At the time the PMD was on the drawing board, all the community groups in the neighborhoods radiating out from Clybourn Avenue supported it, but they each had their own motives.
”One of the things that the PMD did was to make certain uses of property-for bars and restaurants that would have been automatically legal under previous zoning-something that would have to pass the scrutiny of the political process,” says Larry Blankstein, planning chairman of Concerned Allied Neighbors.
”Even people who didn`t believe in protecting the manufacturing were in favor of the PMD because it limited bars, if nothing else.”
Although some sections of Clybourn Avenue still are marked by vacant lots with for-sale signs, rickety houses and crumbling sidewalks, the pace of retail development has been rapid.
Besides the 1800 Clybourn shopping complex, there are six small strip shopping centers between it and Fullerton Avenue. The identity of Clybourn Avenue is evolving as a retail-entertainment area for the scores of residents immediately to the east because it is a less-congested alternative to Halsted and Clark Streets in east Lincoln Park, where parking is very limited. Many residents, however, decry the haphazard aesthetics of the developing street.
”All these darn strip malls are not creative, and I think they`re a blight on the landscape,” says Mary Sue Crawford, president of the Clybourn Lofts Condominium Association. ”The street has changed from a nice city street with unusual buildings and good solid structures to something that looks like Schaumburg.”
Jeffrey Price, president of RANCH Triangle, a residential neighborhood group in the area bounded by Racine, Armitage, North, Clybourn and Halsted, says the retail development is ”destroying a sense of community, a feeling that our neighborhood is unique, and it`s turning it into something that`s equal to Dempster Street in Skokie or Ogden Avenue in Downers Grove or any suburb.”
And anticipating increased traffic congestion once the shopping centers are fully leased, the Concerned Allied Neighbors group is organizing a traffic study that will include a survey of bottlenecks on Clybourn Avenue.
Except for a minor conflict years ago with U.S. Sample over its workers parking in the Clybourn Lofts` parking lot and the loft owners` walking of dogs near the printing facilities` loading dock, there have been no complaints from residents about the grit and noise of the factories. ”We all moved in knowing we`d be surrounded by industry,” Crawford says. ”It`s one of the aspects of the neighborhood.”
When the loft apartments went on the market in 1984, the prices ranged from $30,000 to $150,000 a unit, depending on size and amenities. Since then they`ve doubled in value on the average and, in a few cases, have been resold for sums 250 percent higher than their original purchase prices.
The appearance of upscale loft residents on Clybourn may have reduced the stigma, held by some, of the area as an outpost uncomfortably close to Cabrini-Green. Indeed, it is a revelation to turn directly east off Clybourn and discover an enclave of new rowhouses, townhouses and single-family homes and rehabbed buildings on such streets as Willow, Dayton, Bissell and Maud between North and Armitage Avenues.
”I`ve been in the real estate business for nine years, but two years ago I came here,” says Reinaldo A. Salva II, owner of New Clybourn Realty and Palomino Construction at 1731 N. Clybourn Ave. ”This is where the action is; this is where the money is. If I`m going to get a headache selling a $50,000 house, I`d rather sell a $250,000 home and get the same headache.
”The caliber of the people that you deal with in this neighborhood is better than anywhere else. You don`t have to do anything for them. They`re educated-doctors, lawyers, stockbrokers-and they call their banker for the financing. It`s mostly two-income couples, and it`s big money. They buy and sell, and they move up. Some of these people move into the city from the suburbs. Right behind me, under the elevated tracks, they sold out all those townhouses on Bissell Street-right on the tracks, listening to this kind of noise-for $275,000, $280,000.”
Obviously, such aspects as the nearness of the ”L” tracks and housing projects are not a deterrent for many.
”The fact that Dayton, Bissell and Fremont Streets now come together in a cul-de-sac so that there`s no longer a direct path from North Avenue has been a positive step,” says Mary Thrush, a real estate broker selling new townhomes on those streets and the wife of developer George Thrush. ”Most of the people we`ve sold to, with few exceptions, were familiar with the area. We had quite a few lookers who didn`t buy who were concerned about Cabrini-Green, but the others who did buy just took it in stride.
”I don`t think you find roving gangs around here. Sure, there`s crime, but there`s crime everywhere.”
Many of the windows of homes in the area closest to North Avenue are festooned with blue-and-white signs, reading: ”WARNING. This is a
neighborhood watch area. WE CALL POLICE.”
”The streets are empty at night,” says one woman who resides on the 1700 block of Bissell Street. ”A girl was mugged on the corner over there on Willow a couple of weeks ago. The danger is thinking that it`s not dangerous. There`s reason to be very careful. You`ve got such affluence so near to such poverty.”
Still, it is a far cry from a decade ago when Helen Shaw and her family bought a two-flat on the 1700 block of Dayton Street and rehabbed it into a single-family home. ”Then there were drug deals going on, arson, including one in an occupied building,” Shaw says. ”Where there`s now a set of condos at about 1630, 1640 Dayton, there was a place where garbage trucks were parked for the night.”
The expansion of Lincoln Park to the Clybourn Avenue and North Avenue borders was as inevitable as the passage of day into night.
”Lincoln Park historically has pushed north and west,” says developer Ruttenberg. ”By the early `60s, people were at Fullerton Avenue west of Clark Street. By the late `70s, they were west of Lincoln Avenue. The De Paul factor came in the middle and late `70s, and then you had the townhouse development that ran west of Racine Avenue to about 1300.
”What happens is you have a growth pattern that is contiguous. The boundary keeps expanding because it`s like a balloon. More and more people want to get in, and you have to keep inflating the balloon of desirability for location.
”Affordability also is a factor. While a home east of Lincoln Avenue might cost between $600,000 and $1.5 million, a home along Racine Avenue can be had for $300,000 or $400,000. So there`s that kind of economic differential and an age differential too. By and large, older people who have been in the community the longest live east of Halsted Street, and the younger people who have been in the community the least amount of time live west of Racine Avenue. That`s the way the whole community has developed for the last 40 years.”
The population of the Clybourn Corridor has shifted periodically over the years from white ethnics to blacks and Hispanics. Now it has shifted once again to a predominantly white population, professional-class pioneers. Interestingly, Clybourn Avenue, which starts at Division Street and runs northwest almost parallel to the Chicago River until it reaches the junction of Belmont and Western Avenues, was named for Archibald Clybourne, Chicago`s second white settler who arrived here in 1823.
Just as the city changed radically during Archibald Clybourne`s lifetime, so do the Clybourn Corridor and its contiguous areas seem destined for more change as the `90s unfold.
The establishment of the PMD is not widely regarded as a long-term solution.
”The way Chicago did the PMD, it was a temporary solution to a problem that has really outgrown it,” says Louis Masotti, professor of urban development at Northwestern University`s Kellogg Graduate School of Management. ”PMD is in place but fading because it hasn`t succeeded in creating more industrial development and has succeeded in slowing down retail and housing development.”
Eisendrath allows that ”we have written in the ordinance that it will be reviewed from time to time by the city`s planning commission because if the industries are no longer viable, then we will redesignate it. But as long as these industries are thriving, as long as there`s a really good market for industrial land, as long as they want to expand and continue to employ people, this is a solution that makes sense.”
The LEED Council`s Ducharme bristles at the suggestion that the PMD is a temporary solution. ”If you think of it as temporary, it`s not going to make any difference at all,” she says.
”What the PMD does is give the city the ability to take areas where industry already is present and create some of the security that industrial parks give industry and, in a sense, allows it to compete with suburban industrial parks in the context of what`s already developed.”
Discussions are under way to designate a second, much larger PMD in the 32nd Ward from Chicago Avenue to Webster Avenue and around the west side of Goose Island up to Southport Avenue, where Finkl & Sons is located.
”You may make another planned manufacturing district, and then what will happen is the exact same thing that is happening now,” says George Adamczyk, a mortgage banker and former resident of the Clybourn Lofts. ”The people who would have been the beneficiaries of that positive economic tide-in other words, much higher land values-say: `Hey, wait a second. We don`t want this PMD. We could take this money and get out of this dumpy place and buy ourselves a brand-new building, and we`ll be happy. The guys that buy our old building will be happy. It`s good for everyone.`
”The power of economic forces is greater than political forces, greater than social forces. Over time, if the market demands that an area be commercial and residential, then it will be.”
Few, if any, residents of Cabrini-Green work in the Clybourn PMD, so the housing project is not considered a prime reason for keeping manufacturing jobs clustered in the area. And with the expansion of upscale development on the Near North Side, Cabrini-Green is increasingly being hemmed in by River North, River West, the Halsted Triangle and the Clybourn Corridor.
Indeed, Horwitz Matthews developed two high-priced, fortresslike residential projects on North Avenue in recent years, City Commons and Larrabee Commons. And the company will soon begin what Horwitz terms a
”moderate-income” housing complex of 300 apartments and 42 townhouses right next to Cabrini-Green on a block bounded by Oak, Wells, Franklin and Hill Streets. Prices will range from $485 a month for a studio rental apartment to $728,000 for a four-bedroom townhouse.
If Cabrini-Green were dismantled, ”a lot of developers would get very busy,” says one real estate broker. ”Not only would the Clybourn area become more valuable, but the area south of North Avenue would take off like a shot in terms of value and desirability.”
Asked about the chances of Cabrini-Green surviving the decade, developer Horwitz says: ”That`s really a political issue. Most of us feel that it was an experiment that failed. And not necessarily a failure because of the bad intentions of the planners but because it just didn`t work. The direction that seems more promising at the moment is scattered-site housing, but the problem is we don`t have the prototypes yet for doing it.
”If, in the right political climate, somebody will be able to make the argument that if we can provide the scattered site-housing around the city and essentially finance it in part by the sale of Cabrini-Green, that will do three positive things for the city. It`ll provide housing that`s going to work, eliminate a problem-which is what Cabrini-Green is-and provide revenue for the city from the commercial development. When I say commercial, I assume it would continue to be a residential project creating a greater tax base.
”That`s the scenario that I think is plausible.”
