Broad Shoulders Update

With the demise of Chicago 2016, Ald. Toni Preckwinkle is now the only public voice demanding wholesale demolition of Walter Gropius's Reese Modern campus; she promises community involvement in a planning process -- after demolition is complete....

Demolition of the Michael Reese campus, including buildings designed by architect Walter Gropius, could commence immediately, regardless of whether Chicago wins its bid for the Olympics on Friday...

Ads on CTA bus loudspeakers, Martin Luther King III, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. -- there's a lot of selling going on...

Plans to bring "big box" retail to a remodeled George Washington Bridge Bus Station have been scuttled due to fears that it would attract more car-commuting shoppers to Washington Heights.

Instead, according to the Manhattan Times, the Port Authority will build spaces for about a dozen smaller commercial shops and offices, says PA Executive Director Christopher Ward.

The decision to plan for multiple tenants, Ward said, was partly driven by the belief that retail opportunities should serve customers who walk or take transit to the terminal, rather than out-of-area shoppers arriving by car.

"The community spoke clearly that we didn't need more cars," Ward said.

Work on the terminal, which is expected to increase bus capacity by 50 percent over the existing design, is currently scheduled to start in late 2009 and should take about three years, the Times reports.

South Side elected officials expressed support for a community benefits agreement being proposed by Communities for an Equitable Olympics at a November 6 meeting, the Lakefront Outlook reports. “We found through our research that 1.5 million people were displaced [by the Olympics] in Beijing, and in Atlanta thousands of people lost their homes, and in Athens the same [...]