Plans for Sheridan/Hollywood TIF
A meeting being will be held by the City of Chicago Department of Planning & Development and the 48th Ward regarding a proposal for a new TIF Distrcit in Edgewater and Uptown. It will be called the Sheridan-Hollywood TIF.
This meeting is an opportunity to hear the details about the proposed TIF and ask questions you may have regarding the proposal.
When: Thursday, May 24th, 7 p.m.
Where: Edgewater Branch -Chicago Public Library, 1210 W Elmdale.
6 comments:
Yet ANOTHER tax grab by business interests, one more way to divert future taxes from public purposes to private coffers.
Whatever the proposal is and no matter how many good points it has, you can believe that it could be done for much less money by strictly private funds, and most of all, WOULD be done no matter what.
It is because of anticipation of this TIF that the wonderful old 1900-vintage hirise that used to be an old folks home has sat empty and boarded up for at least two years now. The ownership obviously expects to be provided with risk-free money to build the place out into fairly expensive housing that will net them a huge profit if it succeeds but cost them nothing if it flops.
Somebody give me a deal like that, where if I succeed I absolutely clean up, but if I lose I still clean up a little, at no risk to my own back pocket.
Edgewater is coming along quite well by private means and a huge TIF development might do more harm than good.
Go look at the results of the Broadway-Berwyn TIF and tell me that a dollar store, three cheap apparal stores, a Pier One that will probably end up being shuttered at some point, and a video store, all housed in an ugly fake-wood building that is more appropriate for a semi-rural suburb than a high-density urban neighborhood of stone and brick, was worth the $52 MM that was shoveled into it. Tell me that we will get property taxes from all that, that justified the expenditure.
Noooooooooooo!!! Not the Pier 1, I love that store!!!!
But yeah, another effort to siphon tax dollars.
Kheris, I love Pier One, too. However, the chain is really suffering. They have already shuttered their store in Lincoln Park-Lakeview on Diversey, and that was the best of them all. Their stock has really been hammered over the past couple of years and analysts are pessimistic about their future prospects.
That Pier One on Broadway is one of the few redeeming features of that little shopping district. The Dollar Tree is good for cleaning supplies, but it has no glamour or interest.
I have shopped for my place there since I moved out on my own in 1974. Unfortunately, they have slipped in terms of having really interesting merchandise, and have let themselves be eclipsed by other chains.
Or, perhaps, it is a matter of EVERYTHING having gotten much duller and more conservative in the past 10 years. The chill-out early 60s modern look that is being touted now is a long way from the "counterculture" flavor Pier One had in the old days, when they were the chief purveyer of really beautiful and offbeat things, and cute, cheap, unusual furnishings found nowhere else.
I hope they keep their store on Broadway and recover their identity,because that store is one of only two or three worthwhile stores in that little district.
How much of this one will Loyola garner? Lord knows they need it!
COME SEE THE 48TH IN ACTION. I'LL BE THERE.
I'll be there, too, Toto.
I'm a potential Edgewater condo buyer and really, really love that area.It is now my fave North Coast neighborhood, ahead of even Lakeview. I enjoy walking home up Kenmore or Sheridan. I love the atmosphere. I don't mind being on Broadway or Granville late at night as I once did.
I think it is coming along nicely, at a slow, even, graceful pace, which is the best,surest way to build a neighborhood. It means you build each "story" on top of one that is stable and established, vs. imposing a big, top-down development on the area. Crime rates are very low. Home values are stable and there is a large supply of luxury housing yet there is room for buyers of moderate-priced condos. There is also a good supply of cheap and 'rent-stabilized' buildings that are well-run.
Mostly good, very small and minor imperfections. The streetscape along Broadway is the only thing wrong and that's improving as larger, denser buildings go up on it, and others are improved and more trees are planted. Lots of great little businesses popping up spontaneously.
I don't see how throwing tens of millions of dollars drawn on our future taxes, to impose inappropriate development on the area can help and I can see many ways it can hurt.
Let's fight this hijacking of our taxes for private purposes. We're staggering under the load as it is. We're already paying for about 150 TIF districts in Chicago alone, and most of them are financial disasters and failures on their own terms.
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