http://www.lseforum.com/forum/Blah.pl? http://www.eblah.com en http://www.lseforum.com/forum/Blah.pl?m-1212170459/ http://www.lseforum.com/forum/Blah.pl?m-1212170459/#num1 U.S. City of the Year: Chicago

FastCompany.com
By: Alex Kotlowitz

Skyscrapers, green roofs, and house music -- a very American metropolis.

In the bottom of the ninth inning of the 2005 World Series, as the long-suffering Chicago White Sox were about to win their first championship in 88 years, play-by-play announcer Joe Buck waxed eloquent about Chicago's South Side, where the Sox play. He described it as "a collection of neighborhoods...Irish neighborhoods. Italian neighborhoods. Polish. Lithuanian. Firemen. Policemen. Schoolteachers. Stockyard workers." Stockyard workers? The last stockyard closed in 1971. Irish, Italian, Polish, Lithuanian? The South Side has long been predominantly African-American, and most of its immigrants now are Mexican. Yet that is how many view the city, through a lens dominated by the past. If you travel abroad and tell people you're from Chicago, they'll often pull their hands out of imaginary holsters and start shooting. To them, the city is still Al Capone's town, which it was -- nearly a century ago.

The real Chicago isn't so easy to keep up with. It's constantly reinventing itself. Jumpy. Agitated. Impatient. It's as if the place is trembling. Move aside. Don't linger. And if you're going to dawdle, get out of the way. But what any Chicagoan will also tell you is that the past is very much present. It doesn't go away. It shouldn't. In fact, that's Chicago's lure and its beauty: its ability to take what was and figure out what could be.

Consider Millennium Park. The city's spectacular growth in the late 19th century was in large part because of the railroads. Chicago, centrally located, could ship anywhere and receive anything. But 100 years later, the railroads here had become near relics; the dozens of Illinois Central Railroad tracks that converged downtown, an eyesore. So what did Chicago do? It covered some 25 acres of tracks and commuter lines with a massive platform, one so sturdy that it could build a park on it. It made the park's centerpiece a band shell, designed by Frank Gehry, that feels simultaneously whimsical (it resembles a tangled ribbon tossed by the Lake Michigan breeze) and brawny (that ribbon is made of steel, a call to the city's past as a center of industrial might). Some 100 years ago, Daniel Burnham, who oversaw the construction of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition and drew a layout for the city that included putting everyone within walking distance of a park, declared, "Make no little plans."

And so Chicago does not. FAST COMPANY has named it U.S. City of the Year, recognizing not its past but its present -- and its future -- as a place where there's room to stretch. Chicago has given America social investing and the stories of Stuart Dybek and Aleksander Hemon. It has been greening itself since long before it became trendy, and it has been dancing, too -- this is the home of house music, Wilco, and Lupe Fiasco. Here, in the birthplace of the American skyscraper, Santiago Calatrava is redefining the form with his Spire, while at the Art Institute, Renzo Piano is building a $300 million addition. The economy is growing faster than New York's or L.A.'s. And one of Chicago's own, who arrived in the 1980s and, in the tradition of the great rabble-rouser Saul Alinsky, took a job community organizing, has made a shockingly viable run for president, despite everyone telling him he was too inexperienced. Early in his campaign, Barack Obama told supporters, "I try to explain to people, I may be skinny but I'm tough. I'm from Chicago."

]]> Fri, 30 May 2008 14:00:59 Admin http://www.lseforum.com/forum/Blah.pl?m-1210447250/ http://www.lseforum.com/forum/Blah.pl?m-1210447250/#num1 The Nichols Bridge by Reno Piano spans from Art Instituite's new addition to Millennium Park
MAY 10, 2008





















]]> Sat, 10 May 2008 15:20:50 Admin http://www.lseforum.com/forum/Blah.pl?m-1210285181/ http://www.lseforum.com/forum/Blah.pl?m-1210285181/#num1

http://www.aquaowners.com/aquacam.htm

http://www.spireowners.com/spirecam.htm]]> Thu, 8 May 2008 18:19:41 Admin http://www.lseforum.com/forum/Blah.pl?m-1210183857/ http://www.lseforum.com/forum/Blah.pl?m-1210183857/#num1 CHICAGO MAG.COM
Housing Bulletin— Neighborhood Info @ Your Service
By Dennis Rodkin
Two weeks ago, the Chicago real-estate agency @properties rolled out a cool tool for house hunters and sellers on its Web site. The @Report, as they call it, is built on the idea that real-estate markets are very, very local.

The eight-year-old agency has offices or agents working in 21 Chicago neighborhoods (most of the lakefront from Rogers Park to South Shore, plus a layer or two of inland neighborhoods for much of that stretch); this new tool puts the details on all those neighborhoods into nice capsule write-ups.

It’s like talking to an agent who works the neighborhood: You will find specifics on how prices have changed in the neighborhood at various price tiers, and what are the hottest-selling sections or developments within the neighborhood. There are also brief analyses of why prices went where they did. In its write-up of Hyde Park, for example, the @Report notes that the neighborhood has two major employers (the University of Chicago and its hospitals) that are recession-proof, a possible explanation for a steady pace of sales there in all but the highest-priced homes.

“As opposed to having someone tell you that average appreciation in Chicago was two-tenths of one percent, if you’re in Bucktown you need to know what’s happening right there,” says Thad Wong, a co-founder and now CEO of @Properties. “We’re not taking the temperature of the whole city; we’re taking the temperature of each neighborhood.”

He notes, for example, that single-family home prices in Bucktown jumped 12 percent in 2007, while in nearby Humboldt Park, they dropped 3 percent. This is the kind of information that both buyers and sellers need, particularly now, when the market is in such disarray. “Bucktown is doing fantastically well; Uptown is doing very well; some of the staples like the Gold Coast are doing well,” Wong says. “But you need to know exactly how well they’re doing or aren’t doing. We’re telling you what’s going on in the local markets.” (For the record: at Chicago magazine, we do the same thing annually—in our October issue—for every neighborhood in the city and more than 200 suburbs.)

Along with the immensely useful neighborhood write-ups, the report has a chart showing how prices and market times have changed for single-family homes or condos in the neighborhood. There is also a search function for finding listings in your desired size and price range; this isn’t limited to the 21 neighborhoods covered by the @Report.

In its debut form, the @Report only shows year-over-year changes in the 21 neighborhoods (Chicago’s annual report goes back to 1994), but Wong says the report will be updated with quarterly information beginning with the present quarter, which ends June 30th. Updates will be posted 30 to 45 days after the close of the quarter. He says the map that the report covers will expand in the next year, too.

Even when it’s quarterly, the data still won’t be the absolute freshest you will want if buying or selling. For that, you will still need to rely on a real-estate agent, who will have access to sales data for your neighborhood that is less than 24 hours old. But using the @Report will provide the framework of market insights into which that up-to-date data will fit.


]]> Wed, 7 May 2008 14:10:57 Admin http://www.lseforum.com/forum/Blah.pl?m-1209408445/ http://www.lseforum.com/forum/Blah.pl?m-1209408445/#num1 Sunday, May 4th
155 N Harbor Dr.
Unit 904
1:00 -3:00pm
1 Bedroom, 1&half Bath
$399,000]]> Mon, 28 Apr 2008 14:47:25 Kristine