MAGAZINE / JUNE 2007 / SOUTH LOOP RISING South Loop Rising After languishing for decades as a bleak landscape of warehouses and rail yards, Chicago's South Loop is afire. Condo sales are booming, big-box stores are blossoming, and chic restaurants are laying out the welcome mat. Add the lakefront, the Museum Campus, and a rich history to the mix, and is it any wonder the South Loop is not just the city's but the country's hottest neighborhood? DENNIS RODKIN

Main Story >> From Congress Parkway to Cermak Road, one of the country's most dynamic urban neighborhoods is taking shape. Over the past decade, Chicago's South Loop has reinvented itself as a vibrant collection of homes, restaurants, and cultural attractions.

Faces of the South Loop >> Meet the people living and working there.

Cost of Living >> Learn about options for housing in the South Loop

Goin' South—Walking the South Loop >> Take a lively walking tour to see the changes for yourself.

1 Main story

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When David Loiselle and Lindsey Bailey decided to buy a home last year, they explored several North Side neighborhoods close to downtown. But as the two roommates looked around, they kept thinking about how much they always enjoyed visiting some friends who lived in the

South Loop. “I mean, it’s not close to downtown,” Loiselle says. “It is downtown.”

After pricing properties in various neighborhoods, Loiselle and Bailey found that the South Loop easily edged out the North Side contenders. For approximately the same price, Loiselle says, they could get 750 square feet in Wicker Park but 1,100 in the South Loop. Decision made, they went south, moving in April 2006 into a loft building in the 1300 block of South Wabash Avenue.

Their springtime move put the couple in their new neighborhood just in time to enjoy summer, the season when the South Loop’s three magnetic neighbors—Lake , the Museum Campus, and

2 —come alive. They walk their Lab, Chastain, two blocks to the southwestern edge of

Grant Park at Roosevelt Road, they bike along the lakefront, and they enjoy the “free” concerts at

Northerly Island. “They become free because we go to the 12th Street Beach and listen,” says

Loiselle. “We had a beach party 150 feet from the stage while Journey was playing.”

It’s not just the concerts, the museums, and the lakefront parks. Loiselle and Bailey say they are close to everything they need: restaurants (their condo is at the center of the South Loop’s mushrooming dining scene), grocery stores, and even expressways. “It’s so easy to get around here that it’s almost like being in the suburbs,” Loiselle says. “But then you look up Wabash or Michigan, and downtown is right there, spread out in front of you.”

The recent transformation of Chicago’s South Loop is mirrored in some of the country’s bigger downtowns. There is South of Market in , Lower Downtown in Denver, the Pearl

District in Portland, and the Third Ward in Milwaukee. But none of them compares to the magnitude of what’s going on here. “You’re seeing these fallow areas fill up with condos and restaurants everywhere,” says Michael Beyard, a senior resident fellow at the Urban Land Institute in

Washington, D.C. “But it’s not like what you see in Chicago, where the numbers are so much larger than anywhere else.” That’s in part because Chicago is simply bigger than any of those cities, but also, Beyard says, because the South Loop’s boom is tied in with the larger effort to beautify and enhance the city overall.

This renaissance is clearly visible throughout the neighborhood, where old structures are getting rehabbed and new condo towers are rising in thickets. In 2006, according to data from Appraisal

Research Counselors (a local real-estate consultant), 45.6 percent of the condos sold in downtown

Chicago were in the South Loop—nearly twice the neighborhood’s share in 2003. In the past four years, enough new homes have been sold in the South Loop to swallow the entire housing stock of suburban Wood Dale. (Because the information from the last national census, in 2000, is outdated, and because the South Loop actually encompasses several Chicago neighborhoods in the U.S.

Census Bureau’s database, it is difficult to calibrate the exact size of the ever-expanding South Loop population—which means the results of the 2010 census should be especially revealing.)

3 What makes these changes even more remarkable is that they have occurred in little more than a decade. Mayor Richard M. Daley provoked some head-scratching in 1993 when he moved from his family’s longtime home in Bridgeport to some place in the South Loop called Central Station, at that time a fledgling bunch of townhouses across Lake Shore Drive from the Field Museum. Thirteen years later—in July 2006—Daley hosted President Bush’s 60th birthday dinner at a restaurant

(Chicago Firehouse) only a few blocks from his home in Central Station, by then a well-established enclave of luxury residences. Here was Bush, the most powerful man on the planet, dining in a popular neighborhood that, before he came to office, had been an obscure blip on the local real- estate scene.

“You can’t believe how fast this is all happening,” says Craig Alton, whose gangland-related

Untouchable Tours have been cruising the South Loop—once home to the city’s most notorious speakeasies and brothels—for 18 years. “When people on the [tour] bus used to ask what this part of town was called, I’d call it the No Neighborhood,” says Alton. “It was no place.” As Alton says this, we are driving along the 2100 block of South Wabash Avenue, where this spring the nightlife impresario Jerry Kleiner opened Room 21, a wildly colorful restaurant in a brewery once owned by

Al Capone (the restaurant’s name comes from an inscription on a rusted metal door uncovered during the renovation). It’s Kleiner’s fourth venue in the neighborhood—a sure sign that hipness has definitely ventured south of Madison Street.

At roughly 74 square blocks (plus Grant Park), the South Loop is a sizable swath of the city, bounded by Congress Parkway on the north, the South Branch of the Chicago River on the west,

Cermak Road on the south, and Lake Shore Drive on the east. Until recent years, the area was essentially the Loop’s back 40, a forlorn landscape of surface parking lots and warehouses, peppered with some residential housing.

“It was like coming to the surface of the moon,” recalls Kathleen Butera, the executive director of the Sherwood Conservatory of Music. Butera arrived at the school in 2002, three years after it moved into its new South Loop home (at 1312 South Michigan Avenue). “All around us was this huge, open expanse of blacktop,” she says—and then counts the high-rises built on (or planned for) the blocks immediately surrounding Sherwood in the years since. She tallies at least a dozen.

4 The high-rises are the most visible newcomers to the South Loop, towering over the cityscape with their domed tops, their glassy sheen, their colorful garnish of red, blue, or yellow bands—a recent architectural flourish. But a massive change is also under way at street level. The number of restaurants is multiplying, college students are swarming, and even the local churches are noting increased foot traffic. “This neighborhood has really found its moment,” says Alicia Berg, the vice president for campus environment for Columbia College (from 2001 to early 2004, Berg served as commissioner of the city’s Department of Planning and Development). As the owner or tenant of 19 area buildings, and with plans to build at least two more, Columbia has become one of the South

Loop’s anchor institutions. Along with three other colleges—Roosevelt, DePaul, and Robert Morris—

Columbia also provides the South Loop with a student population numbering more than 30,000.

“There’s a real concentration of energy here,” Berg says. “You’re watching a neighborhood get built from scratch.”

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North of Roosevelt Road and east of the Chicago River's South Branch, an enourmous crane marks the future site of another South Loop residential development.

The historical irony here is that the neighborhood known today as the South Loop originally had a resi-dential flavor, beginning in 1836—one year before Chicago incorporated as a city—when Henry

5 Clarke built a house near what is now 16th and Michigan (the house, Chicago’s second oldest, has been moved to 1855 South Avenue). In the 1880s, several of Chicago’s Gilded Age titans— among them, the piano maker William Kimball, the merchant Marshall Field, and the railcar builder

George Pullman—built baronial homes along Prairie Avenue near 18th Street, making it the city’s most stylish neighborhood for a decade or so.

Meanwhile, just four blocks west, the Levee—the city’s most infamous vice district—was thriving.

The 1894 book If Christ Came to Chicago, which portrayed the sin and depravity of urban life, focused much of its attention on the district’s brothels and gambling parlors, which proved more enduring than the stone palaces of Prairie Avenue.

At the beginning of the 20th century, as wealthy Chicagoans began heading north to the present- day Gold Coast, industries supplanted homeowners as the primary residents of the South Loop.

Some of the city’s—indeed, the country’s—biggest companies were represented there, including

International Harvester, Crane Plumbing, R. R. Donnelley publishing, and Studebaker automobiles.

But there were also other, lesser-known enterprises operating on a big scale, producing such essential modern contrivances as hairpins. The area was also a major rail center, home to four of

Chicago’s six big train depots.

A new era began in the decades following World War II as rail travel declined and industry drifted away to newer locations, leaving behind many gorgeous but vacant buildings and miles of railroad tracks. By 1954, the neighborhood had faded so much that the Chicago Tribune referred to it as a

“tattered doll in sequins.”

Saddled with this moniker, the South Loop spent years as a palimpsest upon which urban dreamers could project their wildest schemes. In 1968, a team of developers whipped up plans for Chicago’s

Garden-in-the-Sky, a dense pack of 13 towers—50 to 73 stories high, home to offices, apartments, and a hotel—a mammoth multisport stadium, and two huge shopping malls, all crammed onto about

12 square blocks around Congress Parkway and State Street. The project never materialized—which didn’t deter another development team from proposing in 1974 a futuristic South Loop New Town, with glass-tube walkways five flights above the street and monorail trains running beneath cantilevered residential terraces. That plan didn’t fly either.

6 In 1977, yet another team trotted out River City, which would have put six interconnected 72-story towers—with apartments for about 45,000 people—on the east bank of the river’s South Branch. All that came of it was a single 17-story structure completed in 1986, Bertrand Goldberg’s curvaceous building, called River City, which still stands on the river at 800 South Wells Street. Then there was the futile attempt to organize a 1992 world’s fair on the south lakefront, and, in 1986, a short-lived plan, floated by Harold Washington’s administration, to build a stadium complex in the neighborhood.

Each one of those plans has trumpeted the South Loop’s many virtues, and in retrospect, it’s a little surprising the area’s development wasn’t more of a slam dunk. It lies adjacent to the Loop, with its jobs and cultural activities, and to the gorgeous but underused south lakefront. Expressways and public transportation are right at its doorstep, and development would not entail pushing out an existing population. Despite these obvious advantages, the area’s modernization was slow, as, one by one, pieces fell into place, building momentum for the big boom of the past decade.

The first piece of the puzzle was Dearborn Park I, eight square blocks of townhouses, mid-rises, and parks finished in the mid-1980s between the rehabbed Dearborn Station and Roosevelt Road. (The development of Dearborn Park and the reinvigoration of Chicago’s downtown were the subjects of

Lois Wille’s 1997 book, At Home in the Loop.) Completed in the mid-1980s, the buildings were nice but inward looking, as befitted a pioneering attempt to bring residential life into a shabby area.

Meanwhile, in an area extending north from Dearborn Station to Congress Parkway, urban pioneers were reinventing the beautiful buildings from Chicago’s early-1900s heyday as the nation’s printer, in the process creating the city’s first residential loft neighborhood. Together, these two pieces created a beachhead of South Loop life, and also set the tone for the neighborhood’s appealing mix of old and new architecture. In the late 1980s, Dearborn Park II appeared, extending from

Roosevelt Road to 15th Street. Confidence in the neighborhood was clearly rising; here, the houses were bigger, the streets more open to public use.

Other small developments—a loft conversion here, a string of townhouses there—tried hard to pull attention south of Congress, but none had enough heft. Then came the 1990s and a confluence of low interest rates (fueling home construction), a reconfigured Lake Shore Drive and Roosevelt Road,

7 and a newly rediscovered love of city life. The floodgates opened, and developers poured into the

South Loop, with eager homebuyers hot on their heels.

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Built in 1870 for a president of the Chicago Board of Trade, the Wheeler Mansion—at 2020 South Avenue—is today a stylish B&B surrounded by new South Loop housing.

The person who actually kicked open the gates was Gerald Fogelson, the developer behind Central

Station, 80 acres—most of it former railroad land—that are now home to some 5,000 people. When drawing up the development’s master plan (which was approved in 1990), Fogelson originally expected it to tilt more toward office and hotel space, with a little residential thrown in. But things didn’t work out that way. “We were second place for a few major office projects,” says Fogelson, referring to the ABN Amro building that wound up in the West Loop and the University of Chicago’s

Gleacher Center, which picked a site north of the Chicago River’s Main Branch. “So we built townhomes to get something going,” he says. “We had this high-density land and we built low density to get it started. And it went well.”

Once Mayor Daley moved there, the project popped, and it has kept its momentum ever since. (In

December 1993, the mayor paid $410,000 for his townhouse on South Prairie Avenue; today, similar homes have been selling in the upper $600,000s.) Big and lavishly landscaped, the gracious

8 red brick townhouses on the blocks around Indiana Avenue and 13th Street reflected the area’s new confidence. Success bred success, and developers flocked to the area, snatching buildable parcels within Central Station and in the surrounding blocks. More and larger townhouses spread down

Prairie Avenue until the few remaining 19th-century houses had rows of comple-mentary new neighbors.

And then came the new high-rises, going up at a faster rate than in any other Chicago neighborhood. This past January, Appraisal Research Counselors reported that six of the ten biggest-selling condo buildings in the city in 2006 were in the South Loop. As elsewhere in Chicago, sales have slowed somewhat from the go-go years: 51 percent of the South Loop’s condos remain unsold, according to Appraisal Research. “I expect to see [those unsold condos] taken in a reasonable amount of time,” says Gail Lissner, the company’s vice president. “There has been a lot of construction activity there; the buyers will catch up”—especially after more of those condos are finally built (though now still on the drawing board, some condos are already presold). What’s more, adds Lissner, “many of the buildings in the South Loop have sold at a faster rate than buildings in other parts of downtown.”

In the same period that has framed the South Loop’s explosive growth, River North and the West

Loop were also developing new residential personalities to replace their outmoded industrial character. Even as both of those areas continue to build, they have yet to match the pace of the

South Loop—for reasons, as with any real-estate venture, that have much to do with location. It’s hard for any neighborhood to top such South Loop amenities as the Museum Campus, Soldier Field,

Grant Park, Northerly Island, and Lake Michigan—even more accessible since a pedestrian walkway over Lake Shore Drive opened in 2003 at 18th Street and Calumet Avenue. “We won the culture war,” insists Fogelson, explaining the neighborhood’s seemingly irresistible allure.

* * *

The other key components of a neighborhood—schools, restaurants, and retail—are also flourishing in the South Loop. Consider the changes at the local public high school. Known as Jones Commercial when it opened in 1938, the school at 606 South State Street trained kids for clerical work and other office jobs. But in 1998, it became a magnet school and instituted a much more rigorous

9 academic curriculum. Four years later, it renamed itself Jones College Prep. (The school is scheduled to get a sizable new addition to its south once the Pacific Garden Mission moves to a new

Stanley Tigerman–designed facility west of the river later this year.) About a mile south of there, the ten-year-old Perspectives Charter School—a neighborhood gem in an eye-catching triangular

Ralph Johnson building—demands discipline from its student body with a tough academic load and an insistence on community involvement. (The school’s South Loop campus, which serves 6th- through 12th-grade students, is at 1930 South Archer Avenue.)

There are dramatic signs of improvement in the neighborhood’s grade schools as well. Over the past several years, things have turned around at the struggling South Loop Elementary School, which before 2002 drew most of its students from Dearborn Park and nearby housing projects (the school is at 1212 South Plymouth Court). The most recent test scores revealed that 80 percent of the school’s third to eighth graders met or exceeded state standards—up from a woeful 33 percent in the 2002-2003 school year. Over at Old St. Mary’s Church—the city’s oldest Roman Catholic parish, which relocated to 1500 South Michigan Avenue in 2002—a new school is taking shape year by year. It began in 2004 with 18 preschoolers; this September, it will add a second grade as it builds toward establishing a full-fledged grammar school. With demand from parents growing, says

Barbara Smith, the school’s principal, the parish might embark on a fundraising drive to build a new school facility behind the church.

Like other developing neighborhoods, the South Loop is farther along on restaurants than on retail.

The north part of the neighborhood, above Roosevelt Road, had always had its hotel restaurants, lunch counters, and dive bars. But the real dining scene started south of Roosevelt around 1999, when Jerry Kleiner launched Gioco and Matt O’Malley débuted the Chicago Firehouse, all within a block of one another (see map on page 80). “That kind of let people in on it, that there was something down here on the far side of Roosevelt Road,” Kleiner recalls. (For more from Kleiner, see “Dish,” page 195.) Now each man has several places in the neighborhood, and O’Malley—a native of the Beverly neighborhood who has lived in the South Loop since 1998—is reaching south across Cermak Road into Motor Row, the next frontier.

10 Retailing has not been as dynamic, but it has gained traction in the past few years as Target, Office

Depot, DSW Shoes, and other big-box stores have landed on and around Roosevelt Road, a street that may eventually rival Clybourn on the North Side for shopping frenzy. The South Loop already has a Jewel store and a nearby Dominick’s, and a Whole Foods is on the way. A 12-acre parcel of land at Roosevelt and Wells, originally zoned for 20 million square feet of office space, has been recast as the Roosevelt Collection, which would include 16 movie screens and at least 40 new retail outlets, with another 1,000 residential units upstairs. The developer, Centrum Properties, broke ground for the project this past March.

If the South Loop is lacking in one ingredient, it’s the idiosyncratic boutiques that can lend a hip flavor to a neighborhood. There are plenty of small hair salons, pet shops, and shoe stores, but very little else. “There’s not a little row of shops like on Armitage, and I don’t know why,” Kleiner says. “I keep telling people to come open a place here, but they don’t.” That may be in part because the little starter spaces that can be had in old buildings—places that once held a neighborhood butcher shop, hardware store, or tailor—don’t exist here. Retail space comes largely in big chunks at the base of new high-rises, often with forbidding rents. Those locations might work for the chains, but they are not ideal for a happening young entrepreneur with a cool idea.

Keep in mind, though, that the South Loop is still young. Even with all that has popped up in the past decade, there are still big, open spaces left, particularly in the southwestern part of the neighborhood, as it approaches Chinatown. And many of the buyers of those umpteen condos won’t move in for a year or more, when the towers are completed. When they arrive, the increasing foot traffic should carry the neighborhood another step closer to maturity.

“The story about the South Loop isn’t finished yet,” says Columbia’s Alicia Berg. “There is still a lot left to be done.”

11 Faces of the South Loop

THE NEIGHBORHOOD COUPLE

Stephen Pugh and Margo Brooks-Pugh, residents since 1999

“We saw a terrific new city neighborhood coming up, a place with a lot of hope and promise,” says Stephen Pugh. He is recalling the decision he and his wife, Margo Brooks-

Pugh, made in 1999 when they moved from their Randolph Street condo south across

Grant Park to a Central Station townhouse.

“It was a new type of community, one where for the first time you might have a true mixture of all the diversity we have in

Chicago. Not just the diversity of colors, but of people generally. We see a lot of people from the suburbs and from out of town and overseas. It’s been a true melting pot of eclectic people.”

Last year, the couple returned to high-rise living when they bought a 25th-story penthouse, also in the South Loop. “When we come down in the elevator in the morning, everyone on the elevator says hello to each other,” Pugh notes. “Can you imagine that?”

Both of the Pughs can get to work quickly—he’s a Loop attorney; she’s an administrator at Jackson

Park Hospital on the South Side—but it’s what awaits them when they return home that they most appreciate. “First of all, there’s the lake, and the terrific running trail,” Stephen Pugh says. “We have the opera and all the restaurants; Columbia College puts on all these terrific music events and plays; and we think Michigan Avenue north to at least Madison belongs to us.”

Despite these many amenities, says Pugh, the neighborhood is still establishing its personality. “It’s not the Gold Coast; it’s not the North Shore. I don’t know what it is yet,” he says—and then adds:

“It’s Steve Pugh.”

12

THE PARENTS Erin and Patrick Fravel, residents since 1996

Erin and Patrick Fravel bought a house in the

South Loop 11 years ago because it was a bargain compared with Lincoln Park, where they had been renting. But since having a child five years ago, the couple, who are both bankers, have found that their 1996 move is saving them something even more valuable than money: time.

Erin’s commute from their house in the Dear- born Park II subdivision into the West Loop is eight minutes; Patrick’s, into the Loop, is five. That gives them more time to spend with their daughter, Delaney. “With both of us working, we don’t want to be an hour’s train ride from her,”

Erin says. “Patrick can drop her off at preschool and be at his desk by 8:30. If we lived in the suburbs and worked downtown, that would never happen.”

She calls the South Loop “the ideal place to raise a child in the city.” The neighborhood is surprisingly green, with two play parks within a few blocks of the Fravels’ house, and Grant Park— as well as the Museum Campus—only a little farther away. There is a burgeoning youth soccer league that plays in Chinatown, and because the Fravels live on a gated cul-de-sac, Delaney can play outside her house with neighbor kids, just like in many suburbs.

“I think what’s typical of the [parents] I know here in the South Loop is that they both work and the dads are very hands-on,” Erin says. “They don’t want to be the guy who’s out the door before the kids are even up. Go to the park: you will see as many dads as moms.”

13 When their daughter was just ten months old, the Fravels got involved in the effort to start a school at Old St. Mary’s Catholic Church. Now Delaney is there five days a week, with ballet class and other afterschool programs right in the building.

“We never thought of moving away from the South Loop,” Erin says. “If you can work out the school thing, there’s no reason to leave.”

THE PIONEER

Lynn Norment, resident since 1984

Lynn Norment has been a resident of the

South Loop since 1984, long before most

Chicagoans even knew the neighborhood existed. Today she sees her life there as

“consummate city living.”

“Everything I want in the city of Chicago is within walking distance,” Norment says, “but it doesn’t feel congested here. I’m from a very small rural town in the South, so I want that feeling of openness you get from having

Grant Park right outside. I’m always discovering new places, new shops when I walk the neighborhood.”

The managing editor of Ebony magazine, Norment came to Chicago from her native in

1977. At a relative’s suggestion, she first settled in Hyde Park, but her job at Johnson Publishing—at

820 South Michigan Avenue—found her traveling each workday into the South Loop. So when she finally got ready to buy her own home, she opted for something close to work: a condo in a mid-rise unit in Dearborn Park I—at that time, she says, “the only place you could live down here.” Eighteen years later, in 2002, she moved even closer to work, buying a condo in a brand-new building right around the corner from her job.

14 Norment acknowledges that when she first moved into the neighborhood, “there was nothing happening. But I always felt like this neighborhood was going to happen any day.” Now that it has, she’s delighted. “It used to be Michigan Avenue, Printers’ Row, Prairie Avenue, and the spaces between them,” Norment says. “Now I feel like it’s all coming together into one complete neighborhood.”

THE ACTIVIST Tina Feldstein, resident since 2004

Soon after moving to Chicago from Los

Angeles in 1992, Tina Feldstein got a job driving a tourist trolley. At the start of each workday, she would ride her bike from

Wicker Park to the trolley garage at 18th

Street and Prairie Avenue—and she fell hopelessly in love with the stunning 19th- century mansions on the next block south.

“The first time I rode down Prairie Avenue and saw the Kimball House and the Glessner

House, I was blown away,” she recalls. “I’d go look at them every day, and I said to myself that one day I’d live on Prairie Avenue.”

As of 2004, she does, in a townhouse one block south of the mansions. “Prairie Avenue has some great historical integrity, and until now, everybody who has built here has been good about that,” says Feldstein, a real-estate agent since 2000. Red brick townhouses replaced her old trolley garage, and though not as fabulous as their older neighbors, the new buildings at least gave a stylistic tip of the hat to the veterans.

But in the fall of 2006, developers unveiled what Feldstein considers an insult to the mansions’ scale and grace: plans to develop a pair of ultramodern towers, one 44 stories tall and the other 33, immediately north of Glessner House. Called X/O, the towers, designed by Lucien Lagrange, are

15 potentially beautiful, says Feldstein. “But,” she asks, “who in their right mind would put the most modern structure you could come up with on the most historic street in Chicago?”

That sense of outrage moved Feldstein to join with others to create the Prairie District Neighborhood

Alliance, which now includes at least nine local homeowners’ associations. “We’re pro-development,” says Feldstein. “We want high-rises, and we want to see every block in the South Loop filled in. But

[X/O] has us all freaked out.” The organization is fighting the project, which has yet to break ground.

“It’s time for this neighborhood to have some groundbreaking architecture,” counters Brian Giles of

Frankel & Giles, which is selling the condos in X/O. He notes that the building defers to its old-line neighbors with a lawn area at its south end, across from Glessner House.

To Feldstein, that’s not enough. “Lucien Lagrange is capable of designing something for that site that is more respectful of what’s already here,” she insists. Cost of Living

How South Loop housing compares with three other neighborhoods

Chicago went house hunting in three price brackets—the starter price of $300,000, a mid-market price of $600,000, and the luxury step up to $1 million—to discover how the South Loop compared with other city and suburban locales. Our comparisons included the West Loop and River North, two city neighborhoods enjoying a recent construction boom as well as the benefits of being adjacent to downtown. In addition, we also tested the market in suburban Evanston, which is also on the lake.

After reviewing the data, it is possible to draw a few conclusions. Homebuyers will likely pay less per square foot for a residence in Evanston. Among neighborhoods closer to downtown, the South

Loop easily undercuts prices in River North, and it is generally comparable (economically) to the

West Loop. But the West Loop and River North are short on parks and relatively remote from Lake

Michigan, two amenities where the South Loop scores high. By that measure, the South Loop is the bargain neighborhood.

16 How South Loop housing compares with three other neighborhoods SOUTH LOOP WEST LOOP RIVER NORTH EVANSTON 221 E. Cullerton St. 933 W. Van Buren 333 W. Hubbard St. 1720 Maple Ave. $300,000 St. $300,000 $292,500 $300,000 <<

FLOOR/SQ. FT. 4th/650 6th/704 4th/561 18th/695 PRICE PER $461.54 $426.14 $534.76 $420.86 LIVABLE SQUARE FOOT ROOMS 4 (1 bed/1 bath) 5 (2 bed/2 bath) 3 (1 bed/1 bath) 4 (1 bed/1 bath) TAXES $4,023.90 $4,002 $3,988.43 $4,704.29 PARKING SPACE $30,000 Included in sale price $30,000 Included in sale price ASSESSMENTS $320 per month $401 per month $448 per month $277 per month COMMENTS The unit has 12-foot The condo is one block Views are east to The unit is in a new ceilings from North high-rise and views north to the a Blue Line stop. Michigan Avenue. in downtown Loop. Evanston. 1322 S. Wabash Ave. 1 N. Halsted St. 520 W. Huron St. 1421 Sherman $599,000 $603,150 $594,500 Ave. $600,000 <<

FLOOR/SQ. FT. 10th/1,400 14th/1,111 5th/1,072 2nd/1,761 PRICE PER $427.86 $542.89 $554.57 $340.72 LIVABLE SQUARE FOOT ROOMS 6 (2 bed/2 bath) 5 (2 bed/2 bath-plus) 6 (3 bed/2 bath) 7 (3 bed/2 bath- plus) TAXES $6,722 N/A $7,028.03 $10,447.21 PARKING SPACE $35,000 Included in sale price $30,000 Included in sale price ASSESSMENTS $661 per month $840 per month $599 per month $724 per month COMMENTS This top-floor unit has This unit is in the This condo has 11-foot The building is in a 40-foot-long terrace. contemporary ceilings the Skybridge building. and a formal dining heart of Evanston. room. 1101 S. State St. Townhouse, W. Townouse, W. House, Payne $998,000 Monroe St. Superior St. Street $989,000 $1.01 million $1.07 million <<

FLOOR/SQ. FT. 24th/1,988 Townhouse/2,184 Townhouse/1,207 House/3,430 PRICE PER $502.01 $452.84 $836.79 $311.95 LIVABLE SQUARE FOOT ROOMS 9 (3 bed/3 bath-plus) 10 (5 bed/4 bath-plus) 7 (3 bed/3 bath) 12 (5 bed/2 bath- plus) TAXES N/A N/A $8,903 $13,381 PARKING SPACE One indoor parking space Attached two-and-a- Attached two-car Attached two-car included in sale price half-car garage garage garage included included in sale price included in sale price ASSESSMENTS $1,073 per month $185 per month $145 per month None (house) COMMENTS This unit’s two terraces This corner unit shares This townhouse is in This gracious old look east toward Grant a rooftop deck. a gated community. French house sits Park. on a sizable lot.

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G I A N E E. 8TH ST. S fountain stages tow- M CTA Brown Line O A L A L N L S ering 20-minute R C L 9 S E I I A CTA Red Line V M T 19 water displays every S L . E T

P k R . S S hour on the hour L . . . S M from 8 a.m. to 10 T

W. 9TH ST. E. 9TH ST. 20 I 1000 ft C A T

H p.m.; after dusk, a E I

G 200 m

S light show is added A T N . to the aqueous mix. A V E .

23 24 f n

22 21 M a B W. ROOSEVELT RD.

SOUTH LOOP DINING (area code 312) A C a. The Bongo Room, slick breakfast S . I spot (1152 S. Wabash Ave.; E. 13TH ST. N

D . I

26 25 A 291-0100) R

i N A g D A

b. Cafe Bionda, old-school Italian S V

E U

o . (1924 S. State St.; 326-9800) P

M c. Chicago Firehouse Restaurant, A stately American classic W. 14TH ST. E. 14TH ST. C M (1401 S. Michigan Ave.; 786-1401) U 27 c E S S

. U d. Cuatro, Nuevo Latino P h R M S S S S 30 A . . . . (2030 S. Wabash; 842-8856) . I M W S R P S R T I I A C A A B T E e. Custom House, hip, contempo- H I R A E. 14TH PL. E I A G I S E S V A rary steak house (500 S. Dearborn H T S E A N . . A . V W V A St.; 523-0200) E E V . E .

29 E N . f. Eleven City Diner, modern JeT wish

W 28 deli (1112 S. Wabash; 212-1112) O E. 15TH PL. R T

1 H g. Gioco, 2 /2-star rustic Italian A V

(1312 S. Wabash; 939-3870) E . h. Grace O’Malley’s, upscale W. 16TH ST. E. 16TH ST. E. WALDRON DR. pub/restaurant (1416 S. Michigan;

588-1800) S . C i. Opera, kaleidoscopic Chinese A L U concept (1301 S. Wabash; M E

461-0161) T A V j. Orange, pancake-proffering E breakfast place (75 W. Harrison St.; W. 18TH ST. E. 18TH ST. 34 447-1000) 31 32 33 k. Oysy, breezy sushi bar (888 S. Michigan; 922-1127) 35 W. 19TH ST. l. Room 21, over-the-top American- style bistro (2110 S. Wabash; b 328-1198) 36 m.Tamarind, minimalist pan-Asian W. CULLERTON ST. E. CULLERTON ST. (614 S. Wabash; 379-0970) d N G I n. Yolk, cartoonish egg-themed S E D

spot (1120 S. Michigan; 789-9655) A

E. 21ST ST. R

37 B o. Zapatista, ambitious Mexican O l C

39 A cuisine (1307 S. Wabash; 435-1307) R B I V

38 :

M P A

CERMAK RD. M GOIN’ SOUTH — WALKING THE SOUTH LOOP THE BEST WAY TO EXPERIENCE THE SOUTH LOOP IS ON FOOT. HERE ARE TWO TOURS, EACH OF WHICH TAKES ABOUT HALF A DAY— OR THEY CAN BE COMBINED FOR A DAYLONG ADVENTURE. NOTE THAT ALL PHONE NUMBERS ARE IN AREA CODE 312.

§ TOUR #1 §§§ breaking Raisin in the Sun pre- Street), salute (20) the eques- Walking south down Wabash P WHERE TO STAY: Begin your morning with a mièred in 1959. Jog north to trian statue of the flag-waving from 14th Street leads you to O Out-of-towners or overnighters flight of silver-dollar pancakes Harrison and west to Dearborn Civil War general John Logan, (27) Soka Gakkai International O L

can put up at the posh Hotel and a cup of orange-infused Street. Just to the north sits the and then finish up this portion (1455 S. Wabash), a Buddhist H Blake (500 S. Dearborn St.; M coffee at (1) Orange (75 W. (11) Pontiac Building (542 S. of the tour at (21) Agora, an cultural center; from 1889 T 986-1234 or hotelblake.com), U Harrison St.; 447-1000). After Dearborn), Holabird & Roche’s outdoor collection of 106 head- to 1983, the (28) Chicago where rooms start at $169. O M

breakfast, walk one block north oldest surviving Chicago build- less metal figures created by Coliseum—the site of five S to Congress Parkway and ing (1891). To the south lies the the Polish artist Magdalena Republican Party presidential (1936 S. Michigan; 225-4951), head east to the (2) Harold historic Printers’ Row district. Abakanowicz (at the northeast conventions—stood just south home to the city’s most spec- Washington Library Center Check out the (12) Donohue corner of Michigan and of here (at 1513 S. Wabash). tacular collection of stained- (400 S. State; 747-4396). Duck Building (711 S. Dearborn), Roosevelt Road). After this long (29) Old St. Mary’s Church glass windows (the church inside to explore the collection the first large printing factory walk, reward yourself with a (1500 S. Michigan; 922-3444), is open to visitors most days of artwork as you ride the in the district (1883) and the good lunch at (22) Eleven City the city’s oldest Catholic until 5 p.m.). escalator to the glass-roofed first converted to lofts (1978). Diner (1112 S. Wabash; 212- parish; established in 1833 Continue west along ninth-floor Winter Garden. Another notable structure 1112), a lively Jewish deli with at State and Lake streets, it Cullerton to Dearborn Street, Back outside, continue east is the 95-year-old (13) Second an irresistible soda fountain. has been a South Loop resident where you can see the Chicago to the northwest corner of Franklin Building (720 S. since 2002. Finally, a walk Housing Authority’s (37) Congress and Michigan, where Dearborn), where elaborate § TOUR #2 §§§ from 14th Street down Prairie Hilliard Homes, another innova- you will find Dankmar Adler tile murals depict the history Begin the second half of the Avenue leads you past the tive Bertrand Goldberg design. and Louis Sullivan’s splendid of printing. The 23rd annual South Loop tour at an architec- gracious red-brick townhouses One hundred years ago, this (3) Auditorium Building (call Printers Row Book Fair will be tural landmark: the 116-year- of (30) Central Station, where was the center of the Levee, 431-2389, ext. 0, to arrange held this year on June 9th and old (23) Ludington Building Mayor Richard M. Daley has Chicago’s notorious vice dis- lived since 1993. trict; until 1911, the Everleigh

P M GETTING THERE: The South Loop is readily accessible via public trans- At 15th Street, walk east sisters had their brothel— O portation. Take the CTA Red Line to the (X)M Harrison stop or the Brown one block to Indiana Avenue deemed the country’s most O

L and continue south to the (31) luxurious—at 2131 South Line to the (Y)M Library stop; ride a Rock Island train to its northern

H terminus at (Z) 414 South LaSalle Street; or board one of the many National Vietnam Veterans Dearborn (the building has

T M CTA buses that make their way up and down State Street and Michigan Art Museum (1801 S. Indiana; been demolished).

U M

O 326-0270). After touring the Michigan Avenue between Avenue. Go toM metrarail.com for further information. S museum, walk one block east 21st Street and Cermak Road a tour). Cross Michigan to the 10th (for more information go (1104 S. Wabash), now part and spend some time inside (the southern boundary of the Congress Plaza, flanked by to printersrowbookfair.org). of Columbia College; designed the 120-year-old (32) Glessner South Loop) teems with ghosts. (4) Ivan Mesˇtrovi´c’s Bowman Linger in Printers’ Row by William Le Baron Jenney House (1800 S. Prairie; 326- Harriet Monroe, the founder and Spearman; (5) Bucking- to explore two delightful book- (the father of the skyscraper), 1480), the anchor of the Prairie (in 1912) of Poetry magazine, ham Memorial Fountain, with stores—the 25-year-old (14) this is one of the first all-steel- Avenue Historic District (go grew up near here in the 1870s, its hourly water shows, is just Sandmeyer’s (714 S. Dearborn; frame skyscrapers—and the to glessnerhouse.org to learn and from 1928 to 1931 (when to the east across Columbus 922-2104) and (15) Printers first clad entirely in terra cotta. about tours of the house and he headed off to prison), Al Drive. Walk south through Row Fine and Rare Books (715 If you have begun this tour the district). Capone had his headquarters Grant Park, the perfect vantage S. Dearborn; 583-1800)—and in the morning, walk east one To reach the lake, continue in a fourth-floor suite of the point from which to observe the newish (16) Printers Row block for breakfast at (24) Yolk east along 18th Street to a (38) Lexington Hotel at the the collection of buildings along Wine Shop (719 S. Dearborn; (1120 S. Michigan; 789-9655); new (33) pedestrian walkway. northeast corner of Michigan the west side of the street. 663-9314), where you can if an afternoon picnic on the (Some local residents want and Cermak. (The hotel, whose (Along the way you will occasionally sample some of lakefront is in your plans, try to name the (34) new park subterranean vault was encounter [6] The Spirit of the wares before making a pur- the gourmet carryout at (25) at 18th and Calumet Avenue famously—and fruitlessly— Music, a statue that honors chase. (17) Dearborn Station Panozzo’s Italian Market (1303 after Black Partridge, the plumbed by Geraldo Rivera Theodore Thomas, the founder (47 W. Polk), the city’s oldest S. Michigan; 356-9966). Potawatomi warrior who saved in 1986, came down in 1995; and first conductor of the surviving train depot—it was Several good restaurants several white settlers during developers recently broke Chicago Symphony Orchestra.) built in 1885—is today a galleria reside in the 1300 block of the Fort Dearborn massacre, ground there for a condo tower While most of the structures— housing a spa, a bank, a bar, South Wabash and the 1400 which occurred at this site called Lexington Park.) Finally, such as the old (7) Harvester and several small offices. block of South Michigan (see in 1812.) Or walk west on 18th the old (39) Chess Records Building (600 S. Michigan) and Venture east along Polk and South Loop Dining on the facing to Indiana and head south to studio, where the gave the (9) Crane Company 8th streets toward Michigan page). Be sure to peek inside the Greek Revival (35) Henry birth to rock ’n’ roll in the Building (836 S. Michigan)— Avenue, making a quick detour (26) Gioco (1312 S. Wabash; B. Clarke House (1855 S. 1950s, still stands at 2120 represent the late 19th and up Plymouth Court to inspect 939-3870), a stylish Italian Indiana)—Chicago’s second South Michigan (the title of early 20th centuries, the new the (18) Lakeside Press restaurant with remnants of its oldest structure (it dates to a song by the Rolling Stones); (8) Spertus Institute of Jewish Building, an early R. R. speakeasy past—faded draw- 1836)—and, at the northwest today it is the home of the Studies, with its faceted glass Donnelley establishment that ings of birds, dancers, and corner of Michigan and Blues Heaven Foundation, which façade (now taking shape at is now a Columbia College faces—preserved on its walls as Cullerton Street, the (36) is run by the widow of blues

N dorm (731 S. Plymouth). Duck part of the modern-day décor. Second Presbyterian Church legend Willie Dixon. I

A 610 S. Michigan), introduces a M

K stunning 21st-century design— down Wabash Avenue and, R I K

by Krueck & Sexton—to this while sampling a cappuccino P

N THE MUSEUMS: At the midpoint between the two tours—east of Lake A or homemade gelato, watch O

H stretch of the avenue.

T Shore Drive at Roosevelt Road—lies the Museum Campus, home to three O A At Balbo Drive, walk west them craft luscious chocolates N L :

of Chicago’s finest museums: the (A) Field Museum (922-9410 or field Y past the (10) Merle Reskin in the open kitchen at H H

P museum.org), the (B) John G. Shedd Aquarium (939-2438 or shedd A Theatre (formerly the Black- (19) Canady Le Chocolatier T R aquarium .org), and the (C) Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum G U O stone; 60 E. Balbo), where (824 S. Wabash; 212-1270). T O O (922-7827 or adlerplanetarium.org).

H Back in Grant Park (at 9th

Lorraine Hansberry’s ground- S P

JUNE 2007 CHICAGO 81