Quote:
Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright
It was irrationally held down as an industrial district despite it's excellent proximity to downtown, transit, and freeways. As soon as the city decided it was to be residential and office instead, the floodgates opened. The existing warehouses and industrial buildings were an adaptive reuse gold mine and define the character and desireability people are looking for today.
That's exactly what happened in River North 25 or so years ago when Friedman cracked that whole area open. What Sterling Bay did to the West Loop is almost identical in process and reason.
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River North got decimated for parking lots because it was a short walk into the Loop or Mag Mile. Decades later, those parking lots are still profitable so they're hard to redevelop. We've seen most of them get built up regardless, but it's not surprising there are still a few holdouts. E.G. some old Italian guy who owns a River North parking lot as his retirement plan and has no desire to sell the land and lose his cash flow.
West Loop (west of I-90) didn't get decimated the same way, it was too scary for commuter parking with Skid Row and still valuable to meatpackers and other industrial users for production. Not to say there weren't parking lots, but they were usually for employees or truck storage and not public lots. As the industrial users left, there's been a steady stream of sites coming on the market for development.