About Chicago's South Loop

Feed Your Tummy, Support High School Sports

When your tummy calls for attention tomorrow afternoon, head over to the Potbelly's at Dearborn and Harrison. I'm definitely a Potbelly's fan, but that's not the (only) reason I'm suggesting them to satisfy your Friday afternoon munchies. Tomorrow, Friday, December 9th, from 3-5pm, this South Loop location is donating 25% of it's sales to benefit the Jones High School baseball team. So head over to Potbelly's at 542 S. Dearborn tomorrow afternoon. Feed your tummy and help support neighborhood student athletes.

View Larger Map

Potbelly's | 542 S Dearborn | Chicago, IL 60605

Over the next two weekends the South Loop will host two of it's most popular annual events.

On September 10th, The Prairie District Neighborhood Alliance will sponsor it's 2011 Festival on Prairie Avenue. The Festival takes place at 18th Street, along historic Prairie Avenue, the early 20th century home to Chicago industry and retail barons. There will be plenty of food, music and crafts. Visitors can take free tours of the Clarke House and Glessner House museums and see reenactments of the War of 1812. Suggested admission is $5.

Next weekend, on September 17-18, The Greater South Loop Association will sponsor the Bash on Wabash. The Bash on Wabash's theme is "Sweet Corn Chicago." In keeping with the theme, visitors can enjoy fresh roasted corn among many other mouth watering treats. Work off the calories at the Corn Bag Tournament. Local bands will take the stage from noon - 10pm each day. Suggested admission is $5.

Both festivals have family friendly activities for all ages.

For decades, a large parcel of land just past the Roosevelt Collection loft building in Chicago South Loop has remained surprisingly vacant despite its promising location and size. The 5-acre plot of land, nestled between the South Loop neighborhood and the Chicago River, has been the site of numerous past development dreams, the most recent of which is generating some buzz.

At a live auction on June 3rd, a company called the U.S. Auction Opportunity Fund purchased the land for $18 million—but for now they won’t say why. So for the time being, all real estate experts can do is attempt to predict what’s in store for the long-vacant and undeveloped section of Chicago’s Near South Side.

The first place to look for clues as to what the empty riverfront property could become is the site’s northerly neighbor: River City, a meandering S-shaped condo complex with its own private park and docks. This innovative piece of residential real estate was designed by renowned architect Bertrand Goldberg (the mastermind behind Chicago’s famous Mariana Towers—better known as the twin corncobs).

However, River City never reached its full potential: a large-scale, self-sufficient city-within-a-city composed of several 70-story skyscrapers linked by sky bridges. If Goldberg’s elaborate dream had been realized, the development would have snaked its way from Polk Street to Roosevelt Road, creating an all-in-one mini-community with everything from retail shops to school classrooms.

But maybe hope is still alive for the architect’s ambitious fantasy… The adjacent 5-acre parcel that was recently purchased by the U.S. Auction Opportunity Fund is apparently still overseen by the original development plan that River City passed through City Council some 21 years ago.

Planned Development 225 outlines specific regulations for what can be built at the site in question, providing possible hints about the future on the land. According to a recent article in the Chicago Journal, the existing development plan allots for construction of approximately 1,000 new residential units and some 570,000 square feet of commercial space. While the correlation between River City and the newly purchased real estate remains currently unconfirmed, some experts cannot help but make a connection between the two.

Today in Chicago, we got to enjoy a beautiful, hot, first day of summer! I celebrated the lack of rain with a task I have been meaning and wanting to do.

I spent all afternoon walking around with my camera capturing just a small bit of the things that make the South Loop a great neighborhood.

Now we have a lot of pictures to go with our regular listing images. Below are a few of my favorites. The rest are posted on our Facebook Fan Page.

Please post in the comments a favorite picture of your neighborhood!

Are Parking Spaces in Chicago's South Loop Over Valued? This is a question a friend of mine and I debated a little one night last weekend.

We both live in one bedroom units in Chicago's South Loop, but in different buildings.

The conversation started when I told her that there was a parking spot for sale in our building and my husband and I were a little sad that we cannot afford to buy it. Banks are not offering unsecured loans, so the only way to get it would be to refinance our condo, but we just did that a few months ago. She asked how much the space was listed for and I told her.

"That's ridiculous! It really makes me mad that parking spaces in the South Loop are so over valued! I'm never going to buy a parking space unless it is with the condo I am purchasing. We looked into it before. The average asking price is $30k, but they only add $10k of value to the property!"

I won't disagree that parking in the South Loop is expensive, but I had to question her $10k theory. In the past year 8 parking spaces sold in the South Loop (including area 8032 south of Congress) the average selling price was $31,250. The South Loop area is very large and in both buildings parking spaces can only be sold to unit owners, so it's hard to compare them with other buildings, they are each a different market. I compared 1-2 bedroom units in our respective buildings that sold with and without parking in the past year.

Only one unit sold in her building without parking. It sold for $234/sq ft. The three with parking sold for an average of $239/sq ft with a standard deviation of 32. I added in the standard deviation at the request of my husband, but I don't remember learning about that in math class. Hopefully this gives someone more information than it does me and you can explain it to me! Anyway, had the unit without parking sold for $239/sq ft like the ones with parking it would have sold for only $3,476 more.

Three units sold in my building without parking. They sold at an average of $241/sq ft with a standard deviation of 23. The average price per sq ft for the five units that sold with parking was $264 with a standard deviation of 19. Had the units without parking in my building sold with a spot at the average price per sq ft that those with parking did one would have cost $880 less, one would have cost $25,548 more and the other would have cost $60,200 more.

What can I deduce from these numbers (with my severe lack of understanding how to apply the standard deviation once you have it)? It seems to me that as far as her building goes she is probably quite right. The parking spaces are overvalued in respect to how much value they add to the home as a whole.

In my building these numbers look like someone got a heck of a deal on one of the units and could probably very easily get the cost back if he were to buy the available parking space. Whereas another one of the units would probably not gain much if any value in his home by adding the parking space.

I think if we were to buy the spot for our unit we would add about $20k in value to the home, but it would still cost us at least 10k+ to add the parking, I would like to consider it a convenience cost. I still dream about snatching that parking space up in a second if I had the means, but my friend is right, she may not see any return on her investment if she were to buy a spot in her building and I may not see enough.