How To Reform Chicago Zoning: The Western Avenue Project

In this episode, Abby is joined by Chicago aldermen Matt Martin and Andre Vasquez to discusses the Western Avenue corridor study, one of the most ambitious planning efforts Chicago has seen in decades. It includes widespread rezoning reform, and it also addresses affordable housing, economic vitality and transit efficiency. The aldermen share their approach to rezoning, emphasizing the importance of a community-first approach.

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  Abby Newsham 0:04

  This is Abby, and you are listening to up zoned.

  Abby Newsham 0:18

  Hey, everyone, thanks for listening to another episode of up zone to show where we take a big story from the news each week that touches the strong towns conversation, and we up zone it. I'm Abby Newsham, a planner in Kansas City, and today we are going to be talking about an article that was published in the Chicago Tribune by Aaron Feldman entitled, let's fix Western Avenue and make Chicago stronger. So this is about the Western Avenue corridor study, which is being called one of the most ambitious planning efforts in for decades in the city of Chicago. It includes widespread rezoning reform, as well as addressing issues like affordable housing, economic vitality, transit efficiency, and today, we are joined by two Chicago aldermen to discuss the potential impact of this project and what it means for the future of the city. So I'd like to first welcome Matt Martin and Andre Vasquez to the show. First of all, thank you very much for taking the time on your Friday to talk about this initiative. I'm sure you have a million things on your plate right now, and yeah, we just really appreciate you taking the time. So I think we could start by just kind of giving a brief rundown on what you do as aldermen in the city of Chicago, and most importantly, what kind of drew you to your involvement in this issue of zoning reform and transit oriented development? Um, maybe Andre we can start with you. Sure

  Andre Vasquez 1:53

  I will do my best to be given the amount of work it is right. So in Chicago, the alder persons are city council members. And so the thing that I'll say is a bit unique when you think about Chicago compared to the rest of the country, their city councils is we're not just legislative we're also service providers. And there is like this planning aspect, where, when it relates to zoning changes, for example, were able to weigh in. And so I was somebody who was an organizer and wanted to help make the city better, coming from the environments I grew up in, you know, pretty marginalized and pretty broke, and once I ran for office, part of what we were trying to develop was housing affordability, because I was someone who was displaced through gentrification every couple years growing up, so part of the job itself was very much service delivery, your potholes, your tree trims, and trying to identify what larger things we could change citywide. How that kind of transitioned for me to be kind of more focused on some of the planning, the zoning aspects, really was just kind of like, there's a creative part to the role that I really enjoy, right? Like, so a lot of it's, again, it's customer service, but when it comes to this, particularly, there's a lot of visioning that goes into place. Like you look at your current neighborhood, and try to, I think, what it would look like 2030, years down the line. So when I showed up in our ward, for example, there wasn't a community process related to zoning, right? The alderperson largely made the decision, and we turned that on its head by creating a community process where we get everyone's feedback, and in hearing all the different ideas our neighbors had, it kind of sparked a curiosity to continue building. And so thankfully, we have some really great folks at the Department of Planning for the city, and that's just kind of helped me grow and find different opportunities for like our ward to to continue its trajectory to make sure neighbors feel safe, that there's places for folks to live, that we're transitioning Chicago from sometimes too auto focused when it relates to what we do to neighborhoods, or Western, for example, into what it could be. And it's been, it's been a pleasure and an honor to be in a position to do so.

  Abby Newsham 4:19

  Awesome. Matt, I'll pass it to you. I'll

  Matt Martin 4:23

  try not to be too duplicative of Andre, because in addition to being good colleague and a friend, I think we approach things in a pretty similar way in terms of our zoning processes and how we engage community. Part of why I love this job is the opportunity to deal with housing issues on a number of different levels. So sometimes you'll have spot rezoning requests where someone comes in and they say, Look, maybe there's a single story commercial building on a big stretch, and they are proposing to tear that down and build up a mixed use, multi story building. But. And to be able to deal with kind of parcel by parcel, how to improve particular lots, that's great. There are times where you get to be a little bit more proactive in terms of looking at larger stretches of street to say, look, we might see a number of different businesses where it's vacant property no longer a good fit for what the community needs. And to say, maybe, instead of just dealing with in a reactive way, a redevelopment proposal, you might be able to go to government, whether it's some of the departments that Andre mentioned, you could even sometimes go to the state or federal government to say, Are there additional resources to bring to bear, to build up some land in a way that aligns with a shared vision for what economic growth and prosperity looks like for individuals and families across our community. And then you get like an extremely zoomed out version. I don't want to get ahead of ourselves in terms of talking about Western Avenue, but you can look at a stretch of a community for miles on end to say, what do we want to do to proactively incentivize people who might not even at the end of the day need to go to government, because we're already letting them know after a robust community process, this is what we want to see at the end of the day, to take these Different approaches, Spot zoning, some all the way up to bigger picture issues, sometimes citywide, like legalizing basement units and coach houses. With John Dre and I have work to do in our communities. You get to address housing in the ways that reflect how complicated of an issue this is. It's not a one size fits all approach when you're talking about how you encourage people who want to move to and stay in the community to be able to do so, whether they want to rent or they own. Maybe they can do a bigger home, or maybe they want to be an owner occupier of a two flat and rent out one of those. Maybe they make a lot of money. Maybe they don't make much money at all. And so this is something that we know all across the country. We have a housing crisis. Chicago is no exception, and to be able to work collaboratively and creatively with our communities and with government is a way where we're able to show, especially in the midst of some frustrations at the federal level, what thoughtful, progressive, effective governance looks

  Abby Newsham 7:14

  like. Yeah, sure. So Maybe Matt, as a follow up question to that, could you set the stage a little bit about this corridor? What's the context of it? Why is it important to look at this corridor and look at the zoning, land use and economic development potential of this corridor as a single study area? Why was that so important?

  Unknown Speaker 7:40

  Yeah, it's something

  Matt Martin 7:42

  where you see Western Avenue have a number having a number of different components that need to be addressed. One is, you know, it's a big street. I think it's the longest, continually running Street in all of Chicago, and for many decades, it was very much just a Thruway where people would drive through, sometimes stop to get their oil changed, their car worked on, maybe going to a big grocery store or manufacturing area. And look, to be clear, it's important that we have all of those businesses and more in our communities, but we were seeing that that was no longer a good fit for a lot of stretches of Western that as bus ridership in recent decades was going up along portions of that stretch, certainly our elevated train, the L, we're seeing a lot more riders there than we were, say, 20 or 25 years ago. We were also seeing in the interior of our communities hollowing out of them in terms of two and three flat buildings getting deconverted into single family homes or being torn down into double lots. So the commercial usage of Western was changing. The housing needs were continuing to expand, including affordable housing. And one of our colleagues, Deborah Silverstein, had flagged the desire to take a more proactive planning approach for all of Western Avenue in her community. And when Andre and I heard about that, we said, you know, plus one that we want to, we want to get a bite at that Apple as well. And so to have a process that culminated in this Western Avenue corridor study that talked about, what do we want to do in terms of housing, economic development, transportation, green space, Pike and pedestrian safety, infrastructure was a huge accomplishment, I think, was the first such zoning plan or development plan in all of the city. We're now looking to replicate that along some other, bigger streets, and at the end of the day, it allows us to move more quickly with things like this up zoning proposal that we can talk about more, and also set the stage for things that are going to take a little bit more time, like bus rapid transit.

  Abby Newsham 9:48

  Yeah, so let's talk a little bit about the housing component. Andres, you mentioned that you, throughout your life, had experience growing up displacement caused by. Gentrification, rapid reinvestment, and this plan specifically is focused on housing issues in addition to the zoning reform. It actually the article mentions that this area could support 6800 new housing units. How do you imagine this shaking out in terms of how these housing units can support a variety of different income levels and help people who currently live in this corridor stay in place if they choose to. Yeah,

  Andre Vasquez 10:33

  absolutely. So there's so many different factors related to what could happen in western or even up zoning in general. And so I think, if I think about, like my own experience, you Chicago, largely the way the alder folks would treat zoning and planning was more of a control issue than an opportunity issue, meaning, if the neighborhoods were or the neighbors were articulating, we don't want to see density. We want to keep the character of the community. Largely, what the auditors would do is down zone areas and say you can't build up, because we want to maintain as is. And so I think over time, that leads to less housing stock, at least to less competitiveness in a market, and the property values may rise some, but which makes it harder to get the affordability now as a kind of counter balance and kind of weight, if you up zone things in a way like I grew up in Bucktown, in the city where there wasn't a lot of investment, but then there became such a focus on bringing in more artists and try to get more yuppies and folks to live in the area that the up zone led to, like, massive growth, massive property value. And it's great in the long term, because you get more competitiveness and you're able to increase supply, but the people living there are affected by the actual economy change and the tax right? Property tax values changing, which leads to the displacement. And so I think when we look at Western for me, in the 40 does a balance of both my predecessor, been here for 36 years, had down zoned a lot of the area in the ward. And so trying to figure out one needing to increase the density because of the city, we're behind about 140,000 units. So we have to, we have to increase the development of those units, but also figuring out that balance of making sure that affordability is locked in and rigid in a certain way. So we have an affordable requirements ordinance right where, if it's 10 or more units on a new property, you're talking 20% of that being affordable based on the 60% of average media income in the area, but also trying to figure out, like the additional dwelling units, the extra basements, so finding a way to have naturally occurring affordable and also legislated affordable, while also increasing. So it's a tricky balance. And then when you're looking at the businesses on Western for example, it's historically been largely auto shops, right? Because it is kind of like a highway through the city that in order to make it more sustainable as a community, if you're going to do all the housing, you want to have a local grocery store, your local shops. So being intentional about all of that is important. So thankfully, what the Department of Planning, after like the leadership and partnership with our colleagues, led to was being able to sketch that out in a way that neighbors could understand what's possible and give us runway to make some of that happen. And so it was good to have that kind of engagement. I've never played Sims, but it felt like playing Sims and like really putting it all together in a way that I think led to a lot of buying in the community. So a lot to happen. We start to see how some of this blooms into that kind of development. But it really is a fresh change to how the cities operated, when before was the auditors controlling every single piece and not allowing that kind of growth to happen?

  Abby Newsham 14:05

  Yeah, I think that's kind of the power of transit oriented development planning, is that you get to not just look at a single transit corridor and the parcels that front on that corridor, but really looking at everything adjacent to those corridors in terms of neighborhoods, and all the you know, the comprehensive land use transportation, mixed use elements that feed into that. So part of this plan is a transition to mixed use e3 dash three, zoning. Matt, I'm curious what your take is on what kinds of businesses and institutions might come into this corridor to better support the needs of current and future residents.

  Matt Martin 14:54

  It's a great question, and I think one thing first to foreground. Found is as much as this will have a beneficial commercial impact, I view this, at least in my in the stretch of Western the covers 47 to be primarily about adding more homes, including affordably priced homes. So just want to say that's important. And there might be some stretches for listeners who live in Chicago or come through Chicago, where it's not ideal to have first floor commercial we know that as much as it's important to maintain and strengthen our commercial corridors, not every single parcel on Western needs to have one. So just want to emphasize that, but in terms of what types of businesses would work, well, I think some of where I'm looking at things, as I say, how close are we to big transit nodes, like a metro station or especially an L station? What are the existing businesses? And how can we ensure that there's, I guess, adequate complimenting of them, as opposed to saying, Okay, well, here's one grocery store, we're going to put another similar grocery store immediately next door. You know, you want to have businesses that work well with one another, and so knowing that a lot of these home of these locations aren't publicly owned, you know, I I'm ultimately looking to our chambers of commerce to see, while we can't necessarily be too prescriptive in terms of business types. Maybe there's a stretch where it makes sense to have some more restaurants. So we want to ensure that any new development is black iron ready, so that someone can come in and operate a delicious restaurant a tavern. So that's how I'm looking at a different node. So places by our Western Avenue, Brown Line station, I think that that's ideal for your service sector folks, as well as retail some other places further south, maybe it's a little bit better to have some office space. Daycares is another one where we hear from a lot of residents. There aren't enough daycares around, especially ones that people can afford. So I like to look at it in terms of segments of the stretch to say, Where does it make sense to have certain types of businesses, and how much can we ensure that we're incentivizing encouraging those businesses to move in? Because at the end of the day, we don't want those storefronts to be vacant once the residential units are filled.

  Abby Newsham 17:19

  Yeah, I think it's a really good point to make that distinction between vertical mixed use and horizontal mixed use. I think when we hear mixed use, people often think that it's like a one building with retail on the first floor and and this plan, I think, is really special because it does. It's talking about kind of a full service community approach, where you might have mixed mixed use neighborhoods, mixed density neighborhoods along these transit lines. So I think that's a really important distinction. I'll give this to either of you. What did the community engagement process look like. How did you kind of formulate a plan around how you'd approach community engagement, and were there any concerns that were raised by residents or businesses during the process regarding the rezoning initiative?

  Andre Vasquez 18:16

  Yeah, I think we can both. This is why Chicago is great. There's so many different communities and different neighbors and persons. And perspectives on what you're presenting. So I think largely the Department of Planning, led by Catherine, heard who had developed kind of the western half quarter study. Part of the component of what was the study were including these community meetings by breaking up this long stretch across, really four wards into like these neighborhood stretches, to be able to articulate how you would create like these proximity hubs to pay, depending on the businesses, for example, or what density would look like. So I think by doing so, you could hear from different communities that were being most impacted or felt like they'd be most impacted by those changes. So we'd get different feedback, right? You get neighbors who are I'll say, a colleague of mine, Harry Osterman, has gave me some advice that has never left me since being in the role that everyone wants to see progress. Not a lot of people want to see change. And so we would have these conversations with neighbors who, it might look great on paper, but they're like, I don't want anything changed from the neighborhood that I've just been used to. So you'd get a little pushback there, right? And I think we were able to articulate the promise of what could happen and the fact that what is happening isn't happening overnight, right? It's not this, you're allowing the development to occur, but then after showing up because you've up zoned, but then you see a whole bunch of urban planning folks, our transportation advocates, right, our Access Living advocates, cyclists, who are super excited and very organized and making sure their voices were also heard along with other neighbors. So it led to a. Process that, again, created the runway for us to make the case and get to where we needed to. I think the last thing I'll say about that is, and I know because Matt and I work together, but we're literally like next board to each other, I'd say we both done a thorough job of making sure that whenever we do any changes, whether it's legislative, whether it's service, whether it's improvements to these things, we really do articulate our thought process. We make sure we're hearing from everyone in a way that I believe has led to confidence in some of our decision making. Right? It doesn't feel rash or that we're doing some of the communities against they've kind of seen how we operate in a way that allowed us to help make it happen. Yeah, I'd

  Matt Martin 20:45

  like to add that both Andre and I have very transparent and predictable development processes that we outline on our websites, that we talk with residents about and for me, I look to that first, because when we have your spot rezoning proposals where someone is looking to tear down one building and erect something new, we have a standard intake form. We have a zoning advisory council that shares some initial input while I'm ultimately the final decision maker, and then we'll typically reach out to the applicable neighbors Association, because the vast majority of our ward is covered by a neighbors Association, so like a block party or a block club, excuse me, on steroids, and then a chamber of commerce. And while maybe the the intake form wasn't apples to apples here, we still reached out to those same set of stakeholders so that people weren't left with the impression that we were ramming through a process without soliciting the right sorts of engagement from the right actors. And then, because this had such a broad application, we also took steps to engage people proactively who might not be plugged into a chamber of commerce or neighbors Association, so doing a lot of work with our newsletter, with social media feeds, asking some of those community partners to reach out to their listservs as well. Thankfully, we had some local media outlets covering it as well. With the idea being we want to have as many different touch points as possible for people to learn about what the challenges are that we're looking to address, to be able to see what the initial set of proposals are, and then ultimately weigh in with questions and feedback so that those initial proposals can be revised in advance of us moving those through city council legislatively. Yeah,

  Abby Newsham 22:50

  sure. So in terms of this, looking at other corridors in the city and kind of the bigger picture, how do you think this particular study, initiative and rezoning effort can serve as a blueprint for maybe other streets and other parts of Chicago, like Ashland Avenue, for example. What factors kind of determine whether similar initiatives are pursued elsewhere?

  Andre Vasquez 23:18

  Sure. Yeah, I think I think one I think what we've learned like, there's a couple components to it. I think the part that we can play is because we've effectively gotten this accomplished for the first time in the city's history. If you would imagine, the city council is a support group of sorts. Our colleagues can look and go, Hey, the sky didn't fall that you did this thing and it allowed you to move forward in a way that alleviates their concern about trying to do something similar on a different street, right? I do think that when I think about what we've done here, I mean, it's obviously still a work in progress, meaning we've up zoned it to kind of signal to development and other folks that we'd love to see growth here. But I think the way I've seen happen in the city is there's neighborhoods that already attract that energy, your downtown, your River North right. There's parts on the north side where developers automatically go because they see a return that I believe for different parts of this stretch. Our job is to kind of be chief marketer and convening folks to say, hey, there's tons of opportunity here, where you can look at all of these stretches, see where opportunity sites are, have these conversations. And so we envision, like the next year, being the time where we start meeting with developers, realtors, business owners, and having conversations about what can happen now that the legislative part has run its course. So I think there's a lot to kind of see how it's going to develop city wide. The first step that I want to look at is like the rest of Western right? We've done a good segment on the whole North side of town. Let's continue moving south to see how many of our colleagues are. Open to the same idea.

  Abby Newsham 25:02

  Yeah, Matt, what's been the response from your colleagues and other parts of the city? Is this something that you think will be replicated in some way in different corridor areas where transit exists?

  Matt Martin 25:16

  I do, and I know that I feel that way because I had a meeting just last night, miles due east along Broadway, where we are looking to do something quite similar in terms of several mile stretch of corridor up zoning and so with that, the the genesis for that was different. So we have the red line, which is the part of our elevated train that is probably the busiest. It's one of, I think, only two branches that operate 24/7 and it runs parallel to Lake Michigan. A lot of that stretch needed to be rehabbed. And I think in the waning years of the Obama administration, we were fortunate as a city to secure probably billions of dollars to rehab a multi mile stretch of that train, that train line, it's been very disruptive, including for businesses, and because of some of the work, You've had to use eminent domain, domain and other ways to get equipment in there. That's meant leaving some properties vacant, tearing them down altogether. And so now that that is coming to its end that work, it's an opportunity to say, well, this stretch of Broadway that in some places, is just a block away from this newly refurbished l line. It can have new life breathed into it, and I think, similar to Western you have a lot of pockets of Broadway that are very underutilized. And so I look at an opportunity to have a lot more people take in the CTA at a time when ridership is not where we need it to be, and that important agency is facing a fiscal cliff. Now that those federal COVID Relief dollars are running down, we also have this acute need of housing, including affordable housing and an opportunity to continue supporting some of our flagship businesses, especially in our Andersonville area, which has a lot of large performance venues, theaters where people can go hear live music oftentimes. So I think it's it's quite similar to Western and when you're talking with colleagues on City Council, as well as people in other sectors, like entertainment, construction, they're like, this is great, rather than dealing with this very parochial parcel by parcel approach, you're looking at things miles at a time to say, what is this vision? And that's exciting. I don't think that we get enough of that in Chicago, because too often when people outside of the city hear about Chicago, they hear about our challenges, and of course, they're quite significant around public safety, or they think about challenges involving corruption, also very important to deal with. But like so many other big cities, there are tons of beautiful things happening here that don't get spotlighted quite as much, and so I'm really excited to view this as like pushing the rock down the hill where it's going to pick up steam. And we're going to see more and more corridor studies like this that are going to take different flavors, because maybe there are some corridors where you're going to say, instead of leaning a ton into housing, maybe want to look at manufacturing. Maybe there's a lot in terms of the green economy that we can double down on, and so it's not like every single approach needs to mirror what we've done with Western but there's that we got right and a lot that's worth replicating.

  Abby Newsham 28:53

  So you brought up a really interesting point about the struggles that transit agencies are going through right now, in terms of a fiscal cliff and funding needs to support the services and the operations long term and maybe even maintenance needs, do you see the development capacity and potential as a potential, Maybe revenue source to support transit through tax increment find financing or other methods that can capture the value of development. Is there any discussion between the city and transit agency and on ways to kind of tie those things together?

  Andre Vasquez 29:37

  Yes. I think in Chicago, as with a lot of things, it tends to get somewhat complicated, um, meaning, what we're currently seeing for our um Chicago Transit Authority is there have been concerns about the leadership itself and dealing with the customer experience part of the agency, right like in order for this to grow. And I'd say the same thing for like, housing, right? You need the people to fill either the train cars or the housing, but that actually is kind of the life's blood that allows us all to grow. So whether we're talking, you know, tax increment financing, it really is growing the base, right? If you're getting more people living in the city, if you get more people using the transit system, they're going to help it flourish. And I think now we're even more I believe we should be more dependent on growing that out. Because the other thing that's that's a factor is the federal government, right? I think, I think infrastructure, transportation, these things, are largely nonpartisan, right? So there is shared agreement in getting that going, and people wanting to take credit for new things being built. But we are seeing some hints of this current presidential administration even weaponizing that and saying, Oh, if you're a city that's a sanctuary city, or if you're talking about Dei, it's not a it's not fantasy to think this administration could try to find a way to stop funding, and we've seen they're threatening to do things like that. So those are all challenges the state right now is looking at combining, like multiple transit agencies right our metro, our pace, our CTA system. They're trying to figure out how they fund that and also who leads it going forward. So I think it's hard to pick it as one part, as far as what we can do to make that better, but I think fundamentally it is about the growth of the base of customers and people living in the city that are going to help increase, like the revenue that sustain these systems. And one would hope better partnership with the federal government going forward, despite how politically charged they're treating everything currently. Yeah,

  Abby Newsham 31:51

  absolutely. Matt, do you have any thought about funding strategies or ways that the future development will make that, that transit system more sustainable.

  Matt Martin 32:05

  I think that there are going to be opportunities to continue partnering with our state colleagues, whether it's folks like Senator Billy ballem or the our the governor's administration Governor Pritzker, we clearly have people who understand that public transportation is one of the backbones of our city, and without the L, you don't have Chicago operating the way that Chicago operates. So we've got those bones in place, but we can't afford to let them get brittle as the system ages. And so I do think that there's an opportunity to double down and find ways to encourage more people to take the train. We more so than most other peer cities, are very reliant on fare, and at the same time, having increased fares, I think in at least 10 years, maybe more. And so I'm not saying that we need to raise them in a significant way, but we do need to be mindful of the fact that costs for construction materials is going up, labor costs are continuing to go up, while with fares kind of holding steady at their current levels, and wanting to make sure that we're incentivizing more people to go not less. It's it's really heartening to see so many people at the state who want to step in and support Chicago, because a stronger and more vibrant Chicago will help lift up the entire state, not just the broader northern region of of Chicago. I do think that there are opportunities for continued collaboration between, say, our Department of Planning Development housing on the one hand, and CTA on the other, because we're working to along in areas like Andres and mine that are so transit rich with bus lines, with the Metra, with the L we should have CTA banging the drum saying, we want to see more density. Because, as Andres mentioned on a few occasions, some of the laws that we've passed in recent years really incentivize development that's transit oriented, not that one for one home to parking ratio. And so as we have consistently supported transit oriented developments, we need to see transit service not just be maintained, but expanded, so that we're continuing to incentivize people to not get an unnecessary amount of cars. Because at the end of the day, if you have slightly fewer parking spots, or significantly fewer parking spots in a lot of developments, that means more housing opportunities. It is kind of one to one. So while I recognize that some people obviously need a car to get to their jobs be able to see friends and family members, we know that some of these courtyard buildings that were built 50, 6070, years ago didn't have one for one home to parking, and so we can get back to a lot of that building, but we have to be sensitive. We have. To make sure that that transit is there to support people so they don't say, Hey, I had this important doctor's appointment. I had to wait over an hour. I'm not doing that again. I'm getting a car. That's, that's, that's not a situation we want to leave our residents in.

  Abby Newsham 35:14

  Yeah, absolutely. So I'm going to leave you guys with one more question, and it's kind of a broad question, looking 10 years into the future, how would you define success for this project? I

  Andre Vasquez 35:30

  don't know that. It's like, hey, is this? Is this is what we see in reality going to match the Western Ave corridor study, right? I mean, like with most things, you're kind of imagining what could be. But I think I like to always compare to what's currently there. And right now, it's auto shop after auto shop, sidewalks and driveways that are all run over and beat down because of the way that Cars are parking all over the place. Lot of really different results as it relates to density on a street like Western that, looking at it ahead it is seeing that growth that's that's more across the whole stretch, to see higher buildings, the density, seeing some of the mixed use in the places where it makes sense. I see something that we've also kind of worked on with during certain stretches is doing live work spaces, right? So if you're a first time artist or photographer designer, and you want a storefront, but you can't afford a different shop and a place to live, combining that in a certain way that allows for a lot of smaller shops kind of spread through and really seeing the affordability manifest itself, because it becomes more competitive as you're seeing the preponderance of units. So I think we do that if we figure out further ahead, like what a bus lane looks like throughout Western and making that, you know, more convenient for folks, making it safer for pedestrians trying to cross as you find ways to to narrow it by creating those kind of lanes, that's that's what I picture that looking like. And I look forward to kind of seeing where in the trajectory we land in 10 years from now.

  Abby Newsham 37:07

  Yeah, Matt, what does success look like to you?

  Matt Martin 37:12

  I would like to see more 15 minute communities along that stretch, so nodes where someone can live, work and play, all within walking distance. So a lot of that can be organized around where Western intersects with other big streets, particularly when they've got an L station or a bus line. Because, as Andre indicated, it's not as if, in 10 or 20 years, every single property that is a legal, non conforming property gets torn down, and then you get something new that's built up. We recognize that you're not going to see all of that turnover, but if you can nevertheless walk or drive or take public transportation up and down Western and you see these communities pop up and grow that have distinctive characters. I think that's something that would be incredibly exciting, and to at the same time, see more bus ridership, because we're not going to have any time soon a street car, something else more robust from a transit standpoint. So if we can continue to see ridership up and down Western grow, and also see bus times speed up, so that someone says, Hey, I can just hop on a bus here, and it's super easy. It's carefree, I don't need to be stressed out about traffic and driving, I think those will all be good signs and an indication that we we did this, right?

  Abby Newsham 38:47

  Yeah, well, those are both beautiful pictures of the future, and I wish you best of luck on achieving those again. Thank you very much for taking the time to talk about this today. It's very exciting to see. I look forward to watching this corridor evolve in the coming years, and hopefully additional corridors throughout Chicago that that will see similar proactive strategies like this. So thank you so much for your time. Awesome. All right, well, hopefully I will have you back soon and again, thanks, thanks and have a great day. Thanks.

ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES

• “Let’s fix Western Avenue and make Chicago stronger” by Aaron Feldman, Chicago Tribune (June 2024).

• There are 6 easy code reforms that city officials can use to bring more housing to their communities. We will release a toolkit to help you implement these changes in February 2025. Get a sneak peek here and join our mailing list to be notified when this resource is available.

• Abby Newsham (X/Twitter).

• Theme Music by Kemet the Phantom.

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