State Street North from 43rd St. to Cermak

IIT alums, look what they've done to your campus. They've spit in Mies's eye with two recent additions: Helmut Jahn's Quonset-hut dorms just north of 35th St., and at 33rd, the squashed-under-the-el-tracks Student Center designed by Rem Koolhaas. Its peculiar design necessitated the building of a huge sound-deadening tube around the entire el structure where it passes overhead.

The neighborhoods north and south of campus are pretty much as they were -- bleak. Vacant lots and more vacant lots. In Bronzeville, the one blues club has moved to Hyde Park. The one big change: condos are going up at the southwest corner of 35th and State, on the site of the CHA's former Stateway Gardens. There's only one old, vacant highrise left. And Police Headquarters has moved from 11th and State to 35th and Michigan; its parking lot spills under the el tracks all the way to State Street.

Still not a good idea to walk north or south of campus, unless you've got your game face on.

By the way, did you know that IIT is now in Dorothy Tillman's ward? But fear not; you can bet that her office returns IIT administration's phone calls.

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• Bronzeville
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• Stateway
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• south
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• Koolhaas
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[pheonixltt]

i'm glad this areas up for urban renewal

[artistmac]

It might be awhile. The last meeting I went to on the subject, the City's Dept. of Community Development said that it would take 7-10 YEARS to redevelop Stateway Gardens and Robert Taylor homes and the areas around it. That was before the mortgage meltdown and the ensuing depression (they're not calling it that, but that's what it is).

[nathans226]

How is Mayor Daley gonna fix the potholes when the Dan Ryan has been and still is under construction since it was first constructed??

[artistmac]

Tillman wasn't fixing potholes even before IDOT started working on the Ryan. And the alternate routes (King Dr., State, Cottage Grove, Stony Island, Halsted, Ashland), were supposed to have been fixed up before the Ryan rebuilding started.

She was a miserable excuse for an alderman, and I'm glad she's gone.

[Imerica1]

Mayor Daley, do something about the potholes man! I've been away from Chicago for close to 13 years now and there are still craters in the streets of our communities. That's just WRONG.

[artistmac]

Daley's mistake is expecting the alderman to take care of this kind of stuff. The city gives each alderman $1.3 million apiece to spend on streets, sidewalks, alleys and ights. For 2004, Dorothy Tillman, whose 3rd ward this part of State Street is in, spent $88,000 of her $1.3 million: On four statues near her ward office at 47th and King Dr., and on some speedbumps. The unspent portion went back to the city. She's exactly the way Harold Washington described her;-)

[AQUEMINI331]

On this side of town, potholes are the least of the city's worries.