What started the fire behind Chicago’s West Loop, now the city’s coolest restaurant, residential and work district?
One catalyst was the 1990 opening of Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Studios on a plot of land that now is home to the world headquarters of McDonald’s. Another was the 1994 arrival of the fabulous, cirque-like French eatery Marché on West Randolph Street, the spark for a world-class restaurant row. A later notable was the opening a decade later of the cool hangout Soho House, which had been rebuffed after initially wanting the Gold Coast building that now houses Restoration Hardware. That arrival, allowing for a cool place for knowledge workers to perch, shifted a lot of hipster energy to the West Loop.
But the best answer to that question is the 1996 Democratic National Convention and Mayor Richard M. Daley’s famous imposition of black, wrought-iron fencing.
As the Democrats came to town 28 years ago, Daley ordered up fences, antique-style street lamps and flower boxes, especially on West Madison Street, the then-gritty thoroughfare to the United Center. Private owners were told by city enforcers to get with the program — that this was the kind of fence the mayor liked and thus the kind of fence they would be acquiring, right now.
We’ve been around long enough to remember walking around the West Loop and marveling at how the fences, lamps and flowers all sprouted in the barren West Loop, as if by magic. (For the record, Daley was copying a similar beautification project pursued by his father, Mayor Richard J. Daley, for the 1968 Democratic Convention at the International Amphitheater, although those efforts got scooped by other news).
Richard M.’s fences were ridiculed by some at the time, but they opened up an entire new neighborhood for development and marked one of his more signficant mayoral achievements. And the fences did not go away when the convention ended. Those empty lots aren’t empty now.
Which raises the question, what are we getting for good this time around as the Democrats arrive in a few weeks?
We’ve heard a lot about temporary benefits including flower boxes and the like. We’ve been briefed that the brutal construction on the Kennedy Expressway will cease for a few days. And, more remarkably, Metra has announced that between Aug. 12 and 30, it will offer hourly service between Union Station downtown and Chicago’s O’Hare Airport (technically the O’Hare Transfer Station by the newish rental car facility) on its North Central line during the convention period. These trains, running between 7:45 in the morning and 10:45 in the evening, will whisk delegates from one to the other in a little over a half hour, hopefully taking pressure off both the crammed Kennedy and the CTA’s beleaguered Blue Line.
A smart idea from the one transit agency that has its current act together. But we regular ORD flyers have reason to be envious.
Metra’s current service on that route is all of six trains a day with zero trains on weekends. Unless your flight (or airport work needs) matches that sparse schedule — unlikely given the vast schedule gaps — it won’t work for you. That’s also why the service is not well known. And the DNC delegates are getting express service too. For $3.75 a ride on a route where taxis and ride-shares these days typically cost $50 or more. Lucky delegates.
Providing frequent and fast North Central Metra service to O’Hare is a no-brainer in our minds, especially since O’Hare’s people mover now more quickly takes you right to the rental car and train station. Sure, a mothballed CTA superstation still lurks on the lower level of the Block 37 development in the Loop, a remnant of the airport express hopes of prior administrations, but that’s merely a pipe dream now. By contrast, it wouldn’t take massive capital investment to make the service the DNC will be enjoying into a regular occurrence.
Metra has said that it was able to negotiate this temporary deal with the freight railroads that control the tracks and to corral scarce resources (equipment, funding) just as part of a citywide effort for an important event. Fair enough. A permanent deal would no doubt be a lot trickier on all of these fronts.
But if this kind of stellar service can be put together for two August weeks, it suggests that it could also be done permanently, assuming the funding could be found. We think there would be huge demand if flyers could count on a fast hourly airport service for less than four bucks. As publicly supported infrastructure improvements go, this one offers major bang for the buck.
We’re happy that the coming of the DNC has meant expedited construction work on the CTA’s crucial new Damen Green Line stop, which will serve the United Center long after the DNC leaves town. It’s a benefit to have that new stop come online more quickly; we’ve seen workers there day and night. Would that all infrastructure projects proceeded as fast. The delays on the Kennedy have become a major disincentive to coming downtown. It’s great to speed up the road for the DNC VIPs, but we have downtown businesses here all year that need their customers not to fear massive delays.
So, as the DNC preparations move into their final phase, the mayor and his staff should be asking themselves one crucial question. Which of these improvements should we fight to keep?
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