Local Businesses

On Wednesday morning the North Branch Works industrial council hosted a meeting for business owners on the city’s proposal to upgrade barely visible conventional bike lanes on Elston between North and Webster to buffered lanes, focusing on the section south of Cortland. Joe Robinson, a member of Bike Walk Logan Square who teaches at a school located on this stretch, attended the session, in which Chicago Department of Transportation discussed the plan with attendees. Although there is a protected lane on Elston between Milwaukee and North, and this section is wide enough for PBLs, Robinson said there was stiff opposition from the business owners to merely striping buffered lanes with paint.

As part of Chicago’s pantheon of curmudgeonly, bike-baiting opinion writers, an elite group that includes Tribune columnist John Kass and guest contributor John McCarron, DNAinfo’s Mark Konkol is a bit of an odd duck. After writing a series of rants against the Kinzie protected bike lanes for the Sun-Times, his former employer, Konkol seems to have softened his position on cycling a bit.

Bike and Roll Chicago (a Streetsblog sponsor) recently put out a press release acknowledging that conventional bike rental and bike-share complement each other. It's a smart shift in approach for company co-owner Josh Squire, who had previously protested the bid process for Chicago’s bike-share contract. Squire claimed it was unfair because Transportation Commissioner Gabe Klein had done consulting work for Alta Bicycle Share, the contract awardee, although Klein recused himself from the process. In May, however, he gave up his beef, stating, "No matter who ends up operating the program, it’s great for Chicago."

The West Town Chamber of Commerce’s stated mission is to “strengthen its business community so that West Town becomes a destination for shopping, dining, professional services, nightlife and culture.” So why did the chamber's board recently make a statement of no confidence on bus rapid transit, when BRT fits right in with that goal?

Shaun Jacobsen is the author of Transitized. 

[This piece also ran in Checkerboard City, John Greenfield's column in Newcity magazine, which hits the streets on Wednesday evenings.]

It’s a pleasure to see Divvy docking stations, People Spot seating areas, on-street bike corrals, and other productive uses of the public way popping up around Chicago. They serve as reminders that there are much more effective ways to move people around the city and attract customers to business districts than focusing on facilitating car driving and parking. Today the Chicago Department of Transportation celebrated two of the city’s newest public space amenities, a docking station in the shadow of Wrigley Field, and a People Spot featuring bizarrely shaped, yet-comfy, seating fixtures.

A proposal to legalize transit-oriented development would make it easier to build walkable and bikeable neighborhoods, in part by halving the car parking requirement for residences and eliminating it for non-residential uses near train stations. The ordinance is set to go before aldermen at the zoning committee's next meeting in September. Right now, without the ordinance, launching a new business that complies with Chicago's parking minimums can be a ludicrous ordeal. Here's what two business owners in Logan Square had to go through to get around their parking minimums.