Tag Archives: Chicago

Using Groupon to sell real estate

Posted on by

With the real estate market in the doldrums (and no end in sight), there are reports about a new strategy that would leverage the popular site Groupon:

In the Dream Town deal, the brokerage will pay out $1,000 in cash at closing to home buyers or sellers that spend $25 for the Groupon. The voucher is good for one year from the date of purchase. The offer launches on Friday and will run for a week. On Monday, it will be the featured deal for Chicago subscribers.

The Dream Town deal tips with 50 vouchers purchased, said co-founder and president Yuval Degani. The coupons apply to both traditional and distressed properties, and buyers can be owner-occupiers or investors. The transaction must be at least $150,000 to qualify for the deal, and there is a limit of one Groupon per customer. There is no cap on the total number of Groupons that can be sold.

“Our big picture is we’re really an emerging company,” Degani said, noting that Dream Town has focused on its Web presence and search engine optimization, which helps its site appear higher on search results. “What we’re trying to do is acquire new customers. We’re not really looking at (the Groupon deal) as a reduced commission. We’re looking at it as getting customers for life.”

Degani said Dream Town has four locations and 165 agents in the area.

I wonder how many people will take this offer and then use it within a year. Typical Groupon deals are for smaller or more immediate purchases while this asks buyers to consider a bigger and more important purchase. But if you are already looking to buy (though there are a limited number of these people), $1,000 in cash could sound pretty good.

The article also mentions some other innovative offers that have recently popped up on Groupon. Seeing this story reminds me that the outgoing Mayor Daley spoke at length in a speech on campus (here, here, and here) about the success story of Groupon. But a city like Chicago will need a number of companies like Groupon to develop and thrive in order to gain population.

Chicago named 3rd most segregated city in the country

Posted on by

A piece in the Chicago Reader discusses the results of a new University of Michigan study that showed Chicago is the third most segregated city in the country, trailing only New York City and Milwaukee. A few notes about this study:

1. Like many other studies of its ilk, this is based on dissimiliarity index scores. Here is how this is calculated:

The dissimilarity index is a system used by sociologists to measure segregation, with the highest score – meaning total segregation – being 100. The lowest – complete integration – is 0. The numbers reflect the percentage of people from one race (black and white are measured here) that would have to move in order to create complete integration.

There are some other measures like this with different calculations but the dissimilarity index seems to be used most often. There are a number of easily-found sites online that provide instructions on how to calculate the dissimilarity index (here is eHow’s explanation).

2. The Chicago Reader article and another piece at Salon (with some nice maps and explanations for each city) focus on white-black segregation. The original study also calculated the dissimilarity index for other pairs of races, such as whites and Latinos. These figures are generally lower than those for whites and blacks as the Great Migration of blacks from the south prompted increasing levels of segregation in Midwest and Northeastern cities during the early decades of the 1900s.

In terms of the white-Hispanic findings from the original study, the top 5 segregated cities are Springfield, MA, Los Angeles, New York, Providence, and Boston. On this list, Chicago is tenth.

The original study also look at white-Asian segregation: the top 5 cities here were Buffalo, Pittsburgh, New York, Syracuse, and Baton Rouge.

3. A little more on interpreting the figures regarding Chicago:

-Along with the other 52 most white-black segregated cities, Chicago had a drop (4.8) in its dissimilarity index between 2000 and 2010.  The 53rd city, Greensboro, NC, was the first on the list to have an increase (0.9).

-In the Salon piece, there is a little bit of history about how this segregation came to be in Chicago and black migration, public housing, interstates, and Mayor Daley are mentioned. The conclusion is this:

Oak Park was one of a handful of places around the country where progressive whites made common cause with blacks. But in the Chicago area, it’s the exception, not the rule. Today, middle-income blacks are increasingly moving into Chicago’s suburbs. And though Quillian says that there isn’t white flight like there was in the past, many communities appear to be resegregating. The problem now is white avoidance.

It would be interesting to hear more about this idea of “white avoidance.”

-The Chicago Reader piece also suggests that Pekin, Illinois (a town whose high school has had some issues regarding race and its mascot – link from Wikipedia) is the most segregated city (white-black) in Illinois. However, the story doesn’t add the caution regarding Pekin: there are 857 blacks in the community. The CensusScope page of Illinois cities by dissimilarity index adds this disclaimer:

When a group’s population is small, its dissimilarity index may be high even if the group’s members are evenly distributed throughout the area. Thus, when a group’s population is less than 1,000, exercise caution in interpreting its dissimilarity indices.

It would be helpful if this were added to the story regarding Pekin.

Light installation at Cabrini-Green to mark demolition of final building

Posted on by

Amidst news of Target’s interest in building a store on the former site of the Cabrini-Green housing project, the Chicago Tribune reports that there is a special light installation at the last building to be demolished (and whose last resident left several months ago):

Marked for demolition beginning Wednesday is the last-standing building of the infamous Cabrini-Green public housing complex. But thanks to a light installation orchestrated by artist Jan Tichy, the structure at 1230 N. Burling St. will remain aglow with 134 white LED lights — one installed in each of its vacated apartments — for the four-week duration of its razing. The light installation was completed Monday, in time for Tichy and the Chicago Housing Authority to flip the “on” switch at 7 p.m.

Here is more information on the project from the gallery that represents Tichy:

From January to March 2011, together with over 20 students from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Tichy held two and three-day workshops with local youth at Cabrini Connections, Marwen, After School Matters Creative Writing Program at Gallery 37 and ThaBrigade Stamps – Cabrini Green Marching Band. In the workshops, students were introduced to public art and light art, and brainstorming sessions and group activities were held on the concepts of Home, Public Housing, Community and Demolition. The youth were then charged with the task of writing poems or texts that addressed the concepts above. Employing a computer program developed by SAIC students that translates sound into light, the youth performed their texts for recording, creating unique light patterns. These light patterns define each of the 134 LED lights at the high-rise. Thus, the youth’s voices literally “tell” their stories through light.

As a component of Project Cabrini Green, live-feed footage from the site will be projected at the Museum of Contemporary Art at street-level, on the corner of Pearson and Mies Van der Rohe streets behind the museum’s glass façade, thereby rendering it visible at night. A voice/light-activated model of the high-rise will accompany the installation, and the youth participant’s written texts and audio content will be available. Tricia Van Eck, Associate Curator, is the organizing curator of the installation at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

The youth’s texts, the audio content, and the live-feed video will also be available on the project website.

Read more about the project in the New York Times or at Project Cabrini Green.

I wonder if there are plans for a more permanent exhibit or marker of the public housing project.

Cabrini-Green site: from housing project to possible Target store

Posted on by

Since the mid 1990s, the area around the Cabrini-Green housing project on the north side of Chicago has been changing (see an overview of this change here). As the high-rises have come down (with the last residents leaving just recently), new mixed-income neighborhoods as well as new commercial buildings have gone up in the area. News comes today that Target may be building a store on this site in the near future:

Target Corp., the cheap-chic discount chain, is in talks with the Chicago Housing Authority to build a store at the site of the former Cabrini-Green Housing Project.

The retailer’s proposal was brought up for consideration at a CHA board of commissioners meeting earlier this month, said Matt Aguilar, CHA spokesman. “We are in discussions and hope to help bring additional investment to the neighborhood,” Aguilar said.

Demolition of the last high rise at Cabrini-Green is scheduled to begin on Wednesday. The seven-acre complex, once among the most notorious housing projects in the nation, is just blocks away from Chicago’s glitziest shopping districts on North Michigan Avenue and close to the wealthy enclaves of the Gold Coast and Lincoln Park.

Target declined to comment on the proposal.

If Target does move forward with this, it would be the second high-profile space they have recently obtained in Chicago. (Read here about their plans for moving to State Street.)

As redevelopment of this space continues to take place, how long might it be until residents and shoppers of the area forget altogether that the Cabrini-Green complex was once there?

Another question: is a big box store in the city such as Target okay or the best move? Does it depend on which store moves in (see the long-running battle between Wal-Mart and the City of Chicago) or are big box stores okay in the city but not good in the suburbs because of their contribution to sprawl?

ASA in Las Vegas update: union reaches deal with Chicago Hilton hotels

Posted on by

The American Sociological Association conference was moved earlier this year to Las Vegas. This was done because the Hilton chain in Chicago did not have a deal with the union of hotel workers. The Chicago Tribune reports today that Hilton “is the first major hotel chain” to reach a deal with the union after 18 months without a contract in place.

I know the ASA had to make a decision at some point and couldn’t wait around for the hotels and unions to reach a deal. Even though Chicago would have been an excellent location, Las Vegas should be fun in its own way.

Chicago newspaper reaction to Mayor Daley in Wheaton

Posted on by

After attending Mayor Daley’s speech on campus yesterday (my thoughts here), I was intrigued to see how the local newspapers portrayed the talk. Here are the headlines:

1. Daley: We’re a ‘country of whiners’ – Chicago Tribune with the story on the Clout Street blog.

2. Together, we’re strong, Daley tells suburbs – Daily Herald.

3. Daley: U.S. is a nation of “whiners” – Chicago Sun-Times (just repeating an AP story).

4. Daley reviews tenure as mayor during event at Wheaton College – mysuburbanlife.com.

The fourth headline seems most accurate to me while it is not surprising that the Daily Herald would emphasize the suburban angle. If you do a quick search on Google News, it appears that the “country of whiners” line seems to dominate the headlines.

This is interesting: Daley’s quote about being a “country of whiners” was in response to a question at the end about how America could get back on the right track. Throughout his talk, he said Americans needed confidence, we needed to push ahead in new directions (like Chicago has in the past), and that we need to continue to compete, particularly in the field of education. But the “country of whiners” quote seemed to a less-guarded comment.

In my opinion, the primary message of the talk was about education and Daley’s role in trying to reform it. The Daily Herald ran a separate story about this emphasis on education. While the “country of whiners” line might be a good soundbite, the bigger question we could be asking is whether the Chicago Public Schools have improved in Daley’s 22 years as mayor.

And I still haven’t seen any mention of Daley’s final line of the day when asked by a student what he thought of Jay Cutler. Daley said something like (paraphrase here), “Both Jay and I get beat around by the media.”

Mayor Daley on campus

Posted on by

Influenced by his connection to former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley was on the Wheaton College campus today for a lecture and fundraiser. Daley gave the kind of speech you might expect at the end of a politician’s career: he highlighted his successes and how much he enjoyed being a public servant. Here are a few things that he said:

1. Chicago is a world class city. He cited a few recent publications (Standard and Poors, Foreign Policy) that have called Chicago a top ten world city.

2. Chicago has been successful because it was “never afraid of changing” and “never lived in the past.”

3. About government spending: the federal government doesn’t have to balance its budget while other forms of government (state, counties, municipalities) do. Government spending has to level off. To help America move forward: we “need confidence,” we need to move away from being “a country of whiners,” and we can compete if we all sacrifice a bit for the common good.

4. Daley said his biggest issue to face was the education system and he hopes the improvement of this system is his enduring legacy. When he first became mayor, he helped stop social promotion. The Chicago schools today teach Chinese, Russian, and Arabic to compete on the world stage. Teacher’s unions have a responsibility to give more (he cited their 6 hour contractual work day while also saying he knows lots of good teachers and he is not blaming them). He said, “education is the cure of all the social ills we have.”

5. The success of Chicago has always been a public-private partnership. He cited Millennium Park as an example. This is what is behind his efforts to make connections with China so that Chinese businesses will see Chicago as the friendliest American city to them.

6. He said he had worked with mayors in the Chicago region, throughout the state, and around the world to discuss common issues. He said numerous times that the common issues they face are not partisan issues.

7. When asked what advice he would give to Rahm Emanuel, he said something to the effect of don’t give advice to people if they don’t ask for it.

Seeing him in person, I was reminded that he can be quite funny, personable, and can connect with a crowd as an “everyman.” He consistently illustrated his larger points with personal stories and interactions he had. His policy recommendations seemed fairly centrist: better education, government has to add value or other contract out or privatize certain services, working together across the region is necessary, government has to work with business leaders to get things done, elected officials and all government workers (teachers, police/fire, etc.) have to work for the people. He told a number of jokes and also several times mentioned advice he had received from his father.

Some other issues were not addressed: the population loss in Chicago in the 2000s, the perception that the city has a crime problem (even though crime has been down – I thought he might highlight this as a success), budget problems in Chicago and where the money from privatization has gone (parking meter deal, the Skyway), corruption in city government, persistent segregation and inequality, the limited number of public housing and affordable housing units (even with the notorious projects, such as Cabrini-Green, being closed), Daley’s legacy of building (outside of mention of Millennium Park and Chicago as a world leader in “green roofs”), whether Chicago’s educationally system has improved dramatically or significantly, and regional issues that need attention such as congestion and expanding O’Hare.

Chicago’s population loss, neighborhood by neighborhood

Posted on by

After the recent news that Chicago lost about 200,000 residents between 2000 and 2010, the Chicago Tribune takes a look at how the population changed in each of Chicago’s 77 neighborhoods. Here are some of the trends:

Sixty of Chicago’s 77 neighborhoods lost population, according to the 2010 Census. The focus of the population growth was in the Loop, the Near South Side and the Near West Side, areas that experienced a boom in new residential high-rises and loft developments.

The city lost more than 200,000 people during the decade, many from predominantly black neighborhoods hard hit by crime and foreclosures. More than 27,000 non-Hispanic white residents, meanwhile, poured into the city’s downtown and surrounding areas.

On the Southwest Side, the number of Hispanics and Asians grew in historically white ethnic neighborhoods such as Bridgeport, Archer Heights, West Lawn, West Elsdon and Ashburn. White populations in those communities dipped.

So the population growth took place in two places: around the downtown where wealthier whites moved in and on the southwest side where Latinos and Asians moved in. Throughout the rest of the city, the population declined.

As the City of Chicago thinks about how to respond to these figures, should they focus resources on the areas that were growing (particularly the area around the Loop which is likely to get more attention) or figure out some way to boost the prospects of the 60 other neighborhoods that experienced population loss?

Mayors united

Posted on by

It’s not just suburban Chicago mayors excited to work with Rahm Emanuel.  The Hill is reporting that basically every mayor in the U.S. is looking to Chicago right now:

The Chicago mayoral election results Tuesday weren’t just a triumph for Rahm Emanuel; they were also a victory for mayors across the country.

Many mayors have been critical of cuts in President Obama’s proposed budget, and some of them are hoping his former chief of staff will lobby the White House on the needs of local communities.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors, which consists of mayors of cities with populations of 30,000 or more, is eager to work with Emanuel as soon as he is sworn in as Chicago mayor on May 16. With budget battles looming, the group hopes that Emanuel’s influence on the White House and Capitol Hill will significantly advance its agenda.

I’m not sure what to make of this.  On the one hand, I’m all for empowering state and city governments.  On the other, I’m not sure that the best way to do that is to further expand federal control over local governments via an increase in restrictive federal funding grants.

Suburban mayors look for Mayor Emanuel’s help

Posted on by

There is often a tension between a big city and suburbs: these communities have different goals and access to resources. With a new mayor in Chicago, suburban leaders say they are looking to work with Rahm Emanuel:

But suburban leaders said Wednesday that they expect Chicago Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel to recognize that the city he will soon lead and the surrounding communities are better off working together instead of fighting each other.

“I think, with his extensive government experience, he understands that we’re all in this together,” said Elmwood Park Village President Peter Silvestri, whose town is in Illinois’ 5th Congressional District, a seat once held by Emanuel.

Silvestri was among several leaders who also said they were hopeful that Emanuel, who has a reputation as a bare-knuckled political operative, will follow Mayor Richard Daley’s collaborative lead…

Among them is Elk Grove Village Mayor Craig Johnson, who fought bitterly with Daley over the expansion of O’Hare. He said he hoped Emanuel “will respect the concerns of his neighbor and work regionally.”

Emanuel supports  a Chicago casino, an idea that hasn’t gone over well in Des Plaines, which will soon open a casino of its own…

Naperville Mayor George Pradel was another suburban leader who said he hoped Emanuel would maintain a strong relationship with his suburban counterparts.

The Chicago mayor has influence on several issues that concern Naperville, including ongoing plans to build a western bypass around O’Hare and rates for Lake Michigan water, Pradel said. Naperville is the largest suburban user of water from the lake.

As a congressman, Emanuel supported an airport in south suburban Peotone and he has voiced support for extending the CTA’s Red Line to 130th Street — two important issues in the south suburbs.

Perhaps these suburban leaders do want to work with Emanuel but to me, it sounds like they are more interested in getting Emanuel’s support for their interests and projects. Perhaps Emanuel could ask these suburban leaders: and if I help you, how does your suburb plan to help the City of Chicago or the larger Chicago region?

This may be a cynical interpretation but this is the long-running history of suburban communities: many are not interested in regional or metropolitan issues except when they might threaten the quality of life in their immediate community. Going back to the 1890s and 1900s, suburbs stopped wanting to be annexed into the big city as they could provide their own basic services (water, sewers, electricity, etc.) and didn’t want to associate with cities which were seen as dirty and crime-ridden. Today, suburbs thrive on this idea of local rule: local taxes should go into local services, such as public school districts and basic local services such as police and fire. Local or regional projects are often judged on how particular suburban communities will benefit, particularly as it pertains to their tax base and property values.

In the long run, how many of these suburban communities are willing to help Mayor Emanuel?