Dinner hour is over. The children are pouring back outside for one more helping of fresh air before their bedtime. A set of red-headed twins races by on skateboards. Sis is in hot pursuit on her tricycle, and Mom and Dad lag behind. Down the street is the new kid on the block-a 2-month-old girl encased in a petticoated buggy. And on the corner a couple of teenage boys and girls flirt.
No, this isn`t a snapshot of suburbia. Imagine that you`re standing on Lake Shore Drive at Belmont Avenue, along a stretch of residential skyscrapers that slinks from the southern reaches of Lake Shore Drive into the South Loop, through downtown and the Gold Coast, in and out of Lincoln Park and all the way north through Rogers Park. Here you`ll find the demographic segment nobody has counted (or counted on)-children.
Dwarfed by the buildings in which they live and hushed by the traffic outside, high-rise kids are anything but inconspicuous.
This fall the Chicago Department of Planning is releasing the results of a survey it conducted with Applied Real Estate Analysis (AREA) Inc., a Chicago-based real estate consulting firm. The purpose of the study was to discover who comprises the downtown residential population-from North Avenue on the north to Roosevelt Road on the south, Lake Michigan to Halsted Street, targeting buildings with 50 or more units and excluding public housing.
To the surprise of many, including Mary Ludgin, the department`s director of central area market analysis, 10 percent of that population is 21 years old or younger. Robert Miller, senior vice president of AREA, qualifies the
”surprise” by noting that the 10 percent includes a segment of 18- to 21-year-olds who are not living with their families but who live and work downtown. Nonetheless, Ludgin and Miller agree the study has revealed a previously unmeasured population of children.
Granted, some sections are more familial than others. Buildings in the heart of the Loop, for example, count fewer children per capita than others to the immediate north and south, where the business district begins to peter out. Once the boundaries between commercial and residential begin to blur, children begin to emerge.
The South Loop is perhaps the best example. A gentrifying residential community that sits minutes by cab from State and Madison Streets, the area is in the midst of a kid boom. The South Loop Elementary School opened early this year to accommodate the influx.
On the other side of town at 340 W. Diversey Pkwy., the condominium association reports a 15 to 20 percent resident population of families with children.
”It`s only been within the last 10 to 15 years that we`ve seen a strong movement of a more diversified population downtown,” Miller says. ”And that includes families with children.”
Chicago architect Bertrand Goldberg, of Bertrand Goldberg Associates, has been prophesying the compatibility of families and downtown living for a lot longer than that. His Marina City was conceived more than 20 years ago as a mixed-use urban complex, not just another apartment building. He updated the concept with River City, another self-contained community with amenities attractive to family lifestyles: an enclosed pedestrian street, shuttle service through the Loop and a health club that has children`s hours.
Goldberg isn`t the only progressive. There`s the burgeoning breed of city moms and dads. These parents have traded a back yard for a view and ceded many of the conveniences usually associated with raising kids in the suburbs.
Why do these parents bother?
Their answer is a collective, ”Why not?” For every obvious disadvantage, there`s an advantage that tops it, they respond.
”If you have kids, high-rise living is wonderful,” says Vicki Quade, mother of two toddlers and half of a two-income family. ”Our high-rise is right on the lake. We`re always accessible to a park. There`s great transportation. . . . Someone else is paid to dump our trash-almost all buildings have janitorial service.” There are no lawns to mow or major maintenance problems. ”And,” she continues, ”we have doormen. They`re there to help you” with strollers or packages if you`re juggling an armload. In an emergency, home is 15 minutes by cab from her north Loop office.
Besides the logistical pluses, parents cite more personal reasons for wanting to raise their children in a highly citified environment.
DIVERSITY
”I feel that, living in the city, I`ve seen more-not all the same type of people,” says 15-year-old Stephany Rimland, who lives on the ninth floor of a vintage building with a lush view of Belmont Harbor. ”I`ve seen poor people, black people, wealthy people, the middle class.”
Stephany`s parents, Marlene, an interior designer, and Jack, an attorney, both grew up in the city. They lived in Evanston briefly after they were married, then moved back to the city and into a high-rise.
”I like city living better than the suburbs,” Marlene says. ”I like the anonymity of it. I like to be able to jump right in and have the world at my doorstep or be totally anonymous. In the suburbs, you can`t do that,” she says, confessing their die-for attitude about having a lake view and dislike of having to drive great distances to work. With 2,600 square feet, four bedrooms and four bathrooms, the Rimlands have been able to stretch out and grow. They converted one of the bedrooms into Marlene`s home office and another into an informal family room. Foreseeing the difficulty of carting Stephany and her friends back and forth to play, they added a bed to her room to readily welcome overnight guests.
Jack and Marlene acknowledge the frustrations. Having to accompany Stephany outside constantly as a child was a full-time proposition. And, because there were few children in the immediate neighborhood, car-pooling and walking her back and forth to friends` homes became a must. School presented another set of problems. Dissatisfied with the local public school, they chose to send Stephany to Francis Parker, a 12-grade private school.
In spite of the inconveniences, all members of this family say they`d do it all over again, and none so enthusiastically as Stephany, whose list of favorite pastimes isn`t different from any other 15-year-old-shopping, piano, field hockey, softball, learning to drive and just walking around with her friends.
PROXIMITY
If anybody has turned the great big city into their own little world, it`s Hans and Ashley Shrader. At 20 and 18 years old, they`re 15-year veterans of high-rise living. Though they`re away at college now, home is 50 stories above ground level in a Gold Coast tower that stands aloof to the raucousness below on Rush Street. They live here with their stepfather, Conrad, and mother, Carol, who after a divorce made the bold move to the city from Highland Park so home and the kids weren`t as far from her downtown job.
Carol chose the area because of its proximity to Ogden School, a public elementary school, and a high-rise because of its tight security. Their four- bedroom, 2 1/2-bath home represents the merger of a three-bedroom unit with a studio.
The studio`s kitchen evolved into a spacious laundry room, and closet space runs rampant. Four sets of skis and boots, two pairs of ice skates, three pairs of roller skates, six tennis rackets, a whole load of running gear, a wine collection and a poodle named Toulouse live here, too. The walls are padded to soften the visually powerful walls-of-windows and to minimize noise reverberation.
”We had to structure our activity,” says Carol about getting the kids involved socially. ”We did a lot of lessons, and they both became very athletic.”
”You can`t be a lazy person,” says Hans, who with Ashley credits their mother for indulging them in a variety of activities that included the theater, symphony, tennis and dance lessons. ”To do it well (live in a city high-rise), you have to take advantage of a lot of things. It`s easy to sit at home, but that`s not going to get you anywhere.”
While many high-rise families revel in lofty city sites, others take a pseudo-suburban outlook. Take Judy and Guy Hoch, for instance. Although they and their 8-year-old daughter, Frances, and 10-year-old son, Tony, live 13 stories up in a Dearborn Park condominium, Judy is quick to note that the immediate neighborhood is more suburb than city.
NEIGHBORHOOD PIONEERS
She may be right. Tree-lined streets, lots of grass, children`s playlots, less congested streets, a folksy rapport among neighbors and an estimated 500 children in the neighborhood characterize the still growing South Loop, which currently extends to Roosevelt Road. Two blocks in any direction outside the development`s perimeter, though, and the traffic, buses and smattering of decayed buildings that once overran the area remind you you`re in the city.
In spite of the reminder, though, it does appear that the ”pioneers” of the South Loop, and Dearborn Park in particular, have a modified city life in mind for themselves, a city life tailor-made for families.
The Hochs are pioneers. They moved in eight years ago, when there wasn`t even a grocery nearby. A food co-op among neighbors solved the problem. Judy says it was an area they believed would flourish, given the accessibility of the city. Prices were notably lower than those in some of the established northern neighborhoods. So the Hochs planted their roots here and started cultivating the neighborhood, filling in the voids.
”If we wanted something, we had to start it,” Judy says.
The first ”something” was a public school. Children were bused to about 30 different schools in the city. The parents banded together and fought for what is now the South Loop Elementary School, a fine arts public school that opened just last February.
Then there was the absence of a scouting program for the kids. Once again, the parents organized themselves and organized troops, dens and packs. Guy is a Cub Scout den leader; Judy is a Girl Scout leader.
Sarah Randle is a fellow Girl Scout leader and a neighbor in Dearborn Park. She moved into the area several years ago from the South Side with her two daughters, Jennifer, 15, and Courtney, 9. She had stumbled upon Dearborn Park years earlier, when she was looking for a day-care center for Courtney that would be convenient to her downtown job. She not only found a facility, she found a whole new way of life.
”I always said I wouldn`t move into an elevator building with my children,” Sarah says. ”But Dearborn Park is a different story. . . . It`s a whole different concept.”
The concept: an integrated neighborhood that puts people from all ages and walks of life into a high-density urban setting that`s comfortably and curiously removed from the hustle.
”We could have been just as happy somewhere else,” Ashley Shrader sums up. ”It`s not a question of happiness.” What really counts is the people you`re with, she says. –
