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When Chicagoist looked for condos throughout the spring of 2004, we often caught ourselves gazing at tangled masses of red brick and limestone and wondering, "Could we really live in something so ugly, even if we love it on the inside?" We luckily found a place that begged no such question, but admittedly never considered this similarly pressing issue: "Could we live in a place that bears a simply ridiculous name?"
Low interest rates and a booming urban market means real estate developers are pushing new residential projects at unparallelled levels, and that makes some of these buildings' senseless monikers even more perplexing. Chicagoist has noticed a few from the north side to the Loop... let's start in Edgewater after the jump, and work our way south for a few examples.
A hulking residential mass is currently rising on the corner of Bryn Mawr and Sheridan, at the edge of the Bryn Mawr historic district, and will be known to all as "Atelier". Well, this word has clearly been the "go to" name for hip boutiques and restaurants in the past year or so, but it essentially means "an artist's space or studio," and is most often used to refer to experimentation, collaboration and innovation in such a settting. Does it really fit for average-looking condos that will likely be sold to account executives and marketing managers? Are the folks from HGTV planning on dropping by for some designers' challenging? We think not, and therefore, Atelier gets a B-.
Moving south on Sheridan, we come across the soaring glass and steel construction of Uptown's newest high-rise, the "Parvenu". Not a bad looking building, truth be told, but Chicagoist winces at the name. Babel Fish will tell you that "parvenu" means "arrived," which is pretentious enough as it is, but the word is generally used in this country to imply nouveau-riche raffishness and money without class. This whole thing could essentially be a twisted joke or unsettlingly self-infating, so Parvenu gets a C-.
We'll make a quick detour onto Sheffield as it nears Clark St., for a different-but-related blunder. Chicagoist would hope that developers could actually spell the names of the streets they're building on, but noticed that a new construction six-flat temporarily boasted a concrete frieze reading "The Scheffield." We can't even give this one a grade.
Finally, we'll emerge from the Red Line station to find the greatest horror of all, courtesy of four simple letters that seem borrowed from Billy Idol's "Rebel Yell": MoMo. Yes, "MoMo". A peek at the Web site indicates that this utter stupidity stands for "Modern Momentum," but would you plop down a half million bucks to tell people you lived at MoMo? What kind of MoMos do they take us for, anyway? MoMo, you get a D-.
Chicagoist is primarily familiar with the north side's developments due to our daily Red Line trek, but hopes readers can provide glimpses of real estate flowers blossoming in their back yards, as well.
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The naming of real estate is, indeed, ludicrous.
My question is: what constitutes a "luxury" condo--as opposed to your normal, run-of-the-mill condo? No matter how stupid the name of the new development is, it is almost a 100% percent likelihood that it will be tagged as a "luxury condo."
I've wondered this, too. Kitchens seem to be the easiest place to assess the overall luxury level of a condo. I see adds that show pretty stock Home Depot cabinets, formica counters and mid-range appliances advertised as "luxury." I want to see granite, stainless and high end cabinetry for something to be luxury.
Maybe it's kind of like Starbuck's and their size inflation that was discussed in a post the other day. You've got Luxury, Super Luxury, and Ultra Luxury condos on the market.
Your illustration is not of the big buildings, but of the width-of-a-2-car-garage crap which is displacing real housing all over the North Side.
It's the four plus ones of the decade. It'll be neighborhood-ruining slums after the crash, when people with negative equity walk away from their leaky, inferior cardboard boxes.
cheers,
Neil
How about suburbs that just plain lie? There are no country clubs and no hills in Country Club Hills. Justice? Worth?
The term luxury has been overused so much, it means nothing anymore. I am one of those that purchased a "luxury" "loft condo" in the last few years. Complete with granite counters, marble vanity, and so on. Yes, my "luxury" counters are 3/4 inch charcoal gray granite (I wasn't given a color choice), My maple shaker style cabinets are real wood (but they look very Home Depot), and I do have a white marble vanity top (mounted on a cheap Menards style cabinet). But it is far from luxury. These amenities have almost become the standard by which all new construction is measured. Builders use their buying power to negotiate for the lowest priced "luxury" items, like my low end granite, and then dumb the whole place down to appeal to the masses. I remember having a choice of beige, beige, beige, or beige carpet (I chose beige, and then tore it up and have concrete). Making it banal and bland, worked for my building, they sold out the 100 units in three day's.
The saving grace for me, and the reason I purchased it, is because I get to live in a funky former warehouse space, in the middle of the Loop. My building is far from luxury, but for me it has location, and in the long run, that means more to me. (besides, I hope to rip out the solid maple cabinets and put something more interesting in, as well as re-do the bathroom, and lay walnut floors.)
The "MoMo" website is a really bad rip off of MoMa's look in NYC.
Real estate people do seem to have a flair for bizarre names. There is, in Westmont, an unpleasant development, consisting as nearly as I can tell of ratty-looking townhouses (or "townhomes", in real estate-ese) called "Citadel-on-the-Pond". The pond itself is ugly, and manmade, apparentlty so the developers wouldn't have to go with "Citadel-not-on-the-Pond". And (Something) Pointe? Real estate people are, in most cases, an embarassment to the rest of humanity
Real estate people do seem to have a flair for bizarre names. There is, in Westmont, an unpleasant development, consisting as nearly as I can tell of ratty-looking townhouses (or "townhomes", in real estate-ese) called "Citadel-on-the-Pond". The pond itself is ugly, and manmade, apparently so the developers wouldn't have to go with "Citadel-not-on-the-Pond". And (Something) Pointe? Real estate people are, in most cases, an embarassment to the rest of humanity.
My personal favorite out in the 'burbs... (hey, i don't claim to be from chicago, but spending 50% of my day in the loops gives me some kind of claim?.. guess not.)
anyway out in Naperville there is a neighborhood named... "Stillwater." Even if they were referring to moonshine, I wouldn't want the label on my trailer-park. Why not just name it "swampland" or "floodplane" or "big stinky pond" and be done with it?
Oddly enough, the neighborhood resembled it's name back in the great floods during the summer of '96. Most of the then under construction homes were under 3 to 9 feet of water.
I love this topic! I am a real estate agent here in Chicago and I loooooove all the dumb names I see on many new developments.
Yes, the "Parvenu" is pretentious...but they dumped the name ...now its "1000 W. Leland"....across the street from it another ho-hum mid-rise is going up on the site of the old Checkers-turned-Harold's Chicken Shack #???....so my neighborhood buddy and I have logically named the building "Harold's Chicken Shack Condominum Place" or "The Residences of Harold's Chicken Condominum Place".....but MY FAVORITE DUMB CONDO NAME OF ALL TIME is....the sexy-named building at the corner of Balmoral and Winchester! I kid you not, they named it..."The Ballchester". Now there's a place you can be proud to call home!
I've got a new one - on the South Side, right on Stoney Island next to Trinity Church - it looked like a saw a development called "Revelation Pointe" - could I be right about this? Has anyone else seen this?
Over a year ago I mailed a copy of a Parvenu ad to a friend, incredulous that anyone could so hilariously misuse a word. Of course, "a parvenu" has always been a French expression used to refer to someone who by virtue of some dishonorable machination, clout or bribe has simply "barged their way in" to a social context where they are conspicuous inferiors. Hopefully they will build a twin tower component to complete the project names "The Arriviste" - another French originated expression meaning virtually the same thing.
I just belatedly stumbled on this interesting thread about stupid names for real estate developments and the definition of luxury housing.
The Chicago real estate industry currently (Dec. '05) defines luxury as a development priced at at least $600 per-square-foot, regardless of types of finish, although the granite/stainless steel deal seems mandatory these days in even the most humble new construction. So basically, if you have a building in a halfway decent location, it can be made of concrete and have a few nice finishes and qualify as luxury.
As for ugly names: You do a public service in pointing out the travesty that is "Parvenu". I work at the real estate mag New Homes and our new blog YoChicago (www.yochicago.com or www.newhomes1.com) has written a couple of things about poorly chosen names such as Vetro (new South Loop highrise). Apparently it's Italian for glass, but to us it sounded medicinal, possibly a new form of artificial insemination.
I really enjoy your blog, by the way, hope to see you at ours sometime soon.
http://motorcyclecity.com/smessages/159012.htm complimentwhosewondered