Hyde Park Urbanist

In Defense of Aldermanic Prerogatives

I've always been impressed by the role aldermen play in Chicago.  I'll forever remember attending a Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference annual meeting several years ago where Toni Preckwinkle took questions.  One of our neighborhood's citizens started asking her something about the mailboxes in her ward and I thought to myself that the alderman would certainly punt on what's obviously a federal question.  Quite the contrary!  Not only did Ald. Preckwinkle discuss the issue, but it turned out she had a protocol for dealing with postal issues, including monthly meetings with the postmaster for the area.

That's one-stop shopping for political issues.  For any problem that occurs in your ward, you can call the alderman and there's a good chance (s)he'll intervene on your behalf.  I've lived in several big cities and this is, generally speaking, the most customer-friendly process I've encountered.  In other places, it's just you, Joe Citizen, trying to meander thru what's often a byzantine process, dealing with municipal agents more worried about making a mistake than solving your problem.  Here, the middleman, the alderman, has a stake in things.  Get your concerns addressed by the city and she may get your loyalty come election time.

Who in the world would argue for changing that?  Richard Gill at Hyde Park Progress:

First: the Chicago system of placing the Alderman between the resident and the city is abominable. This system inserts a third party simply to relay a request. It is time-consuming and it invites errors in communication. It also makes a citizen dependent upon (and grateful to?) a politician, and that invites real problems. If 311 really functions as it should, why is the aldermanic intermediary necessary?

The first clause of that last sentence: "If 311 really functions as it should..."  Right.  In theory, you shouldn't need an alderman.  In theory, communism works.  But down here on the ground in really big cities, you need a middleman.  (And in the next paragraph Gill admits that he believes his request was relayed by the alderman's office in a timely manner.)

The crew at Hyde Park Progress have come out forcefully against Leslie Hairston's re-election.  Don't expect me to defend her.  I agree with their gripes about her fetish for ample automobile parking.  It's the only thing I strongly dislike about her, but to me that's a huge deal.  But Chicago is called "The City that Works" for good reason.  Aldermanic prerogatives invite accountability.  Replace the alderman, not the system.

June 21 Shoreland Meeting

The Shoreland project is so cool that I don't even mind doing a little advertising for Mac Properties.  June 21 at 6:30pm at Montgomery Place is the time and place for this update:

Bey on '76 Woodlawn and St. Stephens

Lee Bey's blog is always worth a glance-- and you should take a look at the combined Vocalo community for Chicago news & analysis-- but a couple recent Bey posts are worth special attention.

If you want a look at Woodlawn in 1976, check out the movie Monkey Hustle (Netflixable).  It's viewable on Hulu and Bey even tells you the times in the movie with the Woodlawn scenes so you don't have to sit thru the whole thing.

And Bey's April 12th post includes photos he took inside the St. Stephen's Church at 5640 S. Blackstone.  The property's still for sale, if you're interested.

Chicago Reader's Hyde Park Issue

You should definitely check out the Chicago Reader's extensive set of articles about our fair neighborhood.

The two hidden gems of Hyde Park-- DocFilms and the Seminary Co-op Bookstore are front and center.  But Sam Worley's article about Hyde Park as "a bastion of the Stonewall-era gay-rights movement in Chicago" told me a lot I didn't know.  A longtime Hyde Parker told me that, yeah, HP was a place a male couple could live in relative peace even before Stonewall.

And as Jack Spicer mentioned at the HPKCC board meeting on Thursday, this link takes you to a picture of a bar that looks vaguely familiar.  Rings a bell, but I can't quite place it...

TimeOut Chicago asks "What's Wrong with Hyde Park?"

TimeOut Chicago features a number of articles about Hyde Park, with the key feature entitled, "Hyde Park's Big Test".  The "Big Test" is the redevelopment of Harper Court.

There's a lot to like about the feature.  Dixie Kitchen leads off as an example of a threatened commercial establishment.  That's a good choice because the commercial vacancies here are almost all spaces awaiting redevelopment.  We'll be losing a swell restaurant, sure, but the new Harper Court complex will expand Hyde Park's commercial options significantly.  These are growing pains.  

The rest of the article talks about what's missing in HP.  Lots of knowledgeable folks are quoted: Peter Cassel, Steve Soble, Jay Ammerman, Jerry Kleiner, Jack Spicer, Steve Kloehn, David Cocagne etc.  The variety is evidence that John Slania, the author, did his homework.  I know he talked to more people than are mentioned because he called me, too, and I tried to convince him that his basic assumption was wrong.

Maybe I made an impression because that basic assumption was not explicitly mentioned in the article.  However, it did make the tease, which Slania probably didn't write:

Its residents, one of whom runs the free world, are among the smartest in the country. It sits on prime lakeside real estate and boasts gorgeous historic architecture. Hyde Park has all the trappings of a commercial star, so why is it a veritable retail and entertainment wasteland? And is salvation finally around the corner? (emphasis mine)

Hyde Park is not, I always argue, a retail and entertainment wasteland. I would heartily agree that that's the subjective judgment of most, but we have a relatively decent objective measure we could look at-- Walk Score's walkability index.  That index places us 10th among Chicago's 77 neighborhoods, just below Rogers Park & West Town, but ahead of Logan Square and Lincoln Square.  We could quibble about how good an indicator the Walk Score is, but at least it's objective.

And more importantly, the Walk Scores of Chicago's neighborhoods explain why Hyde Parkers have the perception that we're living in a retail & entertainment desert.  The walk scores for the neighborhoods around HP range from Kenwood's 25th best to Woodlawn's 45th to Washington Park's 57th.  North side neighborhoods, on the other hand, are uniformly strong, especially along the Red and Brown Line corridors.  Hyde Park is ok, but there's not enough to walk to in the neighborhoods around us.

Slania's article fails to mention HP's two incomparable gems-- DocFilms and the Seminary Co-op Bookstore.  I don't know how anyone can complain about our entertainment options without acknowledging that our student-run film series is a tremendous (and inexpensive) attraction.  Hyde Park is the best neighborhoods for bookstores in the Midwest.  The only way you can refer to HP as a retail & entertainment desert is if you decide that bookstores aren't retail and books aren't entertainment.  Liz Plosser at TimeOut Chicago has a separate article called "We heart Hyde Park" which lists thirteen reasons to visit our neighborhood.  Neither DocFilms nor Seminary Co-op makes the list.  Those two gems are incomparable because... well, because they're literally incomparable.  What other neighborhood in America, maybe the world, has a student-run film series AND a bookstore comparable in quality?

Listen, we're a quirky bunch down here.  HP's not for everyone.  If a 30-minute bus ride to the Loop is too much a burden for clothes-shopping, then you probably don't want to live here.  But let's not sell ourselves short, either.

Anyway, read thru the What's Wrong with Hyde Park feature articles.  They're balanced, even supportive of HP, I'd say, and you're bound to learn something about our neighborhood you didn't already know.  

Maroon Article on Lab School Expansion

Last week the Maroon published a pretty good article about the proposals to expand the Lab School.  Here's a lengthy portion that pretty much explains the key controversies:

(Lab School Director David) McGill outlined the pros and cons of each site. Building the ECC on the Doctors Hospital site would allow for an airier building and more room for parking, but would split Lab into two campuses, on either side of the METRA track. To address this, the school may bus students from one site to the other to prevent families with children in each from having to travel across Hyde Park.

An ECC on the current Lab Schools site wouldn’t require busing, but either the tennis courts or soccer field would need to be bulldozed to make room, and the architects said the building would be more constricted.

But Economics Professor John Cochrane and Hyde Park blogger Elizabeth Fama, Lab parents, asked at the meeting whether moving or removing the soccer field would be the easiest way to allow the ECC room it needed; demolition of the Doctors Hospital will be costly and is estimated to take three more months than the fields.

Community activist Jack Spicer agreed. “Wouldn’t you rather be busing kids to a soccer game once (in) a while...rather than busing little kids over to another site every day during the school year?” Spicer said in an interview. He also attended the meeting.

So, I imagine that Fama called up Spicer the next day to talk about strategies for opposing the University's Doctors Hospital plan. 

Hehehehehehehe!

Hahahahahaha!

Oh, sorry.  I guess I better explain that.  Fama is one of the writers on the blog Hyde Park Progress, which goes out of its way to excoriate Jack Spicer.  The original HPP trio apparently got together because of some differences over the Promontory Point controversy.  (A rarely-updated website against the Park District Point proposal is here btw).  HPP burned a lot of bridges in public for no good reason, especially in the days before Richard Gill replaced the outlandish Peter Rossi.  That's a shame because even if I didn't want to be seen with Jack Spicer, I'd still want to phone him for organizing advice on something I felt strongly about.  Hyde Parkers are notoriously independent.  If you take part in community decision-making here, you should understand that today's enemies are likely to be tomorrow's allies. 

In any case, Elizabeth Fama is a talented writer and her HPP article on the Lab School controversy deserves a read.  I can't say I have strong feelings about this issue, but I agree with her three main points-- that this is a poor use of the money the University paid for the Doctors Hospital site, that there are better uses for the site from the community's perspective and that the Early Childhood Center should probably be attached to the rest of the Lab school.  I would much prefer a larger building at the Doctors Hospital site-- something mostly residential like dorms or apartments.  And I place zero value on having a regulation-size soccer field. 

I'd like to give the University credit for the way the Lab School is handling this.  Outlining the choices and then inviting the community to comment strikes me as quite smart and I bet we'll see a wise decision made in the end.

Time Out Chicago

Just a quick note to mention that Time Out Chicago has several Hyde Park pages this month.  I'll gripe about the content later when I have more time.

(Here's a better link for the TimeOut Chicago Hyde Park articles.)

Bronzeville and the UofC Make the New York Times

On Saturday, the NY Times published articles about both the Bronzeville neighborhood sans Olympics and the importance of the University of Chicago.

I had the good fortune of going on a bus tour of North Kenwood and Oakland recently and was surprised by all the new construction.  If you haven't visited these neighborhoods in the last ten years, you might be in for a shock.  These are middle-class blocks of homeowners now.

Bernita Johnson-Gabriel, executive director of the Quad Communities Development Corporation, a neighborhood group that serves the Kenwood, Oakland and Douglas neighborhoods that make up greater Bronzeville, said hurdles to development included concerns about crime that are rooted in racial stereotypes.

“We are a neighborhood of color,” Ms. Johnson-Gabriel said. “There’s a perception of crime that obviously doesn’t quite exist here the way it is portrayed.”

Indeed, crime in the Douglas and neighboring Oakland neighborhoods fell steadily over the past decade, according to Chicago Police Department reports. Statistics show a 67 percent decline for Douglas — to 1,074 crimes in 2009 from 3,290 in 1999 — while Oakland’s number fell by more than half, to fewer than 300 from 611.

This might be a good time to buy in those neighborhoods and there will be more construction in the Michael Reese area soon, too, which should further help attract retail and services.

Rick Warren's UofC article revolves around the new book The Great American University: Its Rise to Preeminence, Its Indispensable National Role, Why it Must be Protected by Jonathan Cole:

The University of Chicago is, in his contention, “our closest approximation to the idea of a great university,” Mr. Cole said in our phone chat. “It is a meritocracy of ideas, a place where ideas flourish in an open way.”

In Hyde Park, it doesn't much matter who your parents were or how much money you have.  If you put forth an idea and defend it in a rational manner, people will listen to you.

A Couple HPP Props

I've been a bit lax on the blog updates due to just plain being busier than usual, but I wanted to quickly point out two swell Hyde Park Progress posts. 

I agree with every word of HPP's endorsement of the Shoreland Project and urge you to turn out to support it at tonight's public meeting-- 7pm, Wednesday, 30Sep-- that's tonight at the Shoreland.  If you want a tour of the building, just show up at 4:30 or 5:30pm before the meeting.

Also, Elizabeth Fama posted some great pictures of the 47th Street mural.  She did a fine job of explaining what she likes about the mural under the viaduct (and there's plenty to like), while voicing a legitimate concern.  As with most public art works, there's no money salted away to pay for maintenance, which is something that also should concern us about the Fountain of Time sculpture, btw.

Weekend

I got a lot done this weekend, except for working on my blog.

On Saturday, I mostly worked around the house, enjoying the distant strains of the Hyde Park Jazz Festival.  I lifted weights on Saturday and played racquetball on Sunday, doing well on both workouts; I've been pretty good about the gym, lately. 

Sunday, I continued my search for everyday shoes, hitting State Street and the Mag Mile.  I have exacting standards for shoes and probably hit 15 shoe before settling on a pair of nondescript Rockports for $80 at Marshall's.  I'm still not satisfied. 

But it was a gorgeous day on Sunday, probably the last day of the year when I'll feel comfortable wearing a short-sleeve shirt.  The leaves are falling and I'll soon be weatherizing my apartment-- as soon as I'm no longer able to sleep with the windows open.