Book, Reviewed: Dan Sinker’s @MayorEmanuel

Posted on February 12, 2012 by DXO

We’re coming up on the one-year anniversary of a seminal cultural marker for me: Dan Sinker’s @MayorEmanuel Twitter account (easy-to-consume index here) and eventual book, The F***ing Epic Twitter Quest of @MayorEmanuel. I’ve read all sort of book reviews and commentaries about the sensation, but I haven’t been satisfied with how it has been placed in the history or future of literature and art.

The reviews focus on the fact that the novel was written on Twitter, just like novels before it were written on typewriters and Microsoft Word. Many also cover how Sinker’s work fits in the Chicago pantheon of political humor are missing, though, is the stuffing– the idioms used to make the art itself. Here are some things people missed:

Footnotes

T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, and its epic footnotes, is a natural antecedent. The idea that a text was not just meaningful in and of itself, but also meaningful in the context of text that has come before. That in order to fully understand a work pne had to

STUB: footnote as a literary device.

In fact, it is a line from the poem that best tells the method of meaning injection:

She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone.

Meaning from pop culture is automatic– the machine places things. That’s why when @MayorEmanuel wants to “break out of this fake-ass party”, the music is in the tweet. It’s automatic; present.

This, of course, is abundant and normal in a whole slew of pop art– visual, musical, textual. Sinker actually fits directly in the center of an existing genre. It’s just that people go through such gymnastics to define “new” that these connections are missed.

Underlink

A widely-used but heretofore unnamed technique, of underlinking. Not hyperlinking, which is direct and plain. Not a pop-under ad, which is ignored and a nuisance, yet present. An underlink is what all of pop art relies on to create new meanings– shared understandings of culture that inform a text.

[Will develop this further]

Over-emphasis on the real-time reactions to other Twitter accounts

[Need to develop this.]

Lots of people focus on the fact that Sinker @mentioned a number of accounts in the feed, but these were tangential and did not affect the track of the story. In fact, there are no @mentions in the book itself.

[CHECK FACT]

Under-emphasis on the Must-see Tweets in geography

By the time that the vortex was closing, it became clear that the story was coming to a close. It ended up that there were two things going on here:

He set up the ending in prime time on a weeknight, making it a live event. Early 90s Must-See TV. This was valid for the whole country (see a novel being finished in real time). Sinker had set up the last night with such clarity (there was no doubt that the story was going to end):

Carl the Intern just ran in, with a notebook full of fucking numbers, his eyes wet with tears. “The time vortex: It’ll close tomorrow.” Tuesday, February 22, 2011 08:33:34 PM via web

Elected mayor tonight. Sucked into a time vortex tomorrow. Might as well KICK THIS PARTY OFF RIGHT FUCKING NOW. Tuesday, February 22, 2011 08:37:10 PM via web

The second thing is more sublime and random, which made it all the more memorable. During the big finish, while people all of the country (and Chicago) were watching the feed in real time, we experienced a Thunder Snow Storm. It was the second such weather event of the winter season, and it was widely commented on via Twitter and IRL (large thunderclaps during a snowstorm will do that). During (what turned out to be) the final tweet, an enormous thunderclap– heard from Evanston to Winfield to downtown Chicago– roared over the city. Real connections among real people in a specific geography in real time, watching someone whose identity they do not know, finish a novel. And with something that they have personally experienced (a rare weather event) That’s special.

Disclosure:

[Something about me knowing and having taken the Reveal Photos].

Anatomy of a Service Request Type: Tree Trimming

Posted on January 12, 2012 by DXO

The City of Chicago does not yet publish 311 service request data for tree trim requests, although I do expect that to be published soon

Meantime, I took some photos of the process here.

This tree trim operation is in the 2000 block of North Damen.

This guy has the tools of the trade: rake, shovel, ladder, tree pruner, hand pruning saw, clippers, tool belt, safety harness, nylon rope, orange traffic cones, yellow spray can (not sure what that is for)

Tree Trim Chipper Truck from Bartlett

The end result: nice crisp cuts and clear rights of way. All hail the trimmers of trees!

Unused and Unkempt Newspaper Boxes Are An Urban Blight

Posted on January 11, 2012 by DXO

There’s no shortage of text lamenting the death of print. But I’ve not come to bury Caesar, but to get him to get rid of his unused metal boxes. This is a typical set of newspaper boxes in downtown Chicago (at the corner of State Street and Wacker Drive), taken last week. 15 newspaper delivery mechanisms all lined up. Most of the boxes have stickers and graffiti, and many have those familiar orange “remove this box or else” stickers.

So let’s take a look at these, one by one.

ALIVE: Red Eye

DEAD: Chicago Sports Weekly. A logo for a Web site, never heard of it before.

ALIVE: The Onion, one of the finest news sources in the world. A going concern.

DEAD: Chicago Free Press (404 Web site)

DEAD: The simple word “Free” (currently a garbage container)

DEAD: Metro Commuter (never saw it before; see no current evidence of its existence)

ALIVE: Windy City Times is around, but the box has seen better days

ALIVE: “Jobs”. Certainly in demand, and a working Web site, that’s a rough box, too

ALIVE: Chicago Social. Inane as ever, but contains a periodical with a 2012 date. Also: they know how to maintain a luxurious nespaper box

ALIVE: Today’s Chicago Woman

ALIVE: New City

ALIVE: The Reader

ALIVE: Lawndale News

ALIVE: Family Time

DEAD: Tails (though it seems alive IRL)

DEAD: “Free” (though certainly in demand)

ALIVE: (I think)

New Logo In Action: Renaissance Hotel is Now Renaissance

Posted on January 10, 2012 by DXO

Logos change all the time, but it’s not every day you get a chance to see a logo change right before your eyes. The other morning I was walking to work past 1 West Wacker Drive and saw sign company workers changing out the signs at what used to be called The Renaissance Hotel and is now just Renaissance. I felt like I was living inside the Brand New blog, which has analyzed old and new logos side-by-side for years now.

Here’s the old and new signs together:

The new is just a stylized R and a single word:

While the old sits captured on a truck:

And then there’s the fateful wall-based change, which never really seems to go well without a thorough cleaning and masonry work to eliminate negative space and outlines of the former typography:

Can’t wait to see what Under Consideration LLC has to say about this…

Toward Better Tools For Context in Civic Data Using Private Data Sources

Posted on January 9, 2012 by DXO

Now that civic data is a normal part of the atmosphere in Chicago, it’s time to start mining private data sources to make automated context a natural part of our Web infolives. By that, I mean the addition of information about a subject that is generated without human intervention. My experience as the person responsible for obtaining civic data at EveryBlock has made me deeply aware of the power and limits of data lookup tools. Now that we have much more lookup tools and data to fill them, especially here in the City of Chicago, it’s time to turn our attention to the Web and the tools we use to extract data from it.

The recent dogged work of the Chicago News Cooperative, with help from Medill Watchdog, dovetails well with automated context. They’ve been publishing a great series of articles this week about lobbying in Illinois:

There’s great reporting in here based, in part, on a review of data. Here’s are some snips:

The investigation showed that the filings frequently are inaccurate. Both lobbyists and their clients are required to disclose their lobbyist-client relationships. In 242 instances, records show, lobbyists reported working for a client but there was no corresponding registration by the client.

*

Medill Watchdog examined statements of economic interests of public officials, lobbying registrations filed with the City of Chicago, Cook County and the state, and records of state bills and local ordinances. The investigation found 14 elected officials from Cook County alone who, while not lobbyists themselves, are related to or in business with lobbyists.

It’s time to automate some of that review.

Why civic data is not enough

Lobbyist data in Chicago has a great start on automated context. Lobby data was released earlier this year, and then improved when developers asked for better data and the City provided it. Those developers launched an awesome Web site– Chicago Lobbyists– that tracks lobbyists, clients, and projects. Here’s more info on how the Web site works.

This is a great round-trip story: municipality releases data, developers analyze data (for free) and make suggestions, City heeding suggestions and releasing more data, and developers making a great app (again, for free) to view the data.

The next step seems simple– use the site to figure out all the big money relationships inside and outside government. But that didn’t happen. According to the data, $11,422,846 was paid to lobbyists working to influence the City in 2010. While that’s a lot of money, I do not believe that is the sum total of money involved in influencing the actions of a $6 billion operation. That doesn’t pass the sniff test, and the CNC articles this week show the nature of that failed sniff. There’s much, much more to be had.

Reverse-engineered bios

My assumption is that there are dozens of other positions, arrangements, and relationships that are factored into the true picture of lobbying. I am not in any way suggesting that these are nefarious, illegal, or improper. In fact, I find them to be absolutely normal. I just also find them to be hard to find. The CNC/ Medill stories of this week illustrate this very well– they did a ton of shoe-leather reporting to get insights. The thing is that we should be able to piggyback on that work with better tools.

For example this snip from a CNC story:, “the investigation found 14 elected officials from Cook County alone who, while not lobbyists themselves, are related to or in business with lobbyists.”

How did they find that out? Probably by painstakingly reviewing the economic interest disclosure forms and googling the shit out of the businesses listed. In most cases, online biographies of lobbyists played little to no role in pulling these pieces together.

As is typical in an industry where relationships matter, the people who do (and make) the most have to day the least about their work. The firm with the highest billings in 2010, Illinois Governmental Consulting Group LLC., has a one-page Web site with no feature/ benefit text and just emails to the principals. Why? if you don’t know who these people are already, they probably don’t really want to hear from you. To mailto me is to love me.

In situations like this, it’s not impossible to pull together a reverese-engineered bio for the principals, and picking up some noun clauses in the process. For instance, he was appointed to the Western Illinois University Board of Trustees. While we’re at it, here’s a mother-lode of George Ryan appointments to various state boards from 2001, including the Western Illinois appointment for Brunsvold. Someone needs to slurp that up and put it to use.

Automatically-generated entity associations

On the other end of the biographical info spectrum, I found that large law firms— with their sophisticated in-house marketing and PR teams— are much more forthcoming about what noun clauses matter in the world of Chicago lobbying. By doing entity extraction on the biographies of lobbyists, we can be armed with fodder for understanding and connections. With information from these tent-pole sources like law firm Web sites, we can apply that info to the other people in the industry.

Open Calais is one of many tools and companies that are focused on entity extraction and compiling knowledge on a topic.

Here’s an example from the bio of Edward J. Kus, one of the lobbyists found in the data (with some initial research)

Executive Director of the Mayor’s Zoning Reform Commission
Zoning Administrator of the City of Chicago
First Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Planning and Development
McCormick Place Expansion: the Chicago Tribune has a hundred or so stories about this from the 1980s and early 90s in their archive
Navy Pier Redevelopment
Central Station
Lakefront Millennium Park
Chicago Plan Commission: homepage of the Commission has a list of all current members as well as searchable PDFs of all meetings (with members, matters, and outcomes) going back to December 2009. Plethora of info. Includes vote counts, recusals, etc.
City of Chicago Zoning Board of Appeals
City Council Committee on Zoning
City of Chicago Department of Planning and Development
City of Chicago Department of Zoning.
Group Home Task Force
Open Space Committee
Landscape Advisory Executive Committee
Greater North Michigan Avenue Association
Leading Lawyer in Illinois

So even though Kus only received $19,000 in 2010 from lobbying (the top person, Brunsvold, pulled in $978,000), the 17 initial-caps entities can be whacked against all other names in the data to tease out connections. The best thing is that all of this could be automated. I would like to see a computer program that does entity extraction of each of these noun clauses and drill automatically into each of them, slurping up all of the people and putting it into an understandable chart. Again, all of this is fine– it’s nice to make money, it’s nice to have responsible civic voices helping us make decisions, and it’s nice to know everything one needs to know in order to understand.

This info can also be pulled into the Chicago Lobbyists Web site as context in and of itself. These two pages on the Internet: the ChicagoLobbyists page for a registered lobbyist and the Mayer Brown bio for the same person don’t even know about each other. No link, no unique user ID, no way to know that they are the same person, even though the content is in many ways complementary. Here’s an example:

The law firm Web site says this partner “Represented various banks related to municipal and state regulations”
The lobbyists Web site indicates she billed $10,000 in 2010 to the Northern Trust Corporation

Connections in plain sight, rendered in plain text on the Internet, there for the making.

Marrying databases and the importance of standards

The public data environment is maturing quickly; moving from one in which very little data is available to one in which different units of government publish different datasets about essentially the same thing. For example, the Cook County Clerk has their Lobbyists Online lookup tool which contains lots of information about many of the same people who are in the City data. The Cook County system publishes the contact information (including email and cell phone number) as well as what looks like a copy of the building access ID photo for every registered lobbyist. The City data does not include this info, but since they publish the name and firm, it is possible to marry this info into one record.

We’ve been successful in changing policy when it comes to the publication of data, but there has not been much corresponding thought on standards. Much of this has to do with the vagaries of existing software and the idiosyncrasies of intake forms. Meantime, there is lots of opportunity for private developers to pull together all of this info into a useful (and valuable) repository.

Compiling language about the thing itself

One cool thing about marketing and public relations text is that it allows one to leverage the curation of others. Here’s a snip from a lobbyist bio on the DLA Piper Web site:

In 2011, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that a zoning deal concerning plans to develop the old Lincoln Park Hospital site in Chicago had won initial approval from the Chicago Plan Commission despite aldermanic opposition. Reporter Dave Roeder noted, “As a historical note, this project is the third example of a zoning deal winning initial approval despite aldermanic opposition. The only other recent case was the proposal, yet unrealized, for a Chicago Children’s Museum in Grant Park. The zoning lawyer for that deal and the Lincoln Park Hospital site is Ted Novak of the firm DLA Piper. Other zoning lawyers probably wish he would bottle his secrets and sell them.”

Telling language. How people describe their actions is almost always telling. That’s probably why the ones with the most work say the fewest things.

Another example is Shoefsky & Froelich’s pretty enlightening definition of lobbyng:

Our firm represents private-sector entities seeking rights, licenses and privileges from government boards, commissions, and legislatures. We develop government relations strategies, draft and engage in hearings on petitions for relief from government regulations, and negotiate public sector/private sector partnerships. In addition, a substantial element of this practice area includes pursuing zoning changes and other relief required for development

Here’s Mayer Brown’s mega-page explaining, in detail, the actions they take on behalf of their government relations clients.

Meanwhile, watching entities from the DLA Piper bio reffed above, I saw “Lambda Alpha International, Ely Chapter (an honorary Land Economics Society)”. Their Web site has a basic info on the field of land economics. They’ve also got 10 years of their newsletter archived. My guess is that contains some good info about tactics and methods for lobbying, written in the congratulatory prose of a trade publication. Good stuff.

If one wants to understand lobbying, one has to have this stuff in front of them. Making tools that finds and monitors these sources would be valuable.

There’s money in this

It’s not hard to think about commercial uses for such a tool. Opposition research for political candidates and competitive intelligence for the lobbyists themselves are just some of the uses that come to mind. There’s lots of great work going on in civic data, especially in Chicago. I’d love to see venture capital follow some of this important work. I think we’d all benefit.

Let’s Win This Thing, Steelers.

Posted on January 8, 2012 by DXO

Photography, Fidelity, and January Prairie Colors

Posted on January 7, 2012 by DXO

I am not the world’s greatest photographer. I do, however, take a shit-ton of pictures, have a good camera, and actively try to figure out how to get better at taking them.

One of the biggest things I’ve learned about pictures shot on a good camera in RAW format is that you can do a lot with them after image has been taken. Some information embedded in the image file can be exaggerated and saturated so as to present an intensity perhaps not present in the moment of the image. Or maybe just see the intensity that you weren’t able to.

It was about 4:10 PM on an unseasonably warm early January afternoon. I noticed that the sunset was pretty cool, and realized that it would be good to get my 12-year old son off of the Internet and out for a walk, so we booked it out to Lincoln Marsh. By the time we hiked out to the spot, the sun was lower than I wanted it to be (damned nature!), but I kept shooting. Here’s how they turned out, with the glories of post-processing:

Reds are easy:

You can feel the ooze with so many muted winter mushroom blacks and browns and greys:

The mild winter means green still lives amid brown fallen leaves:

You can see what I mean on the sun setting so soon:

Here’s where fidelity comes into play. The landscape seems washed out without any enhancement, January-style:

Sometimes I just give up and put on a sepia filter:

Or go pure black + white:

This vista is probably the most faithful take on the view we shared:

But the next shot can be made unnecessarily foreboding:

Or deeply blue with near-trickery of saturation:

Moon on late-afternoon blue sky is true:

And by now pink comes into play:

By firing the flash on reeds I can make it scary up front and bucolic in the back:

I can get down low to show the fact of darkness nestled near the ground, with light that will soon be a memory up top:

Tightening on dead reeds and cooling off the colors reminds us it is winter:

Graceland Cemetary, January 1, 2012

Posted on January 3, 2012 by DXO

A wonderful place for the living who love beauty. More here.

OMFG IT’S A SALE!

Posted on December 30, 2011 by DXO

Nothing is more exciting in a market democracy than obtaining an object for less money than one perceived one would have had to spend in order to obtain it.

Last night walking down Michigan Avenue (starting at the 400 block of North Michigan Avenue) from work, I began taking pictures of sale signs in the windows of retail establishments.

I present to you: SALE!: A collection of store window-based visual representations of the fact that one or more item inside the store now costs less than it usually would.

God bless us all.

It’s the week after Christmas and the Puma Store is all about the calendar. “Sale? Just Semi-Annual, ya’ll.”

Ted’s has some sort of Kentucky Derby thing going on.

ALDO is all about casinos or something.

Here’s a nice “E” over at Urban Outfitters.

Top Shop knows how to use those windows at their former Borders location.

WYSIWYG over at Victoria’s Secret

Disney can be repetitive.

These guys had a video thing going on. Lots of moody typographical interpretations of the word.

Pretty clever use of the has-been xmas lights.

Lastly, the most honest expression of the inventory clearance aspect of the event.

New Walgreens in the Old Noel State Bank Building at 1601 N. Milwaukee (corner of North, Milwaukee, and Damen in Bucktown/ Wicker Park)

Posted on December 30, 2011 by DXO

Photo courtesy of the Cook County Assessor's Office.

NOTE: This post is an aggregation of information on 1601 North Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago, which is currently being made into a Walgreens. This info was compiled mainly via Web searches and deep dives into public databases. It serves as a specific manifestation of a broader idea– that the City of Chicago contains a mountain of info about the space around us, it’s just unevenly distributed. Making tools to automate the process of turning this raw information into actual knowledge that helps shape our civic actions should be a priority for Chicago developers in the coming year.

A New Store in an Old Building

I’ve watched the work at the new Walgreens at 1601 N. Milwaukee, at the corner of North, Milwaukee, and Damen for a few months now, and I’m really excited about this place. The bank building is wonderful, and it looks like the build-out is going to be respectful of the original architecture. This has always been a dead corner on an integral six-corner piece of the city (I moved into the neighborhood in 1985 and can’t remember anything of interest being there, ever), so I really want to see this new store be an anchor.

The work done to date has been some tuckpointing and painting of the exterior and a general fix-up of the inside (described in full below).All of this work seems to be very preparatory and there’s nothing about the inside that indicates that a Walgreens will be in there any time soon.

I hope that the build-out mirrors the CVS in the old Home Bank and Trust Company building at the corner of Ashland and Division, with some improvements. I love that store, and I appreciate the care they took in maintaining the architectural features of the place.

Having said that, the (original?) doors are very heavy/ hard to open and the store has a “dead air” feel to it. That might have something to do with the soaring height and relatively small footprint of the place. Also, the layout/ flow of the store is even less friendly than most CVS stores. No matter what you buy, you have to double back to the cash register. I’ve never seen the registers in the back of the store open, either–that might help to establish a better feel.

I wanted to create this post just to aggregate as much info I could about the building and track the progress of the store. I’m interested in the history of the place (hence the Sanborn research– thanks, Jen!), civic process (zoning, permits, licenses), architectural detail (especially the glass ceiling), store format type, and the impact that such a project has on a neighborhood.

History

The building started life in 1920 as the Noel State Bank Building at the corner of Robey (now Damen) and Milwaukee. Taking a look at the 1914 Sanborn map for the area, the block had a wagon shop, a wholesale liquor establishment, a post office substation, a paints & oils place, two mattress factories (one with an electric motor), and a tailor shop with wood posts and electric power. As an aside, the tailor shop building now houses a place where they seem to have a never-ending string of weekend customers who want their eyebrows tailored. There were six separate buildings (1601, 1607, 1609, 1611, 1613, and 1615 N. Milwaukee– none of which were labeled with any particularity– where the bank would be built. Here’s the full Sanborn sheet (best viewed large) and a snip below (lower right):

This is a snip of the 1914 Sanborn Map of 1600 Block of North Milwaukee. The six properties that will make up the Noel State Bank are in the lower right triangle.

The next Sanborn map I have for the area is 1950, has the place all decked out. Here’s the full Sanborn sheet (best viewed large) and a snip below:

This is a snip of the 1950 Sanborn Map of 1601 North Damen Noel State Bank. As usual, there is great detail on many of the properties shown.

Note that this schematic refs a mezzanine in the front and back of the bank. You can see the front mezzanine in this recent pic. I wonder what they’ll put up there. Would be a nice breakroom. Or maybe their copious user-driven photo processing equipment. The Cook County Assessor’s Office PIN number for the property is 14313320180000.

Once you’ve got the PIN, you can go to the Cook County Recorder of Deeds to look up info about ownership of the property. Lots of action on the property, all of which map nicely to the news coverage:

Civic Process

Going from a long-empty building in a neighborhood that has experienced lots of change and growth to a new business can be a long, arduous process. Here’s what I’ve gleaned from a search of the topic from a number of sources :

CBS2, April 26, 2011 (quoting Crain’s, whose story is unavailable w/o login) has the deal on the zoning change necessary to make it viable retail: Committee OKs Zoning Change For Old Wicker Park Bank

Crain’s Chicago Business reported Tuesday that the owners of the Midwest Bank building at 1601 N. Milwaukee Ave., are seeking the zoning change. The owners took over the two-story, 15,500 square foot building through a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure, and are now seeking retail tenants, Crain’s reported. Currently, according to the Zoning Committee, the building is zoned for both retail and manufacturing. The proposed change would change the zoning just to retail. The terra cotta building was completed in 1919 as the Noel State Bank building, according to the City of Chicago. It was later a Fairfield Savings Bank and most recently, Midwest Bank.

Racked, May 13, 2011 had the goods on the Walgreens moving in: Breaking: Walgreens to Take Over North / Milwaukee / Damen

Some new information just came our way that leads us to believe that this landmarked building at the six corner intersection of North Avenue, Milwaukee Avenue and Damen will soon become the latest location for the Midwest’s pride and joy: Walgreens drugstore.

The Building is fifteen thousand square feet split between two stories and will become similarly occupied as many of the other projects we’ve been seeing develop around Wicker Park and Bucktown. The facade will be power washed, the windows will become clear and appear to be larger by eliminating window frames allowing for more light into the space. Finally, a large non-lighted “W” sign is to be installed on the corner but plans shall be further studied in case there is a possibility the sign obscures the building’s character-defining features.

RedEye Chicago, June 8, 2011 has info on architectural detail: What’s the deal with Walgreens?

UPDATE (1:50 p.m.): Walgreens spokesman Robert Elfinger has confirmed that Walgreens has signed a lease in 1601 N. Milwaukee Ave., with a tentative opening of winter 2012. Burck didn’t know much about the project, except what was discussed in an April Commission on Chicago Landmarks meeting, which included a vote to keep the 14 ground-floor windows the same size (there was a proposal to enlarge the window openings) and an agreement to continue to study the location, size and design of a large “W” sign so that no building details are obscured.

I looked up the meeting minutes on that meeting on the Commission on Chicago Landmarks page on the City Web site. It was actually the March meeting. Here are the details:

1601 N. Milwaukee (Milwaukee Avenue District – 32nd Ward)

Proposal: Proposed rehabilitation and conversion to a retail use of a 3-story limestone bank building, including masonry repair and repainting, enlargement of ground-floor window openings, window replacement, and new retail tenant signs.

Action: Approved unanimously with the following conditions:

1. The fourteen ground-floor window openings, proposed to be enlarged, are original character-defining features on primary (street) elevations of the building, and the size of the openings shall not be changed. However, given that the existing windows are not historic, and in furtherance of the intended retail use of the building, the replacement ground-floor windows need not match the original configuration but may be undivided picture windows with minimal framing designed to maximize the amount of glazing areas

2. As proposed, all new replacement glass shall be clear glass. Existing and proposed dimensioned window and door details, and their proposed finishes, shall be included in the permit plans;

3. The fixture plan shall be further studied. Areas behind the windows should be kept open and unobstructed to allow transparency and views into the building. Additional information about the build-out behind the windows, any proposed window signage, and merchandising installations shall be provided for Historic Preservation staff review and approval as part of the permit application;

4. Masonry cleaning, repair, and replacement details shall be included in the permit application plans. Samples of any replacement stone, patching, and mortar shall be reviewed and approved by Historic Preservation staff prior to order and installation. Any new limestone shall match the unpainted limestone in color, texture, and finish; and any new mortar shall match the historic unpainted condition in color, profile, and composition;

5. A conditions analysis of the paint and stone shall be performed by a qualified materials engineer/conservator to determine the appropriate paint product type, color, and finish for the existing painted limestone. The analysis and paint specification shall be submitted for review and approval by Historic Preservation staff prior to order and application;

6. As proposed, no exterior light fixtures shall be mounted to the stone facades;

7. The location, size, design, and attachment details for the large “W” sign shall be further studied so as not to obscure character-defining features such as windows and to ensure that it will not adversely affect the building or the district. [A possible location is the wall area below the proposed window location.] The four signs proposed above the doors should be relocated to the flat stone jambs above the door and below the beaded stone molding, or could be relocated to the flat stone pilasters next to the doors and designed to appear like plaques. The other proposed sign areas, the two locations along the stone sign bands at the parapet and the proposed projecting banners mounted at the stone pilasters are approved in concept only. A rendering showing all proposed signage shall be submitted to Historic Preservation staff as part of the continued review. All future signage including material, color, attachment details, sizes, lighting and other information shall be reviewed and approved by Historic Preservation staff prior to order and installation. The signs shall be designed with as few attachments to the masonry as possible, and with attachments preferably located at the mortar joints; and,

8. The proposed use of the building requires a zoning change for the portion of the lot which is currently zoned M1-2. The Commission takes no position regarding the merits of any requested zoning change.

The reason this building is subject to the Landmarks Commission is because it is included in the City’s 1995 Historic Resources Survey. Here’s the record for this building in that database. I track buildings of this type in a side project called Demolition Hold List: A place for info about architecturally significant buildings in danger of being demolished (or are already gone).

Architectural Detail

I don’t have much on this at this time, since I haven’t been inside the building. I do have this set of pics I’ve taken of the place recently, including some good detail of the existing features in the entry:

Building Permits

Google Advanced Search is handy when you're looking for info on a particular address in EveryBlock.

Here’s the building permits I could find for this building on EveryBlock:

June 7, 2011: $500,000 Permit issued for renovation / alteration

SCOPE OF WORK TO INCLUDE RESTORATION OF EXISTING MASONRY, WINDOW AND DOOR REPLACEMENT, AND DEMOLITION OF EXISTING NON STRUCTURAL INTERIOR PARTITION WALLS

August 24, 2011 Permit issued for renovation/alteration

INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR ALTERATIONS PER PLANS FOR PROPOSED RETAIL WITH PHARMACY( WALGREENS) PER PLANS. CONDITIONAL PERMIT SUBJECT TO FIELD INSPECTION.

December 7, 2011: $255,700 Permit issued for elevator equipment

Install two (2) escalators and one (1) 3000#, 125 fpm, 3 stop hydraulic passengers elevator pursuant to plans submitted and subject to City of Chicago DOB Elevator Bureau inspection.

Business Licenses

I turned to the City of Chicago Data Portal for business license info.

There’s nothing yet from Walgreens, so there is no opening planned at this time. The only thing I found was a 3-day “Itinerant Merchant, Class II” license for a “James Perse Sample Sale” from May 20 – May 23, 2010. Otherwise known as a pop-up store. Here’s a vague invite for the event (no address). I wish I would have seen this– would have been good to get inside. Here’s Racked’s coverage of a similar sample sale on Walton in December 2011.

That’s all I’ve got for now. Check back for updates and please provide any info in the comments.

UPDATE, December 31, 2011:

According to ChicagoLobbyists, which uses City data, the owner of 1601 N. Milwaukee Properties, LLC hired a lobbyist. They do not, however, appear to have paid them yet. Nice deal. The attorney hired was Edward J. Kus, who has an “extensive background in Chicago municipal land use law, zoning, and real estate development”, which makes sense for this work
The original Noel State Bank closed on June 18, 1931 due to a run on the bank (NYT article). Their cash position was depleted from $7.35M in March to $4M right-quick

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Here are links to a few other deep-dive civic posts that I’ve made over the years:

Derivative Works

The personal Web site of Daniel X. O'Neil

Author Archives: DXO