Lots of Good Ideas for Stores, but What About the Look?

Evergreen Parkers shared a host of good and thoughtful ideas about Responding to a question posed a couple of weeks ago, people suggested everything from a new YMCA to a Whole Foods to a kindergarten/pre-kindergarten center to fast-food restaurants.

I'd be curious to know where the people who made the suggestions live, mainly because I'm wondering if some of them envisioned walking to the businesses they suggested. I heard one possibility might be a Culver's fast-food restaurant. I thought to myself, the good news there is that I could walk to it. That might almost balance out the butter burgers and custard. Almost.

But one of the things I was hoping people would weigh in on was what any proposed development there might look like. Did they see it set back, with a parking lot in front? Did they picture a single-story building, like the Chase, or a multi-story building like others along 95^th Street? Would there be offices or residences up above? Would it front the sidewalk?

Because while the Chase Bank may have the more prominent location on the old Panos Liquors lot, whatever gets built next to the Chase will form an important transition zone between the downtown business district and the largely mixed residential/business corridor to the south along Kedzie Avenue. Thinking about these kinds of transitions and deciding how they should be executed is a critical piece of local planning.

Every time something gets built in Evergreen Park – be it a business or a residence – its design and how it relates to the surrounding area say something about how we see ourselves. If we build strip malls on two corners of the main intersection in the village and stand-alone single-story businesses surrounded by parking moats on the other two, that says we are a people who do not care to have a downtown in which to live, work, shop, eat and stroll. It says we want a downtown we can drive through on our way to some other place we care more about.

Design matters. Context matters. If we just throw up our hands and say we don't care, we get a built environment that expresses not what we care about, but what developers care about. I have been around long enough to know that what developers care most about and what I care most about are often in conflict.

We live in a culture that is in a mad rush to get things done at the lowest price. That expresses itself in the built environment via precast buildings without character or context wedged onto lots configured to accommodate cars instead of people. If we're willing to forego taking the time and energy to design buildings and places worth caring about for the sake of expediency and a quick tax dollar, then we truly deserve the environment we get. The good news is it won't last long. This slap-dash development never does. And 15 or 20 years from now we'll get another chance to do it differently.

But, really, why wait that long? Why not think about this stuff now?