By Etheria ModacureChicago Talks
The Wilson Red Line train station is in dire need of rehabilitation — there aren’t any elevators for the handicapped and, overall, the rusty station has seen better days. The Chicago Transit Authority realized this and plans to start renovating the station later this year.
But for the owners of four stores who have for years made their living under the tracks, the renovation is not great news. Those four businesses will be forced to close, including Lakeview Foods, the oldest running business to operate at the Wilson station.
Michael Stempien, who inherited Lakeview Foods from his father, is taking the closing of his store — the loss of his livelihood and his family’s legacy — to heart.
The store had been operating for 25 years with a month-to-month lease from the CTA, Stempien said, when he was notified of the renovations in February. Continue Reading
This is a good report. It goes to the heart of the city's central planning efforts that damage capital investment.
ReplyDelete"Stempien said he pleaded with the CTA to keep his store, but to no avail; he was given 30 days’ notice to move his business. He won’t be able to open a new store due to losses he’s currently taking with his inventory, he said."
"Asif Poonja, owner of the Popeye’s restaurant at Wilson and Broadway, took out a $500,000 loan to renovate his restaurant; now, he says, it’s a wasted effort."
Fire, Ready, Aim.
In all fairness, with regard to Lakeview Foods having to shut its doors, if he was selling inventory at a loss, he needed to close, because it was going to happen sooner or later. Popeye's, there are plenty of other commercial retail spaces available within the immediate vicinity, and if you can't afford to move, then you too would have gone out of business sooner or later.
ReplyDeleteI think that these business owners understand this. In the world of business, there is no such thing as "fair." There are five reasons you go into business: M, O, N, E, and Y. These, coincidentally, are the same reasons you go out of business. Ultimately, if your business cannot thrive, you will exit the marketplace.
As a new resident to the neighborhood, I'm happy to see these changes. I'm tired of seeing the dumpy station and the loiterers and being solicited to buy drugs. Hopefully, these people will go elsewhere now that these stores will be closing and the station will be under construction.
I am very happy about this.
ReplyDeleteEspecially about the Popeyes.
That stuff is just terrible.
This will change things,
but the Wilson intersection will likely remain a strange bazaar
trip. But definitely a step in the right direction.
Also that is a bit nuts to have a business going for 25 years at month to month and not to have a plan b. Obviously.
ReplyDeleteThere isn't much security in a month to month lease, so this shouldn't come as a complete surprise to the tenants. It would be nice though if the alderman's office and the city would help the businesses find alternative spaces that would work and help them to locate some funding, a.k.a. the small business improvement grants we're always hearing about. Will these still be retail spaces when the renovation is complete?
ReplyDeleteThere is a God. Wilson Club Hotel included, who patronizes any of these "fine" establishments?
ReplyDeleteCall me heartless, I couldn't be happier to see them out and God willing, replaced by business's that actually care about the neighborhood where they reside.
could "target" be one of cta's influences?
ReplyDeleteCTA employee busted for selling marijuana at the Wilson station.
ReplyDeleteSun-Times
I know of an 2 abandoned fast food chicken outlets within a 1 mile radius of the Popeyes location. El Pollo Loco on Wilson/Sheridan and The former KFC location on Broadway/Buena. Get on it Asif.
ReplyDeleteI'm a little surprised at the casual attitude people are taking about these places closing. At least that meant there was someone trying to maintain SOME cleanliness and providing supervision at that intersection. Now there will be no one there and these places may well decay just like every other abandoned storefront in the station building. These are two more businesses gone from the neighborhood. Target or not, the stretch of Broadway from Montrose to Lawrence is still just a gutted retail shell with a crappy el station. Howzabout someone organize some positive loitering for that corner NOW rather than later.
ReplyDeleteKind of hard to believe that a Bank would loan $500,000 to a person/business that looks like the Popeye's at Wilson ... did they tour the location? Inspect it? Just what was the money used for???
ReplyDeleteThere were CTA leases on the properties. The story neglects to tell the readers that the leases had clauses that said that the lease would be terminated by CTA upon notice when the CTA started renovations of the CTA station. And, the leases were priced accordingly.
ReplyDeleteSo, the business operators benefited from low rents associated with a cancelable lease and CTA only did what is said it could and would do in the lease terms.
As for Popeyes Chicken complaining that he recently invested in new equipment, let's think about that. Did he invest in new equipment because he wanted too? Nope, he was shut down on many serious health code violations and had to make the modifications to be able to reopen his store.
Aw man no more Popeyes!
ReplyDeleteSean: there is a third location too..."Annette's Broasters" over in the strip mall at Clark and Montrose. That place managed to stay in business about six months. It wasn't good.
ReplyDeleteNow if only a Chick-fil-a would come in!
If Chic-Fil-A comes to Uptown...I am NEVER leaving.
ReplyDeleteI am just THRILLED to hear the Mall has found a new home.
ReplyDeleteWhy can't we attract an Old Navy to Uptown. There is a huge market for reasonably-priced clothing.
STASH: Let's hope they pick our hood...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=37891
Just my couple thoughts. First, I was happy to see them go so the station could be renovated. Then I read the story and was saddened by the seemingly bullyish behavior by the CTA. Lastly, I thought about it and read the comments and can't feel so sorry for the store owners anymore. BTW James, I think he was selling his current inventory as a loss just so he could get Some money for it as part of his going out of business sale. That being said, any business open for 25 years should have a contingency fund, I mean what would happen if there was a fire in the building? Sure insurance would pay some, but it never pays for EVERYthing. He should've been saving more. As for Popeyes, I always found their sign fugly as all getup underneath the beautiful Uptown Station wording and I hope the CTA guarantees that sign it's prominent position long into the future. I don't see why Popeye's can't move into the former Pollo Loco as unlike the abandoned KFC building on Broadway, Pollo Loco hasn't been gone that long. In fact, how much would it really cost to repaint the place, do some landscaping, and wheel the deep fryers the two blocks? I've never even heard of that sandwich place who's displacement in mentioned, so...yah.
ReplyDeleteI'm just glad to see Wilson getting some serious attention, but do we still have any idea what the $3m is getting us? If it's to take a year and they're displacing tenants, it's gotta be fairly major.
-Brian
$3 million is not gonna get us much. If you look at the brown line upgrade project, they spent closer to $20-$22 million PER STATION.
ReplyDeleteCould there be any additional funds for this project coming from either the state or federal government? It seems to me that Federal law requires all of these stations to be ADA compliant, and if they are going to kick out the businesses for a large project, this would also be a good time to get an elevator installed.
ReplyDeleteDon't know about Fed funding for Wilson, though I do know that Schakowsky has been hard at work grabbing Fed funds for other transit projects ... just not one that I can find ... in her district.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of Wilson Red line businesses, I was disheartned to see that somebody is trying to peddle knockoff handbags and other junk next to the tamale vendor, across from the Wilson Broadway Mall, next to Truman.
ReplyDeleteForget it...from now on, Im going to walk the extra 10 minutes to the Brown Line Montrose stop and pretend Wilson/Broadway doesnt exist.
ah....again......the gateway to Uptown (Broadway and Wilson) is still a disaster zone.
ReplyDeleteI HAVE to think that when Target opens, things might get a bit better?
Lord knows, having the 46th Ward Office at this corner does little for Uptown's 'image'.
@ QuietlyConscious, you're right that the Brown Line stops each cost way more, but they were also entirely rebuilt, from the station house to the platforms. The platforms at Wilson don't need to be extended, rebuilt or even touched for that matter. A hole needs to be cut in it to place an elevator shaft. The interior of the stationhouse needs to be redesigned to fit an elevator also, and who knows how that'll be done. I see NO reason for an escalator to be installed anywhere or at all, so if my assumptions are correct, this $3m will go for an elevator and elevator only.
ReplyDeleteHow's that sound to everyone else?
-Brian
Brian, you make an excellent point. It's a shame, though, that we don't hear ANY DETAILS at all from Helen Shiller's office and we're left guessing on a blog.
ReplyDeleteSo maybe we'll get an elevator. Maybe we won't. Maybe they'll change up the entrance and place the ticket booth on the first floor. Maybe the won't. We're left with a lot of maybe's and silence.
And maybe even public restrooms with some kind of security monitor?
ReplyDeletePublic restrooms are a horrible idea in the Wilson train station.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I kinda hope they DON'T put escalators in. People at other stations with them treat 'em as if they are 'relaxation lanes', just standing idle, covering the entire path.
Is anyone aware of any red line station that installed an elevator that wasn't the Howard stop restoration or connected to the brown line renovation project?
ReplyDeleteMaybe Addison for the Cubs?
Brennan, there's of course Howard, which is the end of the line. Then there's the Loyola stop which is close to Loyola University. Then there's Addison that has Wrigley Field. After that there's Belmont. Then there's Fullerton, which is also right by DePaul University.
ReplyDeleteNone of those neighborhoods come close to the number of disabled people we have. We also have the most active city college less than a block away with disabled students. None of them have close to the amount of crime we have. None of them have the number of abandoned CTA-owned retail spaces that we have. None of them have had the amount of negative attention as being the smelliest CTA station in the entire city as the Wilson stop either. None of them had an alderman claiming for almost 20 years that remodeling is just down the pike as Helen has said right before every election.
So we get a tenth of what the other stations get for a remodeling and we still know nothing of the details. Is it really surprising?
Thanks to everyone who commented on this story. If anyone has any ideas for future stories, please contact me at professional88@att.net. I would like to continue covering Uptown, it's an interesting neighborhood.
ReplyDelete