River West

Divvy bike-share stations were designed to be easy to move around, with their modular construction and off-grid solar power. Sure enough, plenty of Divvy members have had their routines disrupted by station moves lately: 8,000 Divvy members received word this year that stations they'd recently used were on the move. One Divvy member forwarded two such emails to Streetsblog and asked why the stations had to be moved, since the new locations didn't seem any more convenient than the prior locations.

Security Properties from Seattle recently received Plan Commission approval to build 14- and 15-story buildings on the site of the Gonnella bakery at 1001 W. Chicago Avenue, near the busy intersection with Milwaukee and Ogden avenues and the Blue Line's Chicago stop. 363 apartments and 35,000 square feet of retail would fill the two towers, helping to meet the burgeoning demand to live near transit and downtown and potentially bringing a grocery store to the neighborhood. The alley between the towers would become a shared space plaza, fronted by a bike repair room for residents. Less fortunately, though, the buildings will also include 318 car parking spaces.

The Chicago Department of Transportation is proposing to build a protected bike lane on Milwaukee Avenue in River West, connecting the protected bike lane on Elston Avenue with the protected bike lane on Kinzie Avenue. This project could help many more Chicagoans feel safe enough to bike on city streets, but as we reported earlier this week, the local alderman and some businesses on Milwaukee are uneasy about trading parking spaces for a fully protected bikeway, and CDOT is considering alternating between protected and buffered bike lanes. The businesses shouldn't worry about the redesign: With better parking management and a fully-protected bike lane, Milwaukee will be accessible to more people and customers than it is today.