Newly elected Alderman Bennett Lawson (44th Ward) ran on a Value Statement that included three basic goals:

Falling neatly into the category of “can’t take no for an answer,” the Progressive / Democratic Socialist wing of the Democratic Party in Illinois is, once again, looking for ways to get around the state’s ban on rent control. Having tried to do this directly every year since 2017 – and having failed each time – this group of radical lawmakers has now come up with a novel new way of achieving their objective.

Once again, the NBOA Summer Soirée lived up to its reputation as one of the real estate industry’s most anticipated events. The weather was picture-perfect, attendance was high, the food and comradery were top-notch and the fundraising was truly impressive.

By:

Alan Goldberg, RPBG Director

The 22nd annual Glenwood Avenue Arts Fest (GAAF) took place on the weekend of August 18-20. As in past years, the event was a huge success.

The festival is the largest public event in East Rogers Park, occupying five city blocks and the Family Dollar parking lot and attracting 10,000 - 15,000 people. The festival showcases the best of Rogers Park but is open to people from across the region and beyond.

We do a lot of hand-wringing here in the Windy City about the many problems we face and how intractable they can often appear to be. But occasionally we get a reminder that all is not doom and gloom on the southwest coast of Lake Michigan.

One of those regular reminders has been Condé Nast Traveler‘s Readers’ Choice Awards which just named Chicago the Best Big City in the United States for the seventh year in a row! Not bad for a place certain right-leaning politicians love to hate and that regularly gets portrayed as a living hell-hole where you can’t walk out your front door without being accosted or shot!

One of my first questions when I write a Member profile is always, “how did you get involved in the Rogers Park Builders Group organization?” Almost invariably, the answer is some variant on, “Mike Glasser got me interested and brought me in.”

So, when I started interviewing Mike about his way to our organization, I was genuinely interested in how he found us and got involved. Of course, in Mike’s case, “getting involved” hardly does justice to what Mike has done for the organization, and for small and medium-sized apartment owners across the neighborhood, city and region.

Two recent articles in Crain’s Chicago Business give us reason to be both optimistic and pessimistic about the business of owning rental property in Chicago.

The first article, by Danny Ecker, “Downtown Apartment Rents in ‘Calm Before the Storm’” (August 25, 2023), makes a case for why rents are poised to increase quickly in 2025. Citing data from Ron DeVries at Integra Realty Resources-Chicago, apartment rents in downtown Chicago are projected to see a big jump in 2025 due to the equally sharp drop-off in apartment unit deliveries that is tied to the rapid rise in lending rates. The article links the rise in rates to the difficulties many developers of multifamily properties are having in obtaining financing for their apartment projects. A tighter lending market means fewer projects will get loans, resulting in less construction and fewer deliveries a few years hence.

By:

Mike Glasser, RPBG President
Fall, 2023

Our Rogers Park Builders Group website contains a special section – one that I urge you to visit.

By:

Steve Cain
Fall, 2023

Ever since I first took on Newsletter-writing duties for Rogers Park Builders Club, I’ve kept a spreadsheet with information from each edition, tracking both articles and word-count across the years. I guess I did this just to stay organized. It also made it easier for me to look things up once a Newsletter was published and I had moved on to the next one.

Little did I know when I first got started that this spreadsheet would grow to almost 750 lines of data. It’s almost like a time-capsule. Thanks to this spreadsheet, I know that my first Newsletter went out in the Summer of 2010, a little more than 13 years ago. Including the current Fall 2023 Newsletter, I have put out 54 editions totaling almost 400,000 words.

Chicago is proud of its “sanctuary city” reputation and will tell anyone who wants to know that it is a welcoming place. No neighborhood in Chicago has a greater claim to being inclusive and diverse than Rogers Park. But the ongoing campaign of busing migrants to Chicago, mostly from Texas but also from other boarder states, is posing a challenge to the city, its residents and its resources.

It was a very long run – literally 111 years. But, effective August 18th, the New 400 Theater at 6747 North Sheridan Road closed its doors. Block Club Chicago has a nice tribute to the theater and the people who kept it going for so long. The company’s Facebook Page also posted a farewell.

Let’s end this wrap-up with a little humor. As reported in Block Club Chicago, no, there is no nude beach in Rogers Park …

But, given what we know about the neighborhood, it’s diverse population and open-minded ways, it almost seemed plausible that there could be, maybe somewhere a little off the beaten track and out of view. Maybe that’s why, when “Nude Beach Past This Sign” suddenly appeared at Loyola Beach, it almost seemed believable. After all, Rogers Parkers have earned their reputation as being just little more free-wheeling, uninhibited and less constrained that the residents of other, more conventional neighborhoods.