Logan Square on the verge of booming? (Chicago, Cuba: coupon, apartment)

[Attrill]

Originally Posted by Vlajos

Very true. Look at Nettlehorst, Waters, Coonley and Audubon. It literally took a group of local parents to decide to send their kids to the local school. The schools were significantly underenrolled and bad in general. Today, they are bursting at the seems and improving each year.

Exactly. What's really great is that these schools really helped to establish a process to turn a school around, and CPS administrators are much more supportive of such efforts than they were when these schools first tried it.

[rparz]

Everything is revolving around the blue line.
First the hipsters come in, then the yuppies come and push up rents and push them out, and they move one or two stops down.

Logan is already done, the area around the Belmont stop in Avondale will be the next to turn and you can still find some deals there.

[Attrill]

Originally Posted by Chicagoist123

First they tear down the large building near California and Milwaukee to build I don't know what. They tear down the McDonalds on milwaukee near Kedzie to build something new.

BTW - there are no plans to build anything new at Milwaukee/California, they tore down the Max Gerber building because they think they'll have an easier time selling the lot than the building. The McDonald's is going to a new McDonald's.

I agree that they did a great job with the Logan Theater, I wish they'd do the same with the Congress.

[Chi-town Native]

Originally Posted by Attrill

Yeah, it's boomed and is continuing to do fine. It is important to understand that it isn't ALL of Logan Square that is booming, and Logan Square is a massive area. The areas that have seen a lot of changes are the main drags of Milwaukee Ave. and Logan Blvd., along with any areas that are close to the Blue Line and the expressway. Those areas are very different than say...Springfield and Fullerton, or Central Park and Cortland. The Western edge of Logan isn't changing a lot, and may never gentrify (although there are some nice pockets even on the Western edge).

I moved to Logan Square about 10 years ago, after 10 years in Ukrainian Village, and the changes have been unbelievable, but even 10 years ago Logan Square wasn't that bad. It was certainly worlds away from what it was like 15 or 20 years ago when gang wars and open air drug markets weren't that uncommon. Once the crime level became manageable Logan Square became very attractive based on good transportation options and low housing prices, and people who were priced out of WP/Ukrainian Village started buying in LS. The last 5 or 6 years have seen a lot businesses opening up to meet the needs of people who were already living in the neighborhood.

I think the "hipster" element is frequently overstated. If you go to places like Longman & Eagle most of the customers are far too old to be "hipsters", and the prices for a meal are too high for any starving artist types. A place like Revolution Brewing is full of people of all ages and styles, plenty of them wearing Cubs hats or with young kids in tow. The "hipster" element is certainly there (i.e. the Owl, Bonnie's and Cole's), and probably in larger numbers than in other parts of the city, but it by no means dominates the area.

All spot-on. People who think Logan Square is stuck clearly don't remember the area in the 80s and 90s. I spent a lot of time in LS growing up as my best friend lived there in grade school (Fullerton & Spaulding), it was a pretty fun neighborhood, everyone knew each other, etc. This is due in no small part to not actually running with a gang, but just being on good terms with the local kids.

But I think it had gotten worse by the late 80s. There were places on Logan Blvd where needles were all over the place, there were loads of different gangs all going at each other, etc. I vividly recall a NYE party in 92 or 93 in one of the large yellow brick apartment buildings right off of the Monument, there was seriously an hour of gunfire at midnight, much of it automatic weapon fire. This was a pretty mixed group in terms of ethnicity, and the sad part is such a thing was so common we all just laughed about how long it went on & what a waste of ammo. Really, that's just not right, but you just get used to it.

So yeah, to say little has changed is beyond a stretch.

I remember walking from Diversey & Milwaukee to Revolution Brewing after it opened at maybe 11 pm on a Saturday, and texting a friend going "where in the hell did all these white people come from?" Seems like at least in terms of nightlife, Milwaukee Ave "flipped" at least 4 years ago.

[chet everett]

The idea that these sort of patterns are repeatable / automatic seems to ignore facts. Fact is Uptown is still a lot crummier than other parts of Chicago that are probably further out. The various stupid decisions of the aldermen to support drug addicts over business people are hard to over come.

The other thing that makes me skeptical about the inevitablity of improvement is the whole work / life balance thing. I mean even if Rahm really can get more employers with a youth heavy mix of workers to locate in places like Merchandise Mart, how any will really put up with a 30 ride on the Blue Line from Addison or nearly as long a bus ride in on Addison to a ball game at Wrigley???

I mean at a certain point doesn't the city need to come to terms with the massive de-industrialization that has transformed Elston from a corridor of good paying jobs for skilled machinists and such into a place where even the idiot alderman have to be thankful that a business slinging Chick-Fil-As are paying more taxes than an empty lot? Say whatever care to about the moral stand of the fast food chicken king, but there ain't arguement that somebody will be able to buy a house on the kind of wages you get shoving waffle fries and sweet tea through a drive-up window???

Originally Posted by rparz

Everything is revolving around the blue line.
First the hipsters come in, then the yuppies come and push up rents and push them out, and they move one or two stops down.

Logan is already done, the area around the Belmont stop in Avondale will be the next to turn and you can still find some deals there.

[Chi-town Native]

Originally Posted by rparz

Everything is revolving around the blue line.
First the hipsters come in, then the yuppies come and push up rents and push them out, and they move one or two stops down.

Logan is already done, the area around the Belmont stop in Avondale will be the next to turn and you can still find some deals there.

Yep. Already well underway re: Belmont. But points others have made are extremely valid regarding how you can see changes a few blocks on each side of the "spine" that is the Blue line, but you go a half mile or so away in some parts of the neighborhood and it can be colossally different.

But it also doesn't take more than a few apartments' worth of thugs to make an entire street feel unwelcoming. It's why I always tell people who complain about crime and all that to just go outside.

The ratio of decent folks to punks has always been at bare minimum 90-10 in neighborhoods like Logan Square. The problem is the working folks are out working, or the ones improving themselves are at school. Then they get home, get distracted by the TV or the internet or hit the books, and it allows the deadbeat 15 - 21 year old set to get a very undeserved sense of ownership and entitlement over the streets. When I moved in my place I spent about 6 months confronting the idiots who either tried to hang out on my stoop, double park behind my garage, etc. I brought over my friends to do hard physical labor in terms of landscaping, building a deck and patio, and didn't take long to change the entire character of my half of the block. The working class guys respect people who will roll up their sleeves and do manual labor, and the rest follows from that.

This is why I generally think condos suck. Instead of fostering people going out there and taking hands-on ownership, they encourage people who think all of that stuff is someone else's job. That doesn't work. Logan Square folks have been fighting lousy condo developments for decades, and have without a doubt shown that not only do we not need developers to "improve and gentrify" neighborhoods, but that residents can improve neighborhoods all on their own.

All that said, the guy who fixed up the Logan Theatre did a bang-up job, the subsidy he got didn't even begin to cover the attention to detail and workmanship with the rehab.

[Lorielicious]

All's I know is I'm happy about Logan Theatre. It's small and crappyish, but it's the closest one to my apt and there's a bar inside.

[Chi-town Native]

Originally Posted by Lorielicious

All's I know is I'm happy about Logan Theatre. It's small and crappyish, but it's the closest one to my apt and there's a bar inside.

..with an awesome beer selection, I might add.

[Aleking]

logan theatre is great

[Chicagoist123]

Originally Posted by Lorielicious

All's I know is I'm happy about Logan Theatre. It's small and crappyish, but it's the closest one to my apt and there's a bar inside.

I wouldn't define it as crappyish anymore since it's been renovated. It's actually very nice.

However, has anyone noticed that there are a lot of young Latino professionals as well living in Logan Square. That's what I mean that I hope it doesn't lose it's Latino character. What I mean is there are a lot of Puerto Rican, Cuban, Mexican, and you even have Periuvian and Argentine places to eat. IMO it's the most Latin of all the trendy neighborhoods (with the exception of Pilsen but Pilsen isn't as trendy....yet). I know a lot of the working class Latinos will be pushed out, I just hope that the professional Latinos stay so that at least retains SOME of it's Latino character.