Jennifer said... I am so glad that this topic was blogged about. I live right on Wayne and Farwell and walk to the Morse el every day. On several occasions as I approach Morse and see the new theater, I think to myself "Who in their right mind would want to start a business here?" Sure enough, it has been tagged several times and it isn't even open yet!
I also noticed that there is a new Jamaican restaurant on the South side of Morse that had it's front door shattered. I don't know how it happened, but I'm willing to bet that it was a result of deliberate stupidity. (see above photo)
I would also like to say that I feel uncomfortable, (being a defenseless woman) when I'm walking to and from the L. Not that men can't feel uncomfortable, but I experience constant cat calling and unwanted attention. And I feel that if I say anything to stand up for myself, someone is going to bust out a gun or beat me up or follow me home, or who knows what.
So far I've been followed home and verbally assaulted, no weapons yet, thank god.
Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for posting this. I was excited to find this site and find that I am not the only one who gives a crap about this neighborhood.
BLOGNOTES: Besides the broken glass Jennifer noticed, what else is wrong here?
How about the weather worn, old CAPS 2431 flyer, still attached to the outside of the building. This flyer is dated for a April 17th meeting.
What's that mean? Well, for over 15 days, the Special Service Area janitors have passed this by without removing it. Walked right past this hanging trash.
Where's the supervision by Kim Bares and DevCorp North? We could forgive them if say they didn't remove it the first day. But 15. Please... Someone is not doing their job of monitoring these janitors properly.
And don't tell me these janitors can't see the old flyer. It's eye high for gosh sakes. If they can find the third floor of this building, they should've been able to see this old, outdated flyer and take it down. Where's DevCorp North? They gotta be somewhere nearby. They've got their promotional membership sticker on the broken door.
Jocelyn at Rogers Park Neighbors covers the same subject.
13 comments:
Of course, if everyone in the 49th Ward were of their right minds all the time, Joe Moore's political career would have been ended a LONG time ago.
Joe's career should have ended in the election of 1999, when this area hit its lowest ebb in terms of crime and gang activity.
The only reason property has gained value in this area so rapidly in the past few years is because of the real estate hysteria of the past 5 years, which is now past us.
Now that we are in the midst of a massive bust that is still unfolding and will, by all indications, continue to do so until at least fall 2008 (my guess), and conversions continue apace because of the huge number of them in the permit pipeline since 2004, we will see what Joe had really and truly accomplished in terms of neighborhood improvement.
My guess is that it will be seen that property values have increased very little if at all, and that people run out of rentals by the conversion hysteria will have a new crop of newly rehabbed conversions reverting back to rental, to choose from.
North Coast your right on the money. Rogers Park is being overloaded with condo conversion (as many areas of Chicago are) the difference in RP is that it is not a prime area for buyers. Several realtors I know do not steer their clients to the Rogers Park neighborhood. I already see many of the condo being rented not sold! Results are the rents go up higher then former rents can now afford!
Yes sir 4 more yrs of joey moore!!
Hey Ryne, prices are stagnating and dropping EVERYWHERE, so the developers around here need to get real. Start offering these places to likely customers that the customers can pay and get honest financing for.
The only reason prices got so high everwhere is because the lenders were willing to lend you 4, 5, 6X your money on a "creative" loan to get a mortgage you ordinarily couldn't afford.
You can't do that anymore. The lenders are scared and are tightening up rapidly. No more liar loans. No more adjustable rates for 4X your income.
And no bail outs for delusional, careless borrowers, either.
Now that's all over. Prices are beginning to soften in "desirable" neighborhoods. Read in a national business mag about a woman in Lakeview who bought a place for $240 in 2005, just sold it for $234K, a 2 bedroom at that. She took a $20K bath between fees and commissions and moving expenses, she said. She was transferred out of town.
Read the "bubble" blogs and news mags: it's absolutely everywhere. Some places, like Miami, have 5 years worth of inventory, with more in the pipeline that was conceived at the top of the boom.
I have seen many projects being cancelled or deferred here, in all Lakefront neighborhoods.
So now we can see how much overdevelopment there was just about everywhere.
Yes I agree with you. I am amazed at the amount of new contstruction going on. Grandville & Broadway just started, when I take the redline I have counted about 3 condo near completion between the Thordale stop & Wilson!!
As you said with all the ARM comeing to there end watch out!! The loan companys / banks are going to own alot od homes/condo's they will be dumping!!
I don't know what kind of unsatisfying life you have that you feel you need to complain about EVERYTHING in your neighborhood, but it's really sad.
I'm an urban planning major at Wayne State University in Detroit, and I stumbled upon your blog while researching my move to rogers park.
I don't know you personally (though you seem like a crotchity old man), so I'll restrain any further comments on your character, but let me just say that compared to Detroit (and most any suburban, rural, or urban area in the US), rogers park is a HAVEN. Public transportation, an openness to the arts, affordable housing, and diversity (though, you seem somewhat opposed to those last two), are what makes a wonderful city, accessible to ALL. Not just the upper-middle class.
Along with diversity comes a certain amount of grit. Every urban area has crime.
I live near Troy, Michigan, one of the safest cities in the US. It has a mall, businesses and manicured lawns, but you know what it doesn't have?
Sidewalks.
Public Trans.
an artistic community
diversity.
I'll take Rogers Park over Troy any day of my life. If you hate it so much, maybe you should move to Troy. But make sure every member of your family has a car and is white.
A- I know people that have lived in both troy and RP, and actually its half and half for which they like better. That is not the point, bloggers in rogers park are not against it they just have their gripes and try to fix up the community. Im pretty sure that we all love living here but why not make it better, why not demand better leadership. This blog as well as other RP blogs may seem negative, but they are critical. Everyone needs to be critical of where they live, thats what keeps it alive, and seperates RP from Troy.
To the poster from Troy:
It is commonplace for people who arrive here from white-bread suburbs to assume that in order to have urbanity and diversity, you must tolerate crime and blight.
That is the attitude that keeps our beautiful neighborhood unsafe, and enables pockets of blight and crime to continue as they are.
Well, I'm here to tell you that I have spent my adult life in dense, urban neighborhoods in two cities, and crime and cruddy behavior are NOT inevitable.
Edgewater was worse than this nabe 10 years ago. Now it is one of the safest neighborhoods in the city, even though it has more low-income buidings (very well-run). It is very diverse, with healthy commercial, access to transit, a great arts community, and you can walk around it in total safety, as you can Lakeview and Lincoln Park.
Lakeview was, at my arrival 20 years ago, very diverse, very tolerant of extremely eccentric behavior, sort of scruffy, and very, very safe.
The only reason we still have the problems we have in this otherwise great neighborhood is because our local leadership tolerates it, and has made it known that this area is to be a dumping ground for undesirables.
There are outside factors. Why would I move to Rogers Park now, knowing that for the next two years I will have to deal with slow L service. Maybe I will move to Prairie Shore, West Loop/Town, Bucktown. In a stagnant market where every sector was previously being developed, Rogers Park will tak a harder hit because it is farther fro the Loop (short commutes are an asset), because L service will be slow, and these other neighborhoods are new and exciting.
Rogers Park, while I love living here, is not exciting in the same way.
Hi, I'm a long time RP resident (almost 3 days now :) and I came across this blog a little over a week ago. I have to agree with the comments of the poster from Troy. While it is great to see people care about the community, from reading the recent posts it seems as if this blog seeks to complain about everything and blame it on the leadership of the community. I'm sure the original intentions of this blog were good. However, it is very cynical and seems to almost revel in everything that is wrong with the area. I find a lot of the discussion on here interesting and fully support making changes in the neighborhood (such as eliminating the operation that seems to be going on at the corner of glenwood and estes), but some of the attempts to blast Joe Moore seem quite frivolous
The combination of Joe's tolerance of slumlords and blight, combined with bad El service and a growing glut of new condos, surely won't help property values, especially on the east side of the ward. Locations closer to the Metra stop may get a boost, that is if the doomsday predictions don't come true.
Contact your legislators before 5/15 about funding for public transit (CTA, Metra and Pace).
http://capwiz.com/rc/issues/alert/?alertid=9692366&type=ML
Hi everyone. This may seem a little off topic but it still has to do with local area business. I am a student living on the 1600 block of Farwell and right now I am studying for finals. The problem is that every afternoon from 2pm - 4pm I am forced to deal with Willy's Ice Cream truck that is constantly parked on Morse and Paulina. I can hear the music playing everyday from my apartment- the same tune over and over and over - and it is beginning to drive my girlfriend and I insane. It is especially annoying while I am trying to do schoolwork. I just wish he didn't have to play that tune EVERYDAY FOR HOURS AT A TIME! I am just wondering if anyone else feels the same way about this as I do...
I have to say I moved into my apt in August 2006. I have watched the economy and the neighborhood go south in just these few months. In the last month I have had 2 proposals to buy drugs and was accosted by a drunk toothless woman who insisted I give her $20. If a police car had not been on the corner she would have followed me home. I come home late some nights and have seen gang activity picking up. I'm moving because of this, not because I don't like a diverse neighborhood. Since when do safety and diversity belong together?
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