Gold Coast

Taking away space from cars and making it available to people is providing a shot in the arm to the struggling hospitality industry, while allowing pandemic-weary residents to enjoy some nightlife.

While the block previously had no lane markings, making it a de-facto three-lane westbound street, the city recently striped a median that serves as a bit of a road diet, transforming it to a two-lane thoroughfare.

Streetsblog reader Deni Mayer contacted us yesterday about an unusual car parking conundrum is his neighborhood. Last summer he and his wife moved into a condo on the 100 block of West Delaware in the Gold Coast, between Clark and LaSalle and just west of Washington Square Park. It’s a narrow one-way westbound street, and the east half of the block has townhouses on the north side of the street. Each of these homes has two parking garages and driveways that cross the sidewalk.

The resurgent downtown economy and the growing demand for car-lite living, both in Chicago and nationally, have spurred an apartment-building boom that's transforming neighborhoods citywide. Many of these apartments are rising along the Chicago Transit Authority's rail lines, partially thanks to a recent change to the city's zoning ordinance that has made it easier to build parking-lite buildings near transit.