Quote:
Originally Posted by thegoatman
53rd st in Hyde Park on the southside is also almost built out also. It's like having walkable, vibrant streets +a large concentration of disposable income and a general sense of safety and security attract retail tenants, unlike mini stroad highways such as Western, Cicero, and Ashland  |
Bold addition mine. With those two factors in place, there would likely be a lot less vacancy on several stretches of 71st and 75th.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Steely Dan
what's interesting to note is that north of Irving, Ashland has always been almost entirely residential, and that's mostly because clark runs so close to it for that stretch of the northside and serves as the main retail street for the area precisely because clark is so much more pleasantly scaled to be such.
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Relatively minor nitpick or addition - the historic cause of the change in development pattern there is almost certainly the routing of the #9 streetcar, which had it's layover/turnaround at roughly the same spot as the current northern terminus of the #9 bus. North of Cortland, the Ashland streetcar route branched to run on both Ashland and Southport up to Irving Park. Of course, it was probably never extended further north because of how close Ashland gets to Clark, as you say.
Also, much of Ashland was widened in the 1930s as part of making it a continuous North-South crosstown arterial with e.g. the bridges over the river around elston, Clybourn, Webster, etc. The widening can be seen pretty plainly in some spots like through West Town/Ukie Village based on some of the chopped parcels and buildings that got facadectomied. I'm not sure of the exact impacts of the widenings in the northern stretch.
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