We don't have a time or place yet, but word has it that Ald. Hairston will conduct a community meeting on the 14th of November regarding the proposed Solstice Building. Construction always inconveniences some of the neighbors and no project is ever perfect, but the Alderman needs to know that some Hyde Parkers want this building to go up.
What we've been referring to as "Windermere West", the proposed new condo building at 56th & Cornell, will apparently be called "Solstice on the Park". The photos here are renditions of the buildings that I got from an inside source and may be subject to change.
No one, not even the owners of the project will ever consider the building perfect and I'm no exception. I would rather have seen some retail on the ground floor, but Eli Ungar stated recently that he felt that would be "inappropriate" for that corner. Compromises should be part of any responsible development. There's so much to like about this project that I'm willing to support it with enthusiasm despite the nitpicks.
We're coming up on another anniversary of the Orange Line, which opened on Halloween in 1993. A 1982 environmental impact study for the proposed project came very close to predicting the initial ridership. Construction then lasted from 1985 to 1993 and cost about half a billion dollars, which was also in line with estimates. By October 1994, ridership increased another 41% and from 1994 to 2006 ridership increased again by nearly 36%. Here are station-by-station breakdowns (Oct 1994 and Oct 2006, weekday boardings):
Midway 6292 9304
Pulaski 4930 5565
Kedzie 2419 3238
Western 2950 3632
35th 1968 2764
Ashland 1180 1505
Halsted 1384 2715
TOTAL 21123 28723
The 1995 LaBelle-Stuart CTA study reported:
Preliminary analysis indicates that the Line has increased transit ridership overall in the Southwest Corridor by 31.0%, raising transit's mode share of work trips from 16.4% to 21.5%... (B)y October 1995, a net impact of 5,700 average weekday cold starts, and 100,300 average weekday automobile vehicle-miles, were being avoided by the Orange Line.
That automobile avoidance represents a significant win for air quality.
One oddity about the Orange Line is that it's actually owned by the City of Chicago, not the CTA. The City could have treated it in a manner different from the rest of the CTA rail lines, roping it off and making CTA riders pay an entire second fare to board. Obviously, that would have significantly reduced its utility, both for riders of the Orange Line and for other CTA riders. An idea so ridiculous never came up as far as I can tell. Even though the Orange Line is owned by the City, instead of the CTA, riders can transfer to other lines for the usual transfer cost, just as if it were owned by the CTA.
Now consider the South Chicago branch of the METRA. This line exists completely within the City of Chicago, yet it's subsidized by taxpayers in suburban Cook County and in the collar counties. Riders on this Chicago-only branch have to pay an entire second fare to board CTA vehicles, and vice-versa. The utility of the South Chicago METRA branch is therefore significantly harmed, pretty much confined to commuters going from home to work on that one train. If we were setting up this line from scratch, we would never do it this way.
That's an architect's rendering of the Antheus building to be constructed at 56th & Cornell, across from the Museum of Science & Industry. It's all about green, according to Andrew Blum:
Look up at the sun. (Ouch!) Now look down at the ground. (Ahhh.) That pretty much sums up architect Jeanne Gang's breathtakingly simple approach to reducing energy use in Windermere West, a 26-story condominium destined for Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. She tilted two-thirds of the south-facing floor-to-ceiling windows away from the sun, letting the structure make its own shade — no duckbill protrusions required.
Hmmmm. I think I like it.
One of the most beautiful things about the internet is its ability to bring folks together who share microniche enthusiasms. Such is the case with this forum for skyscraper fans.
Skyscrapers tend to rely on public transit, so there's a whole section on that, including a thread on the CTA funding mess that probably runs about 500 posts long. There's another thread on the high cost of providing parking. And this on a site that's really international in nature.
1) The City of Chicago owns the residential streets.
2) Therefore, it owns the parking spaces on those streets.
3) The city would be within its rights to charge for residential street parking (instead of raising property taxes 15%).
4) Without really thinking about it, the city has generally decided not to charge for street parking, but rather to give it away first-come, first-serve.
5) When the government gives away finite resources, we shouldn't be surprised if this creates a shortage.
If these were metered spaces, the eyesore would be gone, there'd be an empty space for someone else to use and the city would have a source of revenue besides taxation.
In a Hyde Park Progress comment, Deep Throat ruminates about the Co-op's sales:
Based on Treasurer Lowenthal's financial report at the annual meeting, it looks like even the 55th Street store has trailed industry benchmarks for the last few years. For example, revenue growth from that store has essentially been flat from FY 2003 through FY 2007. (This was shown in bar chart form, so I don't have actual figures yet).
The flat growth actually goes back all the way to 1995, I believe. Yes, the Co-op's sales have essentially been flat since 1995-- and there was only one store owned by the Society at the time. However, on a square footage basis, I'm told that our sales are very respectable.
Just for perspective, supermarket sales typically grow in line with GDP -- unless there have been some changes in the local trading area, like an increase in population. So, we would expect the Co-Op's sales to grow about 2% a year, and we'd throw in another 1% in food inflation (though we expect food inflation to be higher this calendar year thanks to higher feed prices and a worldwide surge in demand for dairy). So, in the absence of any big change in population or nearby competitors, we should be seeing the 55th Street store rack up sales growth in the neighborhood of 3% annually.
That's sales for the entire grocery industry, which is the wrong benchmark to use. The appropriate benchmark would be year-to-year same-store sales for similar non-niche players in the city like Dominick's or Jewel. If there were a decent sample size of 30,000 square foot stores, then an average of their year-to-year might be even more appropriate. I don't know what either figure would be. Nonetheless, I'd agree that a sales target for the Co-op should be about 30% higher than current, somewhere in the $32M range. However, before we got to that figure, we'd probably have parking lot woes, so that last $3M might be tough.
At the very least, I would have expected to see some modest bump in 55th Street sales in FY 2005 when the 47th Street store closed and shoppers would have shifted to the original location.
Well, you also want to keep in mind that this fiscal year includes the unforgivable tragedy of losing the register scanners for several weeks last fall. That we were able to still recover and make over $1M at the 55th St store seems remarkable in the context of that and not having a General Manager for nine months.
I'm also lost with the Co-Op's murky financials. And I pick apart financial statements to diagnose companies for a living. This is some of the worst disclosure I've ever run across. The Co-Op is not a privately-held entity where financial conditions can be kept quiet -- it is accountable to its 22,000 members who have an ownership stake in the business.
Oh, I'd guess our disclosures are typical for a one-store, $25M business. That's not sufficient, but it compares favorably with what you'd get from any non-cooperative business. Plus, the written disclosures are not the totality of what's available. Any member is welcome to come to the O&F meetings once a month and ask questions. I've never seen Treasurer Lowenthal refuse to answer a reasonable question.
Just keep in mind that personnel, vendor relations and real estate are privileged and not information that companies tend to share in public forums, even with their stockholders. And again, you're expecting the Co-op to be especially forthcoming when you're choosing to keep your own identity secret.
Yeah, someone posting under the name "Deep Throat" at Hyde Park Progress feels the Co-op is not being forthcoming enough:
I am still in the process of sorting through the historical financial statements, and the very poor disclosure has substantially hampered my efforts...
On the one hand, the Co-Op reported net income of $809,299 in fiscal 2006 from continuing operations, which basically means the 55th Street and 53rd Street stores. The audited financial statements did not disclose net income by individual store, so I cannot find any evidence of the $1 million in profits that has been mentioned on the blog before. (If anyone does have knowledge of where I can find these numbers in the audited financial statements, then please point me in the right direction!)
Ok, I'll point you in the right direction. Why don't you just show up at the O&F meeting just before the board meeting this coming Monday. 5:30pm. Basement of Co-op. Huge, huge secret, apparently, even though it's often written up in the Herald and our minutes are in the everGreen.
And no one anywhere has ever meant to imply that the Co-op as a total entity has made $1M in any recent year. The claim-- and this is a fact-- is that the 55th St. store has averaged over $1M in profits the last five years. This year, I think it made closer to $1.3M. Sometimes, people use "the Co-op" as shorthand for the 55th St store, which is true in a sense but may not convey the whole picture.
Watching C-Pop and Deep Throat try to get to the bottom of this is like watching a couple people try to feel their way around a dark room. Turn the lights on, wouldya? The board has explained our financials in a piecemeal fashion and we need to put it together in a neat package, I think. And, there are some things-- like vendor relations, real estate and personnel issues-- that should generally be kept under wraps. But no one is trying to get away with anything. Much of this information can be explained to any member simply for the asking.
Still, where do these two get off chiding a business for not being open enough when they won't even tell us their own names?
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