Downtown & the Loop (Chicago, Manhattan: houses, luxury, construction)

[edsg25]

Seems like words and phrases constantly take on new meaning. Such is true for the central part of Chicago. Once the Loop was downtown; today it is a part of downtown (although arguably its heart).

We once saw downtown as the CBD and it was decidedly unresidential, not only in Chicago. In an era of lifestyle cities, the concept of downtown has expanded with its geography as a place where business, retail, transportation, dense residential, entertainment, culture, and life style comingle.

So maybe we should revisit the topic of Chicago's core and how do we see it today. Hopefully you'll join in with your own observations?

1. How do you draw the lines of the Loop? To me, it is definitely the river to the north and west, Congress to the south and while some may put the east at Michigan Ave, I tend to take in both Lakeshore East and Grant Park and make the east edge Lake Michigan.

2. How about downtown: where's the limits? I'll go with from North Avenue to McCormick Place, Lake Michigan to the United Center.

3. How about remarketing downtown Chicago to give it distinction, like the Loop did many years back? If the Loop gave downtown Chicago an identity apart from the generic "downtowns" of most cities and like the more distinct of them: Manhattan's Midtown (which replaced the original downtown as its core), Philly's Central City, etc.

I've proposed this one before, but let's give it another go: how about the greater downtown area becoming The Circuit. The Circuit honors the encircling of the new central business district with rapid transit lines just like the Loop was named for a streetcar loop of old and today is defined by the rectangular tracks of the CTA. The notion of a circuit is high tech and infused with a sense of power...an ideal term for today's core. I think we could convey what downtown Chicago is all about with the image of The Circuit with The Loop at its heart.

4. What will be the downtown of the future? The bad news is that the onslaught of downtown construction, mostly residential, that made the crane the official bird of downtown Chicago has ended. And it's not coming back. We know how overleveraged we were to even have had such a phenominium. The economy in the form of that crane laid an egg. Go-go times are gone.

The good news? There is a flip side. With the economy in the dumpster and the car a liability, centralization and density are the most economic ways to go. Downtown Chicago has advantages few places in the US have in the critical mass of its core and, for all our criticism, a transportation infrastructure that is complex and extensive (even if we owe most of that infrastructure to an earlier, less greedy, and more civic minded time). If Chicago's core did well in the good times, it should do realtively well in the bad. Density and critical mass are in place; Chicago has the facts on the ground.

So where at a time when the true luxury high rises and top end town houses won't be built like before will the core go, perhaps with more middle income housing? What do you see as the next perimeter of "The Circuit" in economical times when density and public transit are rewarded?