Lincoln/Ashland Project Moving Along

Hate to see the historic art deco building at the six-corner intersection of Lincoln/Belmont/Ashland finally get reduced to real estate rubble (after so many years of speculation) but hey, such is life in the architectural universe. In later years, the location was the West Lakeview branch of the former LaSalle Bank (also now resting in peace). After it closed in 2008, the site was slated for residential loft development but the looming 'late-aught' housing bubble put the kibosh on that idea and the property stood vacant for several fiscal quarters. Then in 2013, the Target Corporation purchased the property with plans for medium-box retail but that idea didn't fly with the real estate gods, either. Big Red then flipped it to Novak Construction who now envisions 60,000 square feet of mixed-use retail, residential utopia, and blah, blah ,blah...(Everybody in the neighborhood already knows all this. I just needed to say something to go with my picture.)

Geno Petro

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1823 Wellington -- Single Family Luxury

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Geno Petro





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North Side Chicago Storefront For Rent (real estate crystal ball included)

You have to think the good Madame should have seen this coming before she signed a triple-net lease on Lincoln Avenue. It just goes to show, the current Chicago real estate market (in hot and trendy West Lakeview, no less) has even the pundits puzzled. My advice: listen to your favorite Realtor, not your Psychic (nor your office mates, drunken uncles, or check-out clerks at Jewel), before entering into a binding real estate transaction; purchase, lease or otherwise. It's just a premonition I've been having ever since I passed the leasing agent exam a decade ago. Oh, and always remember...'Walk-ins Welcome.' Now that's cosmic marketing.

Geno Petro

Bad to da Chicago bone

This gray, primed beast can usually be found parked in front of Suzie China's on Lincoln Ave in the West Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago at around high noon. It's 'chopped and channeled and lowered and louvered' and...well, it pretty much follows along with the rest of the lines of that old Tom Waits song, too. The machine may be out of time and place with the rest of the BMW condo set in this bustling upwardly mobile phoned community but one thing is for sure; it is definitely not 'cookie cutter.'

In the last 10 years this offbeat Ashland/Belmont/Lincoln enclave has moved from a double row of gritty storefronts and 1920s apartment rentals to an upscale, walk around 'hood along the lines of Lincoln Square, Roscoe Village, and even Bucktown. Only Suzie C and a handful of other old mainstays remain. In this way, the old gray beast is a metaphor of yesteryear Chicago.

They don't build cars with chrome teeth anymore. And while it may take a fairly frugal owner to shun a two-tone emerald powdercoat for an Earl Sheibs coupon special, it takes an even out-of-the-boxier individual to keep the paint job primer gray with a cobwebbed pinstripe applique. But above all, I think, it takes a truly singular soul, with an iron clad constitution (and colon), to eat at Suzie China's everyday.

Geno Petro

i snapped the shot (but as always, I did not shoot the deputy...)