Quote:
Originally Posted by ardecila
There's also a large Chinatown shopping plaza planned for the NE corner of 18th/Canal, with parking on the ground floor (partially buried in the hillside) and 2 levels of retail/restaurant above that.
https://chicago.legistar.com/Legisla...vanced&Search=
This is all exciting, but there's not enough demand for all of these, right? Certainly the Chinese community is growing but you need huge population to support these kind of developments. It's also a shame that the urban experience will be pretty poor, these are clearly expecting people to arrive by car. At least Hoyt Square is a historic building and 2300 S Archer has shops lining the street. |
Editing this down, but the urban experience in that immediate area should be better once (whenever that is) phase 2 happens. There should be multiple new large buildings built there on open land in a dense fashion. Hopefully a little walkable at least.
As far as whether there's a market, will it work, etc?
1) Between 2010 and 2018 the area from Lakeview south thru downtown into Chinatown, Bridgeport, McKinley Park as well as counting nearby Douglas, Kenwood, and Hyde Park grew by over 15,000 Chinese people.
2) More than just Chinese people eat at Chinese restaurants even in Chinatown. Obviously a lot of peoples' view of Chinese food is either narrow or not even accurate to real Chinese food (a lot of people eat the Americanized stuff) but still, a lot of non Chinese people do eat at Chinese restaurants. You also have the potential for tourists..
3) There's more than just Chinese food coming to these places. I do know of a Korean BBQ place going into that new retail plaza at 2300 S Archer. This new Tianyi Square ("Jefferson Square") development says it will also have Vietnamese food, Korean food, etc and sell things like home appliances as well as western (US, European, etc) alcohol.
4) There is that new 5000+ person concert venue Radius literally around the corner from Tianyi Square. Yeah COVID-19 is going on - we don't know what the future holds but I'm pretty sure that even if only 10% of a concert goes to eat food at a restaurant nearby here - that's still a lot of business.
With that being said there's a lot of cultural things that aren't being picked up here.
1) A lot of the Chinese coming into America for the last 2 decades are more middle class like my wife. They can afford an American education and get jobs here. With that comes the fact that they grew up in households in China with cars and weren't strangers to driving around. My wife's parents live in a suburban area (still more urban than US suburbia) of Shanghai. They can walk to places if they want but they also own 2 cars. They are big fans of walking but when they want to go to the Wanda mall (yes, the same one who was behind Vista)? They drive and you better believe that they underground parking lot is almost completely full.
This is just more of a reality of the middle class of China, which has grown a ton - and a lot of the newer immigrants in America in the last few decades are from this class. I think that people have an outdated view in their head about how these things are in China and it's not really a truth. My parents in law for example much rather live in an area like Bridgeport or Lakeview than in downtown Chicago. They would never live in Manhattan for example because it's too crowded.
2) As my wife says "Chinese people do not like loans." Having a mortgage isn't really a thing in China and it's expected that you own property. How much money you have saved up is another story, but there are probably a bunch of people in areas like Bridgeport, Brighton Park, etc who just paid cash for their property. Obviously some have mortgages but there are many others who just pay straight up cash. It's seen as a sign that you can provide for yourself and your family. A lot of parents save up for years and years for their kids for this reason alone. The person in Bridgeport only making $40K per year might actually have $250K in their bank account as a result and the same or higher net worth as someone who lives downtown. In any case, I'm sure many people do take loans, but the reality of landing one and having it more like a 10 or 15 year mortgage, or just paying straight up cash for something is going to be a bit higher in places like Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Philadelphia, etc nowadays than the other places. How people find out about this information about any of those cities is another story - usually marketing and word of mouth.
My wife has been asking me lately when we're moving back to Chicago (well she never officially lived there). It's not because she dislikes NYC - she loves it. She also loves Chicago. She just understands that her chances of outright owning property that doesn't suck that we can raise a family in is immensely higher in Chicago than NYC. Moving to the suburbs of New Jersey isn't really attractive. We'd rather own a 2 or 3 bedroom place in Chicago whether downtown or in some more residential (but walkable) area. This is more in line with her culturally - either pay for something straight up cash or pay off a mortgage in say 10-15 years, not 30. Her parents are totally in line with us coming back to Chicago too - one big reason is due to this "owning decent property faster" reality and also they just think Chicago is a nicer city LOL. In 20 years if they move to the US, they'd rather be in Chicago where we would be.