Results tagged “housingrealestate”

Two stories have us thinking about the continuing evolution of the cinematic experience and the differences between going to see a movie and just watching one. First off, "boutique" theater chain Muvico has signed a letter of intent to occupy two floors of the Block 37 development. The proposed multiplex would have only seven screens, much smaller than the AMC RIver East 21 for example. But (to quote Seinfeld) they'd be draped in velvet, so...

Who gives last rites to the priest? Who installs a new crown in the dentist's mouth? Who buries the gravedigger? Or, more importantly, who gives the eulogy when a funeral home dies? If you're the family that has held sway over Griffin Funeral Home for 60 years, you give it yourself. The historic, African-American-owned parlor at 32nd and King Drive is closing its doors come New Year's Eve. Griffin has played host to such final...

Federal authorities must look at Mayor Daley's administration and think he's coated with more teflon than John Gotti with all the aides and "close associates" running afoul of the law. The Feds are investigating eight years of allegations that members of Daley's administration strong-armed Bridgeport property owners into selling their land to politically connected real estate developers. The Tribune article we linked to quoted Jim Mazzochi, who owns a metal plating business in the neighborhood,...

It almost plays like a plot from a trifling summer movie: The Illinois Medical District wants to build a new biotech building on the Near West Side. The kicker is, they want to build it in the same spot as a current Little League baseball field. In a letter dated Sept. 25, Medical District counsel states that the Chicago Park District must remove all improvements from Livingston Park, at Lexington and Leavitt, so that construction...

From Rogers Park up north to Pullman in the wild-wild hundreds, Chicago is a town full of renters. But there is a problem. The Center for Housing Policy, a national organization that examines housing policies and programs, has reported that Chicago ranks 17th out of 31 areas studied in their Least to Most Affordable Rental Markets. Even more distressing is their finding that 43,000 families are spending more than half their income on rent. Another...

Let's start with a tough question: Who is Chicago's greatest filmmaker? When it comes to experimental film some might advocate for James Fotopoulos, whose output is both prodigious and relentlessly probing. When it comes to documentaries, Steve James is more than formidable. And on the narrative end of things although neither Andrew Davis nor John Landis quite make the grade, they've both had their moments. We would argue that the title should go to Tom...

Hell may freeze over yet. After all of daddy John’s efforts to demolish old Cook County General Hospital, Todd Stroger’s leading the charge to renovate the beast. The Toddler plans to make it an agenda at next week’s County Board meeting. Preservation and renovation carry a price tag of roughly $140 million. For now, the plan is to turn the 93-year-old structure into medical office space, libraries, a day-care center and, if there’s any space...

Remember growing up, there was that one graveyard you just didn’t go into? You weren’t sure why, but something about the place just gave you the creeps at any time of day. Chicagoist recalls wistfully (maybe not wistfully; more like hysterically) one dare-fuelled drive into Barrington's famed White Cemetery, where two of our friends wouldn’t even breathe the open air, opting instead to cover their mouths with their shirts. And when the car became mysteriously stuck in the boneyard’s driveway … well, it wasn’t a feel-good situation. (Later reflection points to the winter weather rather than impish ghosties.)

Back in the early ‘60s, a two-mile strip of low-income housing was completed on State between Pershing and 54th. That strip of 28 high-rises, dubbed the Robert Taylor Homes, would develop over the years into one of the most infamous housing projects of the city, if not the nation. Amid all the sensational stories of the violence, drug-dealing and poverty that surrounded the area, residents insisted the Taylor Homes were not the cesspool many believed...

August 8. August 8 is the day some have been waiting for and some have been dreading. The day Whole Foods will open in the South Loop's Southgate Market. We originally disliked the idea. Then we were pissed when it didn't open in the fall. We also worried that Whole Foods might give up on us all together when their profits were falling. But yuppies, hippies, and everyone in between rejoice: South Loop Whole...

Wicker Park and Ukrainian Village have no shortage of places where Chicagoist can satisfy its sweet tooth. We love Alliance, Milk and Honey, Letizia's and Bleeding Heart Bakery, to name a few of our favorites. But one thing we've learned is that there is never too much of a good thing, especially when it comes to desserts. When we heard Sweet Cakes, a new bakery on Damen and Augusta was open we went over...

We received the press release about State and Rush Street mainstay Melvin B's getting ready to close down a few days ago and were going to write about it, but it looked like the Sun-Times beat us to it. The site on which Melvin B's and the Cedar Hotel - a single room occupancy hotel we're surprised is still in business - now stand is being earmarked for a new 200-room boutique hotel. While some...

You know what we think would be pretty dumb? It would be dumb to rent an apartment at Adams and Wabash and then complain to the city that the trains make a loud, rumbling noise. Of course they do; they are trains. Likewise, we somehow can't wrap our minds around how someone would buy a house next to a popular neighborhood bar, and then complain about the bar and try to get it shut down....

It's now (sort of) official: Robert Redford's Sundance Cinemas has signed a lease to open an eight-screen theater on the site of the former Fannie May candy factory in the West Loop. The last time we reported on this story was way back in 2005. But as anyone waiting for a Dominick's to reopen in lakeview can tell you, real estate development often moves about as quickly as a glacier. (Tangental rhetorical question: whatever happened...

Chicagoist doesn't think about poetry much. Oh, sure, we acknowledge its timeless beauty and reason for being, mostly through the cramped pages of our high school notebooks. And we recognize its innate role in the magical media of music — after all, "my hump" and "my lumps" rhyme sublimely, do they not? Surely it must be Fate. But we jest. Overall we take poetry for granted, preferring instead the down-to-earth words of novels and stories. Maybe that standing will change in our mind once the Chicago Poetry Foundation puts up their new building in River North.

Chicagoist has a confession to make. We were not living directly in the city in 1992. Sacrilege, we know. Being the reluctant suburbanites we were, however, we couldn't help but hear about the flooding that went on in the Loop. Yes, Friday marked the 15-year anniversary of the colossal city cluster. Months before the disastrous date, construction workers rehabilitating the Kinzie Street bridge unknowingly placed some wooden pilings atop an abandoned tunnel and drove them...

Wellsir, after much hemming and hawing, it is done. The last nail was rammed into the coffin yesterday for the Farwell Building. At a special meeting to determine the edifice’s fate, the Commission on Chicago Landmarks approved a plan to destroy it and rebuild it entirely, using only the current façade in the new construction. Commissioners passed it sweepingly with an 8-1 vote, believing that this was the best fate for the crumbling Farwell. Technically...

Here we go again.

What more is there to say about Carson Pirie Scott? We’ve said so much already. There isn’t much left, much like the slim pickins inside the store, as yesterday was the last day customers were able to buy retail merchandise. We took the opportunity (although we hadn’t planned to and, truthfully, had forgotten the occasion) to scope out the place one last time.

Think carefully. Which city is a more natural choice for an environmentally sensitive convention, Chicago or Los Angeles? OK, you can stop thinking now, because the U.S. Green Building Council has moved its annual meeting from L.A. to here. The reason? A scheduling conflict with an auto show. Greenbuild, a three-day conference that revolves around developing construction that's friendlier to the environment, took place in Denver last year and brought in 13,500 attendees. This year...

It’s the beginning of the year, and that means it’s time for architectural institution Preservation Chicago to unveil its picks of the seven most endangered buildings in the city, colloquially known as the Chicago 7. We’re always interested to see what buildings, structures or districts the little-organization-that-could deems worthy of its annual list. The finalists: North Avenue Bridge. We mistakenly believed this was the bridge someone asked Chicagoist about last week, but 'tis not the...

The architectural preservationist signal went up all over town Thursday afternoon. On that day, the Commission on Chicago Landmarks went to vote on the fate of the Farwell Building, an Art Deco/French-inspired edifice at 664 N. Michigan. Prism Development Company, the Farwell's current owner, put their proposal in front of the board: To strip the outside of the 11-story landmarked building of its facade, demolish the skeleton, and reattach the facade to a newly-built 40-story...

Is the real estate market so bad now that the rental companies are fighting over customers? Not really — it should work the other way. Would-be buyers still waiting for the housing market to bottom out are choosing to rent longer, meaning companies like Apartment People and Chicago Apartment Finders should have plenty of business to go around. Somebody forgot to tell that to Robert Talamine, an Apartment People employee who was arrested for slashing...

In news that is not news to anyone who actually lives in Chicago, the New York Times discovered this weekend that Chicago's West Loop is hip. Comparing the West Loop to New York's Meatpacking District, the story discovers that, like the Meatpacking District, the West Loop transitions from a meat processing area to one where food and drink abound after the sun goes down. Interestingly enough, Chicagoist was in the West Loop last night, dining...

A Chicago judge dismissed a lawsuit against online ad service Craigslist, filed by the lengthily-named Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law because of discriminatory rental ads.

Well, the empty lot that was once a Dominick's over in Lakeview/Boystown finally has a contract on the table for a new structure and the developer for the project, Michael O'Connor of Dionysius LLC, says "the date hasn't closed yet, but the contract is hard." We're trying to leave that be, and just be grateful. Every time we walk past that gaping hole, we sigh and lose a little bit more hope that it will be just another set of boxy, half-a-million dollar condominimums.

The Chicago-area real estate market saw a precipitous drop-off in the number of sales in September this year, according to a monthly report released by the Illinois Association of Realtors. Single-family home sales fell 26 percent from last year's levels, and condos were off by almost 19 percent. Meanwhile, prices held steady. What this means is that sellers are being stubborn, clinging tooth and nail to the idea that their place is worth as much...

Topics great and small are fodder for discussions here in the Chicagoist offices. In getting to know some of our new writers last week, we were having a discussion about neighborhoods. Surprisingly, we discovered that some of us didn’t actually hang out on the streets where we live. More than one person said something along the lines of “I like this about my neighborhood, but I don’t like that.”