, that phenomenon is an illusion created by the fact that A. economies expand in cycles punctuated by recessions and B. the fact that cities arise out of economies of agglomeration.

The sheer volume of workers are going to add even more foot traffic to patronize nearby businesses, and I can't imagine a scenario where developments like this LOWER surrounding property values. The only way that can happen, perhaps, is if you demo, upzone, and the lot remains fallow for 20 years.

You guys are literally debating my research agenda, so I'm really enjoying your discussion. I don't have a clear opinion one way or another on whether we can expect nearby property values to increase or decrease based on this upzoning--we don't yet have a good idea of the effects at such a local level, but this is a gap I'm hoping to personally fill. Just my two cents on why I don't think it's obvious, and why both you and TUP are right in some sense:

There are two, basic effects of an infusion of floor space: 1) the first-order price effect of increased supply, reducing land and floor prices; and 2) the second-order effect of increased demand for floor space, and thus land, as a result of those agglomeration externalities you mentioned (i.e., a thousand more workers demanding housing and retail, and then other workers also being induced to come to the neighborhood).

The first effect decreases land and floor prices, while the second increases them. Which effect dominates? Generally, the first is much larger, so I'd generally agree with you there. But the second effect is much more concentrated than the latter; some good estimates of the productivity externality say that the spillovers from a given increase in worker density decay at such a rapid rate with distance that they are effectively zero past a 9-minute travel radius (i.e., the neighborhood). Meanwhile, the [first] price effect is likely much more diffuse, especially in the West Loop since firms in need of large amounts of office space are looking over a relatively large area.

So I wouldn't be surprised if this upzoning increases property values locally and reduces them at a larger scale, but it's impossible to make a strong conclusion about the net effect at such a small scale in such an idiosyncratic case.

[LouisVanDerWright]

^^^ Interesting, what are you researching for? Are you in grad school or something? Econ PHD candidate?

See I think the localized effects of more businesses or the growth or "hot" areas are illusions that create the appearance of induced demand when really, if you could graph a 10 year moving average over a census tract sized area, you wouldn't see an effect beyond what would occur from demographic and economic growth trends alone. In other words, yes the West Loop looks hot right now and as if property values are being induced to rise, but if you smooth that growth out over multiple economic cycles and back out what is being added by businesses relocating there (i.e. how much would the West Loop have grown if existing businesses like Google and MCD didn't choose to relocate there) there wouldn't be much of a change. You also have to remember than Google relocating from somewhere else made that area slightly less desirable and obviously Oak Brook has lost luster with MCD now moving to West Loop. Those are examples of finite demand simply shifting from one locale to another, it's not as if the West Loop caused MCD to suddenly become a F500 company because people upzoned it. No, they upzoned that site because they realized a F500 company would move there if they did. So the upzoning didn't cause the value to change as much as MCD decided they wanted to move there which caused the value to change and caused a developer to find a site to upzone for them.

[Skyguy_7]

Excellent result on the restorations, LVDW. Quite ballsy of you to choose the area you did. I'm sure the neighborhood is appreciative of your work. Make no little plans!

[the urban politician]

Originally Posted by Khantilever

You guys are literally debating my research agenda, so I'm really enjoying your discussion. I don't have a clear opinion one way or another on whether we can expect nearby property values to increase or decrease based on this upzoning--we don't yet have a good idea of the effects at such a local level, but this is a gap I'm hoping to personally fill. Just my two cents on why I don't think it's obvious, and why both you and TUP are right in some sense:

There are two, basic effects of an infusion of floor space: 1) the first-order price effect of increased supply, reducing land and floor prices; and 2) the second-order effect of increased demand for floor space, and thus land, as a result of those agglomeration externalities you mentioned (i.e., a thousand more workers demanding housing and retail, and then other workers also being induced to come to the neighborhood).

The first effect decreases land and floor prices, while the second increases them. Which effect dominates? Generally, the first is much larger, so I'd generally agree with you there. But the second effect is much more concentrated than the latter; some good estimates of the productivity externality say that the spillovers from a given increase in worker density decay at such a rapid rate with distance that they are effectively zero past a 9-minute travel radius (i.e., the neighborhood). Meanwhile, the [first] price effect is likely much more diffuse, especially in the West Loop since firms in need of large amounts of office space are looking over a relatively large area.

So I wouldn't be surprised if this upzoning increases property values locally and reduces them at a larger scale, but it's impossible to make a strong conclusion about the net effect at such a small scale in such an idiosyncratic case.

^ I never said that upzoning is the primary reason that the West Loop is seeing higher property values. There are many reasons that the West Loop's property values are increasing.

I am simply saying that, in this particular case, the upzoning with the development to follow will lead to a rise, not to a decline, in nearby property values. Yes, it's competition for Sterling Bay and, well, sucks for them. Perhaps they may not get a project or two off the ground because of this, but so be it. It's not like Sterling Bay isn't pulling the same crap on everyone else with their whole Lincoln Yards proposal.

[Mr Downtown]

Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright

what about my property rights? What about the fact that by defacing the historic nature of our district they are devaluing my properties? What about the fact that I gain value by having beautiful historic properties and part of that value lies in having a whole neighborhood of historic properties?

You're confusing property rights with property values.

[harryc]

Oct 1





Abig job for 1 man

[the urban politician]

^ So there are people on site?

That would mean that the work stoppage as a result of nonpayment by the owner has ended?

[harryc]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

^ So there are people on site?

That would mean that the work stoppage as a result of nonpayment by the owner has ended?

I only saw one person.

[the urban politician]

^ One is better than none I suppose.

I'm guessing he will be completing the project by himself?

[harryc]

Sept 21

[emathias]

Originally Posted by Vlajos

...
I live in a 100+ year old home. We did some extensive rehab and looked at replacing an exterior door with a replica. The price was $10K FOR A DOOR. We didn't do it.

Me condo association is replacing an exterior door with something historically appropriate. We'd budgeted $20k but are likely to actually get closer to $30k by the time it's done. :-( and we're just a14 unit association and that's not the only common-element exterior door.

[Vlajos]

Originally Posted by emathias

Me condo association is replacing an exterior door with something historically appropriate. We'd budgeted $20k but are likely to actually get closer to $30k by the time it's done. :-( and we're just a14 unit association and that's not the only common-element exterior door.

Wow! That is a lot!

[west-town-brad]

Originally Posted by Vlajos

Wow! That is a lot!

But how much to restore versus replace?