Bad economy doesnt justify West Loop Target

07/21/2010

Thanks for your recent editorial “Just Barely” (Chicago Journal, July 15) on the proposed big box Target store in the West Loop. My wife and I attended Ald. Fioretti’s recent town hall meeting at the Merit School of Music to share our concerns and our subsequent opposition to the proposal.
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Look to Spain for parking innovations

07/21/2010

I thought I would share with you the metered street parking arrangement I witnessed on a recent trip to Barcelona, Spain, due to street parking being an ongoing issue of concern in both the West Loop and South Loop neighborhoods.
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Just barely

Target jobs, neighborhood aesthetics and the West Loop

07/14/2010

The Target store proposed for the West Loop is a step backward in terms of neighborhood aesthetics, charm and style. But in the end, it’s an incremental net positive. Just barely. And mostly because the job market is simply dreadful.
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How to challenge the mayor

07/14/2010

Reading the tea leaves suggests Mayor Richard M. Daley will run for reelection this fall, asking for a seventh term from Chicago voters. He hasn’t announced his intentions yet, but the mayor is unlikely to decline taking another shot to sit in the big chair on the fifth floor of city hall for a simple reason: getting out now means leaving the city’s top job and leaving Chicago in the lurch.
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Target practice

The economy of the past several years has reset many of the best-laid plans, and Target seems on its way.

07/07/2010

When I was a kid, my dad always seemed to be in the middle of a renovation project. We’d go on frequent excursions to Sears and The Crafty Beaver Lumber Store just east of Lincoln Square to pick up a specific saw, bolt or cut of wood. I flashback to those projects, like the picket fence he built around our house, every time I smell lumber.
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Auditing TIF

The missing debate

07/07/2010

The city’s tax increment financing monies continue to draw attention and heat, as our story about Chicago Inspector General Joe Ferguson's recent audit of processes in the Central West TIF district reveals.
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Beach beauty

07/07/2010

It goes without saying, right? Heat in the upper 80s and into the 90s, plus humidity like a wet towel, equals prime time on Chicago's beaches, summer's places of respite and cool.
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Losing Mr. Anderson

Fred Anderson was a free jazz icon and neighborhood stalwart

06/30/2010

It's hard to overstate what a loss - to the jazz community, to the Near South Side, to Chicago in general — Fred Anderson’s death represents. Anderson, 81, died last week. He leaves behind a rich legacy of recorded music and studio albums, live performances and, of course, the incomparable Velvet Lounge.
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Storms hurt our good trees

Although it wasn’t the first violent storm we ever experienced, it was the first one that caused permanent damage to the local landscape

06/23/2010

Something changed at Roosevelt and State after the deluge last Friday. Even before the second rainfall of the evening, after a huge branch of a big tree blew over, it was apparent.
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The cost of cars

06/16/2010

The rate increases that followed the city's privatization of its parking meter system were simultaneously dismaying and important. They're dismaying because the mayor and council members should have had the guts to raise the meter rates.
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