North Side development caught in crossfire over schools (Chicago, Lincoln: apartments, home)

[Vlajos]

Idiot Lincoln Park NIMBYs at work.....

North Side development caught in crossfire over schools - Chicago Sun-Times

[chet everett]

I dunno, V, apartments do often generate additional pressures on schools. Many many many towns have impact fees to defray such costs to the school district. Sort of surprising on some level that Chicago does not have an official policy -- didn't the stuff around Illinois Centre or other other Lakeshore East developments have a school?

Of course the developer would probably want the most units on the site he can and one does not have to be an unreasonable nut of a NIMBY in the area to be leary of that. if schools are already overcrowded building a new one makes sense, no? If the utilization of other schools nearby is not as intensive change in attendance might work, but that assumes the reason for underutilization is not a poorly run school.

Complicated. I'd like to hear more about what the alderman wants and why. She undoubtedly has a "campaign fun" that needs fattening and who ever does that will probably have the most brilliant solution to this impasse...

[Vlajos]

I'm really not referring to the school thing. It's always about height and density with the local idiots. Oh and they want a park.

[chet everett]

The park sounds nice, I have mixed opinion of height restrictions -- the old Children's site could go either way. The scale of the rest of neighborhood is fairly low rise, and the streets are not the super wide stretches like LaSalle or something, even walking to the El would be disruptive to some of the existing home owners... There are existing parking garages as part of the complex but the flow of workers and patients is very different than a residential building. Also some folks who are attracted to high rises also tend to like to have a car for the weekends or just as status. OTOH if everyone who lived there did take the bus maybe it would be minimal impact. Doesn't Chicago require traffic studies and such? In the burbs you gotta do that for any redevelopment...

[Vlajos]

I like parks, don't get me wrong. But is it the private developers job to build a park? Maybe the nimbys should buy the property and build a park.

Here's crains on the whole mess.

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/artic...s-lincoln-park

[Ace Rothstein]

What a flipping mess!

Anyone else find this quote in the article to be borderline absurd? "I have two Hispanic children," she said. "It is racist to continue to concentrate the wealth into one corner or one neighborhood." So expanding an overcrowding school in a wealthy neighborhood is racist? The race card is so played out.

[DanielWaterhouse]

Originally Posted by chet everett

If the utilization of other schools nearby is not as intensive change in attendance might work, but that assumes the reason for underutilization is not a poorly run school.

The school they're talking about taking over already has 33 kids per class and is one of the top 10 non-selective enrollment schools in the city (and gets 100 applications per open kindergarten slot). It is a magnet school, though, and in CPS calculus for determining whether an area has excess capacity, seats occupied by out-of-area students count as empty. So, by having LaSalle and Newberry in the immediate vicinity - both magnets - it looks like there are a bunch of empty seats and Lincoln doesn't qualify to get funds for expansion or a new building. But the catch is that you have to send those out of area students back from whence they came to go to their crappy neighborhood school to actually free up the spots so the Lincoln Park kids can take their place.

The people at Lincoln don't really want to do that, but if they're painted into a corner by CPS they will. The current "outside the box" thinking has them shaking down the developer and looking for any other funding they can get.

[rparz]

Yeah, but if they build a huge skyscraper the city will also get a property tax windfall calculated by square footage.

That's problably one of the highest tax ratios in the city, so it makes sense to build as large as possible to plug to the budget holes.