Get it done

Trade off for recycling

06/09/2010

One of the threads that bubbled up Monday in city hall as aldermen batted around verbal proclamations of support for the city’s stillborn Blue Cart recycling program was whether or not recycling is a basic public service (like fire protection or street repaving) or a luxury that taxpayers can’t afford.
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A wash?

Time will tell if a new Costco will be a net gain for local jobs

06/02/2010

Back in January, our sister paper Austin Weekly News published an article on a study carried out by University of Illinois-Chicago and Loyola University researchers about the impact Chicago’s sole Wal-Mart has had on the West Side.
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Moving a loved spot

Cancer Survivors Garden needs a fresh start

05/26/2010

During a recent walk around north Grant Park, a Chicago Journal reporter came across the following scene in Cancer Survivors Garden, just east of Daley Bicentennial Plaza: a woman was using one of the stakes in the garden’s Positive Mental Attitude Walk as a brace for her exercise routine.
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The future of buses

05/26/2010

Our story this week about Chicago's proposed bus rapid transit pilot program is one of those citywide stories with a very local potential impact. One of the streets slated for bus rapid transit is Halsted, which cuts through Greektown and University Village.
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The forest and the trees

05/12/2010

It was unexpected. No, we weren’t expecting Ald. Burnett’s two-pronged broadside Monday at the finance committee. He demanded his constituents get access to new schools funded by tax increment financing dollars coming out of districts that overlap with his ward, and he critiqued about how the Daley administration distributes TIF dollars for “their” projects but not aldermanic ones.
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Welcome, Threadless

West Loop scores with HQ relocation

05/05/2010

The West Loop just got a major shot in the arm. On Monday, the popular T-shirt company Threadless announced they’d like to move their headquarters from Ravenswood to 1260 W. Madison.
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How not to have an event

Red Bull blew it, but reaction overblown

04/28/2010

Why Red Bull approached the set-up to the BMX competition they wanted to hold at Harrison and Wells the way they did we don’t know. It sure didn’t help their cause.
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The Gateway rental tower

Let's not be so fast to nix this

04/21/2010

In last week's Chicago Journal, we reported on a story that’s rarer than an endangered mink: the contentious community meeting about a proposed development. In this case, the story sussed out some of the tensions generated by the Taxman Corporation’s proposed Gateway Project, eyed for the southwest corner of Madison and Halsted.
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Beef with Mike

04/21/2010

Also in last week's paper was freelance writer Michael Nagrant's take on which is the finest of three very-fine Near South and Near West corned beef emporiums - Manny's, Moon’s or Eleven City Diner.
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Why we need frameworks

Individual environmentalism isn’t enough

04/14/2010

We love recycling. We think people who take reusable mugs to coffee shops for their morning fix deserve a medal. We offer a tip of the cap to those who eat food grown locally, eschewing plums from Chile.
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