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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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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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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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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