People Spots

Last year the Chicago Loop Alliance, one of the downtown chambers of commerce, rolled out several successful placemaking campaigns, activating underused public spaces in an effort to make the central business district a better place for people to hang out, relax and socialize. These included the Pop-Up Art Loop program, which turns empty storefronts into temporary galleries, the Gateway seating area in the median of State at Wacker, and Activate Couch Place, an arts event held in the eponymous alley.

As part of the Make Way for People program, which seeks to create places where residents can relax, socialize, and maybe enjoy some culture, the Chicago Department of Transportation is seeking proposals to activate nearly 50 plazas across the city. “The concept behind the request for proposals is we believe these spaces have a lot of potential but they’re currently underutilized,” said CDOT Project Director Janet Attarian. “We’d like to see them be better maintained and enlivened with new amenities and programming. It’s really about creative ways to promote positive activity in our public spaces.”

32nd Ward Alderman Scott Waguespack, usually a progressive on transportation issues, recently made some backward comments about city initiatives that convert car parking spaces into facilities like Divvy stations, bike parking corrals and People Spot seating areas. Waguespack fretted about the impact these conversions would have on local businesses, but it’s clear that these innovative uses can be more effective ways to draw visitors to retail strips than simply warehousing cars on the public way. Even after I staked out a bike-share station in his ward and found that 12 customers used it during a two-hour period, while there was zero turnover at two adjacent car spaces, the alderman still wasn’t convinced.

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.

32nd Ward Alderman Scott Waguespack is a key independent voice at City Hall. Most famously, when Richard M. Daley was ramming the disastrous 2008 parking meter contract through City Council in a mere three days, Waguespack was perhaps the only alderman to actually read the thick document. He led the opposition to the deal, and was one of only five council members to vote no.

It was a sign of the times when the Chicago Department of Transportation celebrated the city’s 13th on-street bike parking corral this morning at the Cheetah Gym, 5248 North Clark in Andersonville. Nine years ago, when I worked as CDOT’s bike parking manager, I put plenty of blood, sweat and tears into trying to get a corral installed at this very same location. The gym’s owner was ready to bankroll it, and we had the blessing of the local chamber of commerce and alderman, but the CDOT higher-ups deep-sixed the plan, questioning the safety of placing racks in the street, although corrals were already common on the West Coast by then.

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

Andersonville’s vibrant, ped-friendly Clark Street business district just keeps getting better. Last year the strip got one of Chicago’s first “People Spots” at Clark and Farragut, which replaced car parking with a miniature park with benches and greenery, as well as an on-street bike parking corral next to the parklet and another one by the Hopleaf tavern, 5148 N. Clark. Now the neighborhood is about to get its second parklet, the fifth one in the city, this time on Clark Street at Olive, in front of Piatto Pronto Italian deli and the Coffee Studio café. The new space could open as soon as early May.

Last week when I talked to Brian Bonanno from the Andersonville Development Corporation about his interest in bringing bus rapid transit to the neighborhood, he mentioned that the ADC wants to create a pedestrian plaza along the Clark Street business strip. The Chicago Department of Transportation’s Make Way for People initiative is helping to create “People Spot” parklets (Andersonville's was one of the first) and “People Streets” pedestrian zones, so this is a great time to pursue the idea. I called Brian today for more info.