This post was moved from the end of the thread "TIF Hidden Costs"
When the Riverside Improvement Company developed Riverside, the man in charge wanted to take Olmsted's main park - the Big Ball Park - for his own homesite. He was, fortunately for us, dissuaded from doing so. All the lots on the "curvy" streets as they are now being referred to were originally to be 100ft minimum, the houses set back, the roads sunken and with just french drains, not curbs, so they would not be so defined and really, not even visible from one home looking across to the opposite side. Forty-seven thousand trees and plants were put in, and 75 years later, when I was growing up here, the towering America Elms made tunnels of streets like Longcommon and even Burlington. We still had an old guy with a Model A and a ladder going around and fooling with the gas lamps. The sky was dark then, with no Chicago and Expressway sodium vapor lights to bounce off the clouds, and there was a lot more understory growth on all the triangles and parks - enough so if you were riding a motorcycle without license plates and were chased by the cops you could round a corner, duck in, and lay it down, and they'd never find you - "I'm told."
The old Grillette - where the Chew Chew is now - was like something out of a Drive-In movie - and how the Petersen Brothers ever managed to stay sane listening to "Rock Around the Clock" almost endlessly, I'll never know. The tunnel was a place where you kissed your girlfriend, or someone's girlfriend, and you could buy gas and get a job at Henderson Pure Oil (now Riverside Garage) or at Frank Martin's (now Delaplaine Crossing (ugh.)) Parking behind the Scout Cabin the cops couldn't see you or didn't bother. Kids rode their bikes to school - there were never all the parents and nannys and grandparents waiting out in front of Central/Hauser - kids walked or rode to school.
We just had our 50th RBHS reunion, and so many who came back were shocked to see that the VC was being allowed to be built. The Police and Rec Department want more understory taken out so that stalkers can't lurk or sports can be played in places that Olmsted intended to be left for more tranquil pursuits. People refuse to walk a few blocks to town but go to gyms to work out. Fewer resources are allocated for tree maintenance and replanting when though most residents list the "woodsy" feel as one of the things they like most about the Village. People buy old houses, tear them down, take out trees and build McMansions, then wonder why we have flooding problems. Where we used to have some nice festival decorations, I now see the same tacky "made in China" crap out in front of homes here that I do in Cicero. And I realize - it isn't the Village that's changed, it's the people.
Everyday I walk my dog in one or more of the parks, down various streets, and everyday I pick up bags, literally bags, or cups, bottles, wrappers and assorted unmentionable detritus from our streets. At all hours of the day I hear cars rolling thru with brain-softening noise levels pulsing. Maybe Riverside is out of step with what these people want - but I am not interested in what they want. I worked for Frank Lloyd Wright, who valued the individual above the committee meeting, and so when I see this garbage on the streets I act individually, pick it up and put it in the garbage. I can't pick up structures like the VC and put them in a dumpster, would that I could. So I must then look at how it got here and who allowed that kind of junk to be built here, and then say, I won't ever allow them to do be trusted with the wherewithal to build more of the same.
Regardless of all the protective coloration that is now being applied "after the fact" to have community workshops and all the rest, the fact of the matter is that this Admin and this Board were all set to ram this through and build more of the same, and do it on parcels that most people think are park-protected (and aren't.) This Board hired outside consultants (proffered by Metra) for the TOD study, which is now spoken of like it was Holy Writ, and then rehired these guys to get them a funding mechanism so they could pursue it. Regardless what they say about not using ED today, or hearing the community, or looking for other alternatives to the Parking Garage, or any of the other statements coming forth, the fact is, that if people hadn't gotten outraged and stood up, we'd already be well on the way to having this thing in place.
I'm happy to hear all this discussion - and while I think building a "movie set" downtown would be intellectually dishonest and eminently unsuccessful, I'm glad to hear people say they would support local businesses if they were there. So just do it with what you have. Support the ones that are there, and drive to LaGrange or wherever you need to go for what you can't get here. But don't, please, don't stick us with any more ugly buildings that won't work. If all the people in town that now run to the Jewel or Dominicks or Starbucks or whatever just took that money into town we could get an increase in sales tax revenue without squandering millions on studies and lawyers and all the rest. If our local businesses had local support, others would be trying to get in - but they don't. Don't throw the baby that you have out with the bath water. There are a million LaGrange's, dozens of Forest Park Madison Street (have you ever seen or heard that late at night in the summer?) and innumerable opportunities to acquire what you can't get here. But where else can you get Olmsted's carefully crafted vistas, or the view this morning with that delicate tracery of snow against the wet, black bark of the trees, or the deer I saw in the Swan Pond? Let's keep what we have.