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Old Posted Sep 17, 2021, 8:23 PM
marothisu marothisu is offline
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Location: Chicago
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ardecila View Post
We'll see. Old Town Park is at the doorstep of two long-standing entertainment areas and a Red Line stop. 3 supermarkets nearby plus a 4th in OTP itself. Walkable to the lakefront. Truly an excellent location once they figured out how to handle the existing Atrium Village affordable housing. The only reason it hadn't developed earlier was Cabrini stigma. If they couldn't keep the towers going up continuously it would be because they f'ed it up.

The Greyhound site is much more isolated. Hefty walk to the Blue Line, although it does have Halsted bus to West Loop and Chicago bus to Mag Mile. No real amenities within an easy walking distance. I think if they want to keep the towers going up they will need to do whatever it takes to bring some amenities in Phase I (grocery store) even if they need to subsidize it for a few years.

More likely they will just front-load a ton of parking into Phase I so the first residents can just drive to get what they need. The renderings did show some weird glass skybridges that suggest some kind of shared parking garage. Overall the development has a 53% parking ratio but I think Phase I will be closer to 100%. As future phases go up they can re-allocate some of the existing parking to serve those phases.
I think I did it before, but I'm going to draw parallels to where I've lived in NYC for nearly 3 years to this. It just happens to be right on the water too, and it just so happens to be a half mile walk to the nearest train stop. The same exact distance as 901 N Halsted is to the Chicago Blue Line stop. There are some buildings near me which are a little further distance to the train stop than we are too.

When I first moved here, I thought it would be such a pain and such a long walk. I was dreading it because in Manhattan, my train stop was 1 block away. For most of the year it's not that actually that bad. It's a 10 minute walk. What makes it even better is that my landlord, who owns multiple buildings here, has a free resident shuttle to and from the train stop which makes it easy. It runs every day too and most of the day, at least until something like 8pm.

This area I'm detailing has 7 high rises with 6418 official residents in 2020 (as of the official Census). Very very popular even though it's a half a mile from the train and most people take a train to work, or a ferry. What helps is that each building has some sort of food in it, or cafe...with one building having a little clothing store. One building also has a grocery store.

15 to 20 years ago, this area was completely full of warehouses and vacant lots. It's extremely popular now and something like 4 or 5 high rises are being built right now on the other end of a ~0.75 mile road where those high rises are still a half a mile or more from the nearest train stop. They have 2 or 3 more planned for there too which haven't even started yet. There are other buildings in between this too with many residents too, but it's still about 1/3 mile walk even for them.


I think that if this on Goose Island can do something similar - put in a grocery store, get a few restaurants, coffee shops, etc then honestly I don't see why it can't be successful just like my current neighborhood in NYC...which has some strong-ish parallels to be honest. I don't think anybody in their right mind 20 years ago would have ever foreseen what happened to our neighborhood in NYC but here we are. To be quite frank, it's probably the nicest neighborhood I've lived in either Chicago or NYC from an overall perspective because of what they've done here - but that's been a huge WIP over many years.


Just to give an idea, that many years ago would have looked like this over there (this one is close by - you can see high rises in the background):
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7493...7i16384!8i8192

Today:
https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7485...7i16384!8i8192
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Last edited by marothisu; Sep 17, 2021 at 8:37 PM.
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