Hull House organization shutting down

01/25/2012

Jane Addams Hull House, the charitable organization founded on the Near West Side, announced last week that it’s shutting down. According to Crain’s Chicago Business, the organization is closing after more than 120 years because they “can’t make the math work,” Crain’s quoted Hull House’s board chairman Stephen Saunders as saying.
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Crane teachers, activists unveil turnaround plan

With clock ticking on phase-out vote, no indication CPS is listening

01/25/2012

A coalition of Crane teachers, students, parents and Near West Side community activists unveiled a plan Friday night to turn around the 109-year-old high school at 2245 W. Jackson Blvd., focusing on adding programming and services to the school.
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City steps up nuisance business laws

New amendment expands law beyond late-night operators, wipes out signature requirements

01/25/2012

The city is changing how it reviews operating licenses for businesses that get complaints from neighbors. Last week, the city council pushed through a series of amendments aimed at tightening Chicago’s deleterious impact and public nuisance ordinance — a set of regulations that give residents in Chicago a platform for “addressing negative quality of life and public safety concerns in their neighborhoods” caused by new liquor license applicants or existing liquor establishments.
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Still developing

Former Alderman Ted Mazola forging through recession in University Village, South Loop

01/25/2012

Ted Mazola has a booming voice, an easy laugh, and a philanthropic vision for the vibrant, charming and diversified University Village neighborhood he has always called home. In the area where he lives and does business, the affable 62-year-old has been a one-term alderman of the 1st Ward, co-founder of the University Village Association, a driving force behind the rejuvenation of Maxwell Street and a board member of the Chicago Lighthouse for the Blind.
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Ward remap passes

2nd Ward blown up, banished to North Side, but Fioretti promises to stick around

01/25/2012

Bob Fioretti is not happy. Less than a year ago, he was elected to his second term as alderman of Chicago’s 2nd Ward, a sprawling city council district that stretched from the Near South Side all the way west to East Garfield Park, becoming the dominant alderman in the South Loop and Near West Side, as well as much of the West Loop.
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Web apps track snow plows progress around Chicago

In case you missed it, it's snowing today

01/20/2012

Forecasts predict somewhere between 4 to 8 inches of snow in Chicago through Friday evening. The plows are out working to clear the streets and ease the evening commute. According to the city's website about 183 snow plows, or 50 percent of the city’s snow fighting equipment, are currently working on the main routes. After those are clear, the plows will head to the residential streets.
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Motor Row's Broad Shoulders Brewing aims to debut this summer

01/18/2012

Frank Lassandrello has been brewing beer since he was 18. No, it wasn’t necessarily legal, and no, it wasn’t necessarily good, but it certainly gave him a head start on his peers. As a freshman at Green Mountain College, he found it was simply an easy way to do what so many college students enjoy doing: imbibing alcohol. But 12 years later, with professional brewing experience at some of the Midwest’s most prominent craft beer breweries under his belt, Lassandrello is striking out on his own again with Broad Shoulders Brewing, set to open this summer at 2337 S. Michigan Ave.
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Compromise looms, but few details emerge at city hall remap meeting

Drawn out

01/18/2012

Chicago's political battle lines are being redrawn, and the new aldermanic ward boundaries increasingly look like they'll be along the lines of a map presented by the city council’s Black Caucus.
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Train traffic along 16th Street to decrease, but timeline unclear

A freight to change

01/18/2012

The Near South Side has changed a great deal over the past 15 years. Decaying housing and industrial sites gave way to condominiums, upscale stores and parks.
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Prostitution sting on Wacker Drive

01/18/2012

On the evening of Jan. 16, an officer conducting a prostitution sting operation contacted a woman on the website Backpage.com and directed her to meet him at a hotel in the 100 block of East Wacker Drive.
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