Patricia Jones doesn’t shop at the stores near her South Side home anymore. “The quality of merchandise is pretty disgusting,” says Jones, who lives within walking distance of the old retail strip that stretches from the corner of 91st Street and Commercial Avenue.
Jones didn’t always avoid the small storefronts that line the main streets of the neighborhood known as South Chicago. She says she used to shop there regularly when it had a better mix of stores that carried the things she needed for her three children. Back then, the Goldblatt’s and Woolworth stores were among her favorites. But when retailers such as those two left the neighborhood, Jones took her dollars elsewhere.
“I have a car, so I go to the malls–either Ford City or River Oaks,” says Jones, 46, quickly adding that she’d prefer to spend her money in the neighborhood if only the right kind of stores would open there.
Jones’ strong opinions illustrate the problems facing a number of Chicago’s neighborhood retail districts. Retailers naturally want to attract more shoppers. And while residents like to shop in their neighborhoods, they also say many of the old stores just aren’t as appealing as the new ones.
“Everyone faces the dilemma of how to revitalize retail in an existing urban setting,” says real estate executive James Kaplan of James Kaplan Companies Inc., Highland Park. “You want to combine the best elements of the neighborhood shopkeeper with the pizazz of the new retailers. It ain’t easy.”
Recognizing these challenges, the City of Chicago has introduced a retail program designed to strengthen the viability of traditional neighborhood shopping areas. During the program’s pilot phase, special assistance will be given to six city neighborhoods where the old-fashioned kind of storefronts, once so popular with residents, seem to have a chance to make a comeback.
“We wanted to initiate a program that provided a comprehensive and long-term approach to revitalizing our neighborhood commercial areas,” says Bob Kunze, assistant commissioner at the city’s Department of Planning and Development. The program will help train local retailers and business organizations. It will also aid with streetscape and building improvements, marketing and promotion, and site assembly for development.
Kunze also says the city recently signed a contract with the National Main Street Center to provide assistance in three of the six designated retail areas. These include: Portage Park at Irving Park Road and Cicero Avenue (also known as Six Corners), South Chicago and Bridgeport. Kunze says these neighborhoods were selected, in part, because of active merchants’ organizations that have already done a lot to spur development.
The Main Street Center, part of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, was chosen to help because it has a good track record rehabbing the downtowns of small towns and cities. In short, the Main Street Center works to save existing commercial buildings while helping merchants set up organizations to support retail districts.
Locally, the Main Street Center has helped revitalize the downtowns of several Chicago suburbs, including Libertyville, and a handful of Downstate towns. “We are not only preserving buildings, but also communities,” says McDuffie Nichols of the National Main Street Center, Washington, D.C. While most city residents would probably like a quaint, tidy shopping district nearby, big obstacles remain.
Local merchants and shoppers alike complain about the lack of parking. And store owners say the meters installed by the city on main streets discourage shopping.
Absentee landlords, sometimes common along commercial strips, often don’t want to spend money on tired-looking storefronts. Vacant stores, sometimes as much as 30 to 40 percent of a retail district, deter new retailers from opening shops.
A surplus of certain types of retailers, such as resale shops and stores with cheap goods, can dissuade shoppers. At the same time, the development of new shopping centers is often hindered by the difficulty of dealing with multiple property owners in order to assemble a large block of land.
Yet, many contend retail can thrive along the old commercial strips. “The one thing these neighborhoods have that regional malls don’t is proximity to the rooftops. In other words, they have access to people who live above the store, or across the alley behind the store,” says real estate executive David Stone of Stone Real Estate Corp., Chicago. “It is so easy for people to shop there.”
The Chicago neighborhoods selected for help from the Main Street Center illustrate the issues that face urban retailing. And while neighborhood merchants seem to welcome outside assistance, they’ve already made some progress on their own.
In South Chicago, for example, the site of the former Goldblatt’s store at the corner of 91st and Commercial will soon have a new Delray Farms supermarket. A Walgreens and Footlocker Shoe store also have recently taken spots along the strip.
Long-time resident Jones sees these changes as a positive sign that retailers are taking an interest in the strip. “I’m happy to see it,” says Jones. “People need a choice.”
So far, 15 property owners along Commercial Avenue have fixed their storefronts. Tony Macias redid the exterior of his grocery store, La Fruteria Inc. He had the outside of the building sandblasted and replaced the canopies. He even purchased the building next door to expand his business. “People notice the difference. It would be wonderful if everyone joined the program, but not everyone does,” says Macias, referring to a special city plan that pays 75 percent of facade rehab costs.
Many of the positive changes can be attributed to the work of the Southeast Chicago Development Commission, a local group trying to rebuild the commercial district.
“We have the infrastructure in place,” says Lynne Cunningham, president of the commission. “We have a good merchant organization.”
Bonnie Dinnell-Dimond, for instance, represents the kind of enthusiastic small merchant often found in the neighborhoods. Her family-owned store, Steel City Furniture, burned to the ground last year. Her father, who runs the business, decided to rebuild the store in the same place on Commercial. (The store has a temporary location two blocks from the main street.)
“The reputation down here is worse than the reality. This is a wonderful neighborhood. But we need more varied types of merchandise,” says Dinell-Dimond.
Active merchant organizations are key to transforming a commercial strip, says Nichols of the Main Street Center. These groups guide development and help recruit new retailers. They also act much like a shopping center manager, setting up rules, such as consistent hours of operation and design guidelines for storefronts.
In South Chicago, the development commission has even gone so far as to purchase two blighted apartment buildings on the commercial strip. Both buildings have been rehabilitated and leased again. One now has a social service agency on the first floor. The other has two new storefronts for lease.
Besides helping with programs already underway, the Main Street Center can, if appropriate, jump-start new construction. Vacant or underutilized spots are earmarked for so-called in-fill development. “We hope to tap Main Street’s experience in terms of locating new retail development in an established area,” says Cunningham of the Southeast Chicago Development Commission. She says her group would like to assemble land that might attract large retailers.
But developing new shopping centers in dense neighborhoods isn’t easy. According to retail expert Stone, it’s hard to put together parcels of land when multiple owners, some of whom are unsophisticated, are involved. Stone says: “Times are good right now. So developers are working on projects where the land is easy to assemble, instead of in these urban communities where it’s a tough job.”
At Six Corners on Chicago’s Northwest Side, community groups worked for about 10 years to have a new shopping center built in the neighborhood. “It took a long time,” says Jeannine Smentek, executive director of the Portage Park Chamber of Commerce. “We had three different developers and three different sites.”
Eventually, property adjacent to a successful Sears store was designated a tax increment financing (TIF) district to help lure a developer, Tucker Development Corp. of Highland Park. Called The Marketplace at Six Corners, the center includes a Jewel/Osco (opening in December), Marshall’s, Blockbuster Video and K.B. Toy. “This is an underserved market. There are 400,000 people in the trade area. People did not have quality shopping. It should be the catalyst for further development,” says Richard Tucker, president of Tucker Development.
With that project finished, the local Chamber of Commerce has turned its attention to the old storefronts where vacancies are running about 20 percent, according to chamber president Smentek. She says the area needs a master plan for parking and streetscape improvements. Another wish: a big store on the west edge of the shopping strip to balance the Sears store on the east.
“For years, I have been reading about Main Street and saying we need this program. I love the program because it is into conserving storefronts,” says Smentek. She adds that chamber members in September toured Libertyville to see how the Main Street Center has helped retailers there.
“We should not try to be Woodfield. We should be Six Corners. But we would love to have a Starbucks,” says Smentek, realizing that fixes won’t be quick and changes may takes years.
Merchants along old commercial strips sometimes have difficulty coordinating their plans, though. For example, Joe Angelastri owns City Newsstand, a magazine and newspaper shop, on Cicero Avenue at Six Corners. He’d like to fix his store, but before he does, he’d like to know what will happen to the vacant spot next door, an old Woolworth store. Angelastri wonders whether a new shopkeeper will fix the store and what it might look like. He figures maybe he should postpone a remodeling job until he knows what his neighbor will do. “We are waiting to see what happens,” says Angelastri.
In Bridgeport, one of the big problems is absentee landlords who own property along Halsted Street, the commercial strip. John Wilkinson, owner of Great Western Beef and a member of the South Loop Chamber of Commerce, figures storefront vacancies are running about 35 percent there. He says even though the stores are empty, the property owners pay the taxes and hope the property will be valuable some day. Other landlords collect $300 to $400 a month in rent, which becomes supplementary income for them. “It’s a delicate situation. We are searching for a solution,” says Wilkinson.
Real estate executive Kaplan thinks some of the old commercial strips with high vacancies may eventually be redeveloped for residential use.
“If the second-floor apartment above the storefront is rented, but the storefront is empty, what does that tell you? Real estate will be what it wants to be,” says Kaplan.
Then again, he doesn’t think the job of revitalizing neighborhood commercial strips is impossible as long as the timing and location are right.
“Look at the revitalization of the near South neighborhoods,” he says. “They are 10 minutes from downtown, the same 10 minutes from downtown that the Gold Coast is, just a different direction. It’s right there.”
