CHICAGO | General Discussions

[HomrQT]

Originally Posted by ardecila

Yeah I think the city stopped expanding the Pedway system for good reasons. Underground construction is expensive, and as the Loop got cleaned up in the 1990s, people didn't hesitate to walk around at street level anymore.

I still think pedways make sense in certain cases - we need better, sealed connections between CTA and Metra stops - but we don't need a full-fledged street network below ground.

Keeping people out of the extreme cold or rain and giving people a way to walk uninhibited by car traffic to their destination are huge reasons why the pedway needs to continue to be expanded. Also not having the deafening elevated tracks above you is a nice plus.

[left of center]

Originally Posted by HomrQT

Keeping people out of the extreme cold or rain and giving people a way to walk uninhibited by car traffic to their destination are huge reasons why the pedway needs to continue to be expanded. Also not having the deafening elevated tracks above you is a nice plus.

I love it when L trains pass overheard. Makes the city feel so damn urban and alive. (Might be a different matter if I'm taking an important phone call, lol)

I'll agree that it is a nice respite from inclement weather, but other great cities get along just fine without a pedway. New York's weather isn't much better than what we get here in Chicago, for instance.

We should definitely maintain and improve on the existing pedway that we have, but there are probably other projects the city should give priority to over expanding the pedway, IMO.

[ardecila]

Originally Posted by HomrQT

Keeping people out of the extreme cold or rain and giving people a way to walk uninhibited by car traffic to their destination are huge reasons why the pedway needs to continue to be expanded. Also not having the deafening elevated tracks above you is a nice plus.

We've built great cities with streets for thousands of years, I don't see why we need to abandon the concept now. If you can't deal with varying weather conditions and dress properly, maybe you belong in LA... The streets of the Loop are vibrant enough that I never gripe about walking around even during inclement weather.

When pedways/skyways are taken to the extreme, like Minneapolis, the street level just becomes a featureless sewer filled with parking garage exits and fast-food ventilators. At off-hours, the lower number of pedestrians is split over two levels, which just decreases the number of "eyes on the street" and encourages crime.

[cannedairspray]

Were those some of the tunnels involved in this infamous event from when I was a kid?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_flood

I vaguely remember this making downtown a no-go zone, which either made us all late for school or had school cancelled altogether. Not sure which.

[left of center]

^ Different tunnels. Those were caused by accidentally breaching the old Chicago Tunnel company tunnels. There are almost 60 miles of track under nearly every street in the Loop, extending under the river to the West Loop and River North as well.


Source: nap.edu

The tunnels had small freight trains that used to haul things like coal, mail, and garbage to/from buildings downtown, in order to avoid the heavily congested streets and bridges.

[KWillChicago]

^ Supposedly Capone used them to transport booze from the north side to the loop as well. Avoiding street traffic (police) and having access to old buildings basements without being seen must have been quite the convienance.

[donnie]

Originally Posted by KWillChicago

^ Supposedly Capone used them to transport booze from the north side to the loop as well. Avoiding street traffic (police) and having access to old buildings basements without being seen must have been quite the convienance.

I live close to Chevy Chase in Northwest suburbs where one of his homes had a tunnel that went underneath Milwaukee rd into the forest preserve!
Read this http://www.wheelinghistoricalsociety...10/Albump4.htm

[IrishIllini]

Originally Posted by donnie

I live close to Chevy Chase in Northwest suburbs where one of his homes had a tunnel that went underneath Milwaukee rd into the forest preserve!
Read this http://www.wheelinghistoricalsociety...10/Albump4.htm

Capone? Was there even anything out there during his reign? Kind of a hike form his south side headquarters, especially in the early-ish 20th century. I know the club has been there for some time. Was it originally a weekend resort away from the city that just got enveloped by suburban development?

[Tom In Chicago]

Not sure I saw this posted anywhere else in the forums, but it's worth noting. . .

https://chicago.curbed.com/2018/3/13...t-architecture

Steely Dan will no doubt find it of interest. . .

. . .

[bnk]

Not to side track but holey shit Loyola !

Elite 8 now.

There are tons of news stories explaining what Loyola is.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sport...1e4_story.html


Take a tour of Loyola Chicago, which wasn’t a sports school until last week



By Chuck Culpepper March 21 at 4:56 PM 


CHICAGO — Yes, but what exactly is this Loyola University Chicago?

Is it small? (Not really. It has 16,673 students.)

Is it urban-grimy? (No, it’s urban-gorgeous, with a rectangular West Quad and, just in case you didn’t fancy that quad, an egg-shaped East Quad.)

Where is it? (It’s umpteen stops up the “L” red line from downtown, north enough that you start to think about Northwestern even if you disembark before reaching Northwestern which, like many places, has one fewer men’s basketball national title than Loyola.)

Is it near Lake Michigan? (Yes, it backs right up to that beast, which snarled on Tuesday, when some wind gusts felt merely frigid, where others felt just plainly rude, where others felt barbarously, sadistically, ruthlessly, inhumanely, vilely disgusting.)


Has it any recent sports glory? (Yes, the men’s volleyball team won back-to-back national titles in 2014 and 2015.)

Why is the sudden presence of this LUC in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament so charming?




(How much time do you have?)

...

The national media has to call it Loyola of Chicago. To me it was always just Loyola, a conservative Jesuit campus right on the lake just a few miles south from Northwestern university.

Not its not small, no its not in the hood.

Yes they have their own medical hospitals and med school pipelines.


Loyola bought huge Adverts on TV tonight.

This will not only benefit the basketball program that I could care less about.
But the University is shining on a national stage right now.


BTW my step daughter is attending Loyola pre med, even though they do not have an official pre med major, to get into medicine as a doctor.

She got pretty much a half ride, scholarship of 22K per year for 4 years guaranteed as long as she makes the GPA requirements.

I am positive she will. Took all honor courses, has an ACT of 31, 35 in science. We wanted to send her to NW but we never got an acceptance.

GD Northwestern must be awesomely hard to get into.


In two years I will have 4 children under my care in collage at the same time. Two of mine are my biological and two are my GF's.

Right not I am only supporting one her oldest. I got three more to go in rapid succession. My kids will be 16 next year and they already are looking at NW and U of Chicago, and many other top programs. My twins are also elite college prep educated and not just nerds, they play multi sports too right now.

To me this is the meaning of life. Giving the best I can to give my blood the best education they can receive, and pass on that incredible bnk genes.

We need all of the scholarships we can get. I need my snowbird house someday.

[LouisVanDerWright]

As a Loyola grad who played pep band for the basketball ball team when they were miserable:

HELL YEAH! GO RAMBLERS!

They play a 9 seed for a trip to the final four so things could get even crazier!

[left of center]

^ Could've been worse. Kentucky was the 5 seed. Lucky that K State did the dirty work of dispatching them later on last night.

I'm a UIC grad and fondly remember the crosstown rivalry between the Flames and Ramblers before Loyola ditched the Horizon League for Missouri Valley. Since the Flames haven't been all that good since their NCAA appearances in 02 and 04, I've been rooting for the Ramblers.

Tomorrow is going to be a very inebriating day

[left of center]

Bill Gates believed to have bought Hyde Park mansion
Source: http://www.chicagotribune.com/classi...430-story.html

Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda, appear to have paid $1.25 million for a five-bedroom, 3,000-square-foot house in the South Side Hyde Park neighborhood through a land trust on April 4.

Seattle attorney Christopher Carletti, who frequently represents the Gates family in property transactions, is listed on the Hyde Park property’s deed as the trustee for the trust that purchased the Hyde Park home. Carletti declined to respond to numerous requests for comment.

The purchase deed for the Hyde Park home states that its property tax bills will be sent to a second-floor office unit in a suburban Seattle office park. The sole occupant of that suburban Seattle office suite is the Gates family's private business interests.

...

The reason for the purchase of the three-story house could not be determined, although its proximity to the University of Chicago — it’s just three houses from campus — and the fact that the Gateses’ son, Rory, is college-age may offer a clue.

[Steely Dan]

^ damn, my parents only bought me a 4 bedroom, 2,500 SF house for $900,000 when i went off to college.

those Gates kids get all the breaks.

[Halsted & Villagio]

^ This is the best news I have heard all day! Hopefully property values spike in the area a little bit as a result of having one of the richest men in the world as a neighbor. I don't have a mansion but I am close enough to this area and the U of C where I would still expect to receive some benefit of a spike.

As for the city as a whole, he will obviously be spending more time here, who knows what that could lead to. Maybe nothing but then again, maybe he sees an investment opportunity or two... or three. The reality is it can never hurt having guys like that around.

[left of center]

^ My thoughts exactly. While Bill isn't in charge of the day to day decision making at Microsoft anymore, I'm sure he wields more than enough influence on the board and on the current CEO that if he so chose, he could sway to open up a larger operations center in the city.

Wishful thinking, but who knows...

[the urban politician]

Guys, let's stop acting like Chicago is Podunk, Mississippi.

Having said that, Bill Gates galavanting around town is less appealing to me than having a Gates as a U of C alumnus. I'm seeing major donations some day in the future...

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

Guys, let's stop acting like Chicago is Podunk, Mississippi.

Having said that, Bill Gates galavanting around town is less appealing to me than having a Gates as a U of C alumnus. I'm seeing major donations some day in the future...

Exactly my thoughts. It would be cool if his son goes there but even better if Gates decided to be involved in U of C somehow.

[marothisu]

Was just reading something on Reddit where someone posted a topic 3 weeks ago saying they saw or met Gates' son at a prospective weekend so it's looking like it's for his son.

[Halsted & Villagio]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

Guys, let's stop acting like Chicago is Podunk, Mississippi.

Having said that, Bill Gates galavanting around town is less appealing to me than having a Gates as a U of C alumnus. I'm seeing major donations some day in the future...

Quite a stretch there to equate feeling good about one of the richest men in the world as a resident (being reasonably hopeful that he may chose to invest in either this city or the U of C), with deducting that it means we are Podunk, Mississippi. I think any city in the world (save possibly Dubai) would take note of such a man moving to their city and reasonably posit would it could possibly portend.

Moreover, not everything is about dollars and cents. Just like there is something to be said for the civic esteem of a city that wins Amazon HQ2, there is also something to be said morale/esteem wise to have a very "high profile" man who happens to be one of richest men in the world residing in our city. There is a reason this was covered by the Trib afterall. This man is obviously no ordinary home buyer.

Of particular note for me, having one of the richest men in the world residing on the beleaguered South side (particularly as a neighbor of mine) is cause for a small celebration in my book. Come on Ken Griffin, you can be next