Monday, March 30, 2009

Messy Montrose

There's a huge crane and a massive gaping hole at the intersection of Montrose and Hazel; parts of Montrose (in front of Kahawa Coffee House) are blocked off; and there's a "Street Closed" sign at westbound Montrose at Clarendon, which is pretty much being ignored by the vehicles swerving around it. Predictably, westbound Montrose is a mess (and eastbound ain't much fun, either). Like they say on the radio, "consider alternate routes" until the sewer folks finish their tasks.

20 comments:

  1. What are they building?
    Per previous posts.....it is very strange, that nobody in Uptown knows how big the WY tower is?
    How high is this $400k plus-unit structure going to be?
    I don't know why it is such a mystery.........

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  2. It's sewer work. They have been closing off streets for the last 8 months. Windsor, Sunnyside, Hazel and now Montrose.

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  3. Oops. Helen forgot to send out a notice on this.

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  4. Silly Holy Moley! Don't you know that 46th Ward email blasts are reserved for important news, like movies at Cricket Hill?

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  5. Do you people want water or not? Do you want the flooding to stop or not?

    I don't think any alderman could survive this group.

    Make up your minds. Work to make things better or no work at all.

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  6. Katie, what "we people" want is to be told what's going on in this neighborhood by the person whose job it is to do it.

    I get emails from every ward around the 46th, and Gene Shulter, Tom Tunney and Mary Ann Smith all manage to get the word out when streets will be closed. Gene Shulter, in particular, realizes the importance of this and sends out a weekly newsletter, as well as daily updates about Montrose when it's under construction (which happens quite a bit around the portion surrounding the Brown Line stop).

    So, Katie, it's not about whether or not we want water. (For the record, we do.) We also want information. Ald. Shiller bragged about being a "great communicator" on TV the other day, and said how easy it is to get the word out using the internet.

    I'd like her to live up to that.

    Katie, I feel vaguely sorry for you that you have such low expectations for yourself and your community. Being informed isn't some godly right of the privileged. It's everyone's right, yours too, and I'm sorry you seem to think it's an extravagance.

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  7. Our absentee alderman is just working hard on electing her replacement.

    Protest softly.

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  8. The only people in this ward that would receive e-mail updates from the alderman's office are the pesky condo owners who can afford internet access. As they are not part of Helen's constituency they don't get those notices. And, as her voting bloc is the homeless and extremely poor who are living off the backs of those pesky condo owners they don't have internet access to get those updates. She just waits until election day and buys them breakfast on the way to the voting booth.

    Understand that "knowledge is power" and she can't have that floating around in this ward. It would thwart her bizarro world ideas.

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  9. I don't think any alderman could survive this group. Katie

    Actually, I'm hoping just Helen can't survive us. Maybe she'll grow weary of all this and not run again.

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  10. TrumanSquareNabr-

    http://www.aldermanshiller.com/content/view/590/9/

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  11. Katie,

    LOL.

    Burn....sizzle.....oooooohhh.

    Not a Shiller fan, but that was a good one!

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  12. I live at Hazel and Agatite, and we actually did get notice of the water project (albeit not advance notice of the street closings). I believe it was from the city, although it did have Shiller's name on it. Thank god they're almost done out there- they've been waking us up at 7:00am for several weeks.

    They are planning on repaving Hazel, right?...

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  13. Nice of her to put something up for the first time on 3/27, when work actually started more than two weeks ago. Coincidentally, her informational post on 3/27 coincides with a post I made in another thread on 3/26, concerning the lack of information surrounding this project.

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  14. And just west of the ward, they're tearing up the street at Montrose and Damen AGAIN, just months after a big water-main break that I thought got "repaired" already! Wonder if the people living in that 'hood were properly warned.

    Why do I know about this? Because, among other things, the little post office by that corner is a LOT better than Broadway/Lawrence!

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  15. Gee, Katie, I wish I could provide a link to my e-mail inbox, which doesn't have an email blast about the mess on Montrose in it.

    I wish I could provide a link to my voicemail in November, when a Shiller assistant called me and said I was one of the few people on my block whose phone number she had, and could I please tell my neighbors our one-way street would be blocked, and run two-way for a few weeks?

    So, if I had HAPPENED to check Shiller's website in the morning before I left for work, I might know about Montrose being a mess. For anyone who didn't, well... too bad for them.

    For a "great communicator," she really needs to learn that email blasts are allowed to be sent at times other than a month before the election, when she was sending two a day. Since then, nothing. Oh, yeah, I forgot. She did send a couple about the movies at Cricket Hill being cancelled.

    I don't even live in Gene Shulter's ward, but I know all about the Montrose construction there. Because of... email blasts.

    Learn about them, Helen. I'm sure that'll happen -- right after she posts the Letter of Intent from Target.

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  16. Wow - color me impressed. TSN posts at 12:07, at 12:22 I get the first email blast from Shiller in a while, this one actually including information about the work on sewers!

    I'm honestly glad to see that there is communication that, even if indirectly, the Alderman's office will respond to. I find it a bit amusing that official communication is made such an exercise in futility, but I'm glad that at least someone is paying attention somewhere.

    I have this mental image of Helen with ear pressed against a glass at the wall, then scurrying over to her computer to take the wind out of the sails of people complaining...

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  17. TrumanSquareNabr-

    A lot of people have had emails concerning this matter, and it's on the Aldermans Website.

    I think you are complaining just to complain.

    You might have some valid concerns at times, as do I. But in this one instance you are wrong. You should let it go and find something else to complain about.

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  18. Katie, Katie, Katie,
    Give it up on defending Helen's communication skills, or in this case, the lack there of. I know somewhere, somehow there must be some positive thing to say about her, but good communication is not one of her positive attributes.

    Honestly, can you think of any other alderman in the city that gets slammed as much as Helen? Helen would have you believe it's all coming from racist NIMBYs. One can get by with this type of name-calling for just so long. Maybe Helen really is the problem.

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  19. I have never gotten an email from the alderman's office. I also have never cared. I don't rely on others to feed me information anyway. Sounds kinda whiny to me.

    And I don't like Shiller.

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  20. I don't think the lack of notice is a 46th Ward issue, it's a city issue. When I lived in Lakeview, I went out to my car a few times only to find it gone. Thankfully, after a panic the first time (I thought it was stolen), I found that the city had towed it a few blocks away to another street because they were doing utility or street repairs. Never got a ticket, because they hadn't posted a "no parking" sign. All of these occurences were within 1-2 blocks of where I lived. Still, if they would have just posted flyers and mailed a notice...

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