Results for “uptown”

PERSONALLY, I THINK THIS IS A HORRIBLE IDEA. UPTOWN USE TO HAVE A VERY STRONG JEWISH PRESENCE THAT IS CURRENTLY MAKING A COME BACK. I THINK IT SHOULD BE MADE A CITY LANDMARK.

I’m no fan of SCB or Pappageorge, but – I can’t believe I’m saying this – I actually think the 53rd street tower design is pretty good. If it is a tower on a podium, it’s not the most offensive edition of one I’ve seen. SCB and Pappageorge have done much worse in the South Loop and River North. I like how the base is brick and is set back from the tower portion. Street-level footprint looks relatively welcoming to my eye, and balconies are minimal and muted. MAC Properties has done good work before; I hope they continue with this project.

Nothing special about the Uptown low-rise. Glad to see more apartments and retail added to the mix for North Broadway, but really the CVS across the street needs to go more.

Sorry to be a stickler about these things, but the proposal up top should be E 53rd Street, and the proposal below is in Edgewater, not Uptown. No offense meant. I’m just a bit obsessive.

LJSBurn said it best! I seriously recommend anyone wanting to leave to do so – not trying to be flippant, but like LJ says, sometimes its better to see if the grass really is greener. In my case, I went to graduate school in NYC and worked there for a few years – I got really deep into the Wall St./financial industry rat race – and I can tell you with certainty, NYC is not a place where people should go to generate their wealth. The city has turned into a giant pied -a-terre for the global elite and trust fund babies. It’s a place where successful people go to SPEND their wealth, not earn it.

After NYC I gave Texas a try – not Dallas, but Houston. And it was a nightmare – I barely last 2 years: I could not get out of their fast enough. It was worse that Dallas: churches and strip clubs, and the "urbanized" areas of Midtown, Uptown, and the Galleria make Schaumburg look metro. Poor quality new and old construction; Houston’s version of Lake Forest is 5-10min fron dowtown and many of the homes are in the shadows of high-rise condos/apartments; most of these homes have no basement, cheap windows, and are gaudy beyond repair. New construction multi-family is a shoddy U or O shaped box wrapped around an equally tall parking garage. No thanks. Of the dozen transplant friends I made there who were from the North (Chicago, Boston, NY, etc), all but one have moved back. I kid you not, I was called a Yankee or heard the phrase ‘north of the Mason-Dixon line’ weekly. Texas has no state income tax, but the property taxes are high in Houston and the public schools are atrocious in rich and poor neighborhoods alike. Tax savings vs school tuition in the South proves to be a wash in most cases, I found.

Long story short, after 7 years away and watching Chicago slowly but surely transform into a global alpha, I knew it was time to come back. I love 4 seasons (sans March) and I knew I could start and build a successful company here. My firm regularly host interns from NU, UChicago, UIllinois, UMichigan, and many of these students are keen to make their careers and lives in the Chicagoland area. I will continue to be a booster of this city. I am well bid on Chicago; if the city can continue to attract corporate headquarters and keep a viable talent pool in the face of existing headwinds and bad national press, I can only imagine how successful Chicago could be if local and state government could get their acts together.

These studies are all bogus because no one rents 1 bedroom apartments. If you’re single or have a partner you usually rent a studio, if you have kids you get a 2 bed. 1 beds are the awkward middle. I’d be willing to bet that if you looked at studios or 2 beds (or 3 beds) then Chicago would be even cheaper relative to other cities because you have so many converted hotels on the north and south sides (you can still get a $900/month studio in Lakeview or Uptown) and you have a ton of courtyard apartment buildings/3 flat and 6 flats which have larger apartments.

I realize that, and am generally wary of comparing things like urban infill in neighborhoods like Uptown to the greatest hits of NYC. But projects with a profile like this (mid-rise condo in the West Loop or River North) are, or at least should be, the city’s comparable project to the starchitect-designed mid-rises of lower Manhattan.

Keep in mind land acquisition costs are significantly higher in Manhattan as well. While I expect the price disparity would still result in more design constraints here than in New York, there is still plenty of room to raise the bar (note that I mentioned Ralph Johnson, who designed a wonderful building at this price point with the Contemporaine).

High rise parking lots in Chicago should never be made on an exposed outside. Either they need to be enclosed from the elements of Chicago’s winters, or made underground. Target in Uptown, a Minnesota based retain chain, actually got it right.

More residences would be a big plus there. Currently the area feels kind of empty when compared to prime Uptown to the north and Lakeview to the south.

As developments like these in the area progress, the CTA may want to consider adding more express buses down Marine / LSD.

Uptown has a pretty organized online community. In the early days of the internet, they had active message boards, such as Buena Park neighbors and Beacon Neighbors. When blogs started to rise, we first had IrishPirate and WhatTheHelen blogs…. that got usurped by a "legitimate" blog — "Uptown Update" which a while ago had 5 million visitors (though I am sure a few like me who hit refresh a few times) . Those blogs and message boards accused me of having false ID’s too , but I always made myself public. It was people like IrishPirate and the UptownUpdate crew who remained anonymous.

Also, Uptown has a number of different communities within it so i am sure they spread the word.

I love Uptown, lived there for a decade, and still visit…but yeah, previous winners (especially since it’s all predominately white and upper class) should be excluded, so other neighborhoods can be a part of the voting… Woodlawn is lucky to have actually been a part of the voting