Mayor wants water rate hike for Chicago and suburbs
Water rates could go up 70 percent by 2015 under new plan
11/02/2011
Mayor Rahm Emanuel is pitching a plan in his new budget that would raise water rates for Chicago and the surrounding 125 suburbs by 70 percent over the next four years.
Read more...Top Chicago cop defends station shutdown plan
Combined 12th and 13th District would have most cops in city
10/26/2011
As Garry McCarthy took to the stage Tuesday night, it was clear he didn't have many friends. The packed house of Chicagoans mostly from West Town were rowdy, and they were angry with the police superintendent's plan to shut down their local police station.
Read More...Grant Park plan unveiled
Northeast corner could be more passive, make it easier to get to lake - but remove tennis courts
10/26/2011
The Chicago Park District was set to unveil a new plan for the northeast corner of Grant Park on Wednesday night, floating the idea of replacing what had been a rigidly structured plaza with a flowing, open green space. Daley Bicentennial Plaza is set to get a $35 million revamp, as the parking garage beneath it is rehabbed. As essentially a massive green roof, it’s become leaky over the years and needs to be replaced.
Read More...Chicago used bookstore embraces the Internet to stay alive
Opening the books
10/26/2011
"My life is an open bookstore," Keith Peterson likes to say, with a chuckle. Peterson is the owner of Selected Works Used Books and Sheet Music at 410 S. Michigan Ave., which has been in business for more than a quarter-century. He works six days a week - "that's a lot," he adds - but he has good company.
Read More...Foreclosure threatened for Central Station development
South Loop monolith under the gun
10/26/2011
Bank of America may soon foreclose on Museum Park West, a 298-unit condo building in which the developer Central Station Development Corp. has sold just 65, or 22 percent, of the units since the building opened in early 2010.
Read more...South Loop gets a seminary
Unitarian-Universalist school moving into Spertus this December
10/26/2011
Meadville-Lombard Theological School, a 167-year-old Unitarian-Universalist seminary that has operated out of Chicago since 1926, is moving from its current home in Hyde Park to a space in The Spertus Institute for Jewish Studies’ new building at 610 S. Michigan Ave. this December.
Read more...Chicago opens its doors with data, invites programmers in
The download's upside
10/26/2011
Chicago is pulling back the digital data curtains, publishing hundreds of sets of official data, and enlisting the help of program developers to make the information useful to the rest of us.
Read more...Photos: Picking pumpkins at Chicago Women's Park
10/19/2011
Web Extra! Slideshow
People were at Chicago Women's Park to pick pumpkins with their kids on
Saturday, October 15. Read More...
Cop consolidation in Chicago's Near West Side
Emanuel, McCarthy pitching plan that would bring all of Near West Side into one police district
10/19/2011
Less than six months into his mayoral tenure, Mayor Rahm Emanuel touched the third rail of Chicago politics, and Anne Shaw is angry. As part of his proposal to cut a financial path through an expected $635.7 million deficit in next year's city budget, Emanuel announced last week that he wants to consolidate facilities in the city's police department.
Read more...South Loop School principal defends kindergarten cut
10/19/2011
South Loop Elementary Principal Tara Shelton defended eliminating the school’s kindergarten gifted program for the 2012-13 school year and gave parents a chance to air worries about school overcrowding at a Local School Council meeting Oct. 12.
Read more...