moving from new york to chicago - need help! (Lincoln: apartments, rent)

[nytochicago]

hi,

my husband and i (both 29) live in greenwich village in new york city. we're moving to chicago in a few weeks and are trying to find neighborhoods to limit our apartment search.

we want to live near the water but work will be near o'hare and we're reading on a few posts here that traffic is a nightmare during rush hour.

are there any neighborhoods that have high-rise buildings (maybe with a view?), good restaurants, and a reasonable commute from o'hare?

any help you could provide would be awesome :0)

[alknightlong]

The best you are going to get are Lake View or Lincoln Park. But then again, if you are commuting on the expressway during normal rush hours, you might as well live in downtown if you like. It would really not to much time to the commute via car.

[jgardener]

Living in a high rise, near the water, near restaurants, and with a good commute to O'Hare. Finding a place with 2 or 3 of these requirements shouldn't be too hard, however all 4 may be next to impossible.

My two choices would be a high rise downtown walking distance to the blue line train to O'Hare or a highrise on Sheridan Rd. somewhere in Edgewater and use Peterson Ave to get to O'Hare. Downtown, close proximity to both the train and the lake may be difficult and view may be difficult unless your budget is pretty high. Also, truly good, non-touristy, non business lunch crowd restaurants open after work hours may not be prevalent.

Edgewater's drawbacks might be the surface street commute (but maybe less traffic than expressway?), lack of a ton of restaurants/boutiques. Closer lake access and a much cheaper price for a view of the lake. There are several good restaurants, but they are spread throughout the neighborhood and not a central location, but Andersonville is a mile away, so more restaurants. Vietnamese restaurants on Argyle are also a mile away.

Many more options would open up if you're willing to drive further/longer (or a multi transfer train/bus trip) or would be willing to live away from the lake. Also, not requiring a highrise really opens your options up. Most highrises in the city are in a 1 to 2 block strip following the lake (unless you are downtown) so this limits the amount of apartments you can look at. You can still live near the lake in many neighborhoods, but in a 3 or 6 flat.

If you take the lake out of the equation, you could look in Wicker Park, Bucktown, or Logan Square and have access to lots of restaurants, bars, and shopping and all have access to the blue line to O'Hare (or I-90). It really just depends what features are most important to you.

[Vlajos]

Andersonville is in Edgewater.

[jgardener]

Yes it is, but the majority of highrises in Edgewater are on or near Sheridan Rd (a couple mid-rises on Kenmore, Winthrop, and Broadway. So depending on where in Edgewater you are located, your walk to the main strip of restaurants and shops along Clark St. (the area mostly referred to as Andersonville), could be as short as .6 miles or as long as 1.8 miles. I should have been more clear in my earlier post.

[chicagobear]

Maybe River North (just north of the Loop). It's expensive but there are lots of high rises and you can walk everywhere.

[jsk1983]

Where exactly is the job located?


Most jobs near O'Hare aren't going to be easy to get to via transit, but if it is near a transit stop then you'll probably want to live near the Blue Line.

[paytonc]

If transit is an option, consider the West Loop -- only a few high-rises, and a bit further from the lake, but the southern parts are close to the Blue Line, which gives you a one-seat ride to O'Hare/Rosemont. If you'd prefer to drive or if you're driving past ORD, the reverse commute is fairly simple from River North, since you can easily get to I-90 (Kennedy). I'll warn you that the worst traffic is on I-90 east of ORD, since it's the narrowest segment of that road, and you won't be able to avoid it.

[emathias]

The best near-the-lake highrise lifestyles in the city are in eastern portions of Lincoln Park, the Gold Coast, or the eastern portion of the South Loop/Central Station development area. However, as others have pointed out, none of those have a particularly good commute to the O'Hare area.

The highrises as you get further north are typically older and what's near them is spottier - the lifestyle depends much more on which specific highrise you're in. The rent or buy prices would be lower, but the commute wouldn't necessarily be any better, because while you'd be a bit closer to O'Hare, you'd be even further from an expressway.

I guess you need to decide on whether a bad commute offsets the benefits of your desired lifestyle, or if you can deal with a bad commute in exchange for the desire lifestyle when you are actually not working or commuting.

If your office is one of the few that's actually easy to get to from the Blue Line near O'Hare, then you could at least consider living in the greater Loop area between, say Hubbard and Harrison - somewhere an easy walk to the Blue Line. The commute would be long (about 45 minutes not including walking time), but you might get a seat for most of the ride since you'd be reverse commuting and at least you wouldn't be sitting behind a drivers wheel.

For me, I hate commutes, so I work in the West Loop and live in River North, barely a mile away. A cab takes about 10 minutes, or a bus about 20 including walking. It's because of that, that I've never seriously considered a job in the suburbs or even the edge of the city, even when I've been unemployed. But, plenty of people seem to have a higher tolerance for long commutes, so maybe you can live with it. My dad commuted an hour each way by car most of my youth. And now he commutes between the Bay Area and Boise, so I'm sure he'd love to go back to an hour drive.

[FAReastcoast]

Originally Posted by nytochicago

hi,

my husband and i (both 29) live in greenwich village in new york city. we're moving to chicago in a few weeks and are trying to find neighborhoods to limit our apartment search.

we want to live near the water but work will be near o'hare and we're reading on a few posts here that traffic is a nightmare during rush hour.

are there any neighborhoods that have high-rise buildings (maybe with a view?), good restaurants, and a reasonable commute from o'hare?

any help you could provide would be awesome :0)

Having recently moved to Chicago myself from West Village/SoHo, I think you may be underwhelmed by the South Loop. It does look nice in a skyline shot, but the actual neighborhood at street level leaves a lot to be desired, IMO. If you are certain about living in a highrise, I would check out East Lakeview or East Lincoln Park, as there are many pre war buildings in that area, and are better nighborhoods, IMO, than anything near the loop. Wicker Park is great, and would be an easy commute to O'hare, but as others have said, it is a bit west of the lake.

If you do own a car, there is plenty of parking along the lake, so trips to the lake are actually not that bad from Wicker Park.

Also, a good thing to know if you are renting, is there is no broker fee in Chicago, saves you thousands of dollars up front!