Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Long-Empty Funeral Home To Become Retail Center


The developers are back, not only in Uptown, but right across the street from our community boundaries as well.  The former Piser Weinstein Funeral Home on Broadway just north of Foster is going to be demolished and turned into retail, according to the developer who's rebuilding.

According to Chicago Real Estate Daily, "An affiliate of Chody Real Estate Corp. wants to bring new life to a vacant funeral home in Edgewater. The Chicago-based real estate development firm plans to demolish the existing building at 5206 N. Broadway and build a 20,000-square-foot multi-tenant retail complex there, said Chody Principal Bart Friedman."  Read the entire article here.

Clearly the empty, unsafe funeral home has been a drag on the retail corridor, especially since it's been sporting big red X's, signifying that the building is vacant and could collapse, indicating to first responders not to enter unless someone's life is endangered.  Yeah, nothing says "healthy retail" like a let it burn symbol on a building.

It's an ambitious project.  We hope to see it come to fruition.

14 comments:

  1. Hopefully this "retail complex" doesn't turn into yet another strip mall.

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  2. It is weird-I was born and raised in this area-seen alot of funeral homes close and there is more people in area than in earlier years.People still do pass away -where are these services being held now?

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    1. Yes, more people cremate now. Everyone in my family does, and not necessarily through the legacy funeral homes, which charge way too much. Someone in the business told me that there has not been a new cemetery licensed in the U.S. since 1961.

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  3. I strongly advise that everyone who is concerned to voice said concern with the Alderman's office. I too, am worried that the nature of the developer is that of yet another strip mall. In reading the full story, everything points to a dumpy, under valued strip mall that will not add any value or appeal to the neighborhood. Given the close proximity of numerous strip malls, there has to be a better, mixed use alternative that will not only add value to the community, but bring a different image to this stretch of Broadway. There are far too many possibilities that are being over looked there... NO TO STRIP MALLS!

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    1. FYI, the alderman for this property is Harry Osterman.

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  4. Bobbie, this one was a Jewish funeral home and it moved to Skokie. Just as the wealthy Jewish residents in the area built the now-closed synagogue on Kenmore, populations shift and the buildings no longer have the support they once had in this area.

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  5. How sad that Lakewood Balmoral residents torpedoed a multi-use condo/retail project that was to have gone in on this property around 2004. They didn't want the traffic an additional 80 or so residences would have brought even though it would have been an extremely attractive development.

    So now we're getting a "retail center" that I sincerely hope is not another strip mall. Strip malls are instant blight, IMO. This site needs a multistory building, and it really needs something with a good street presence. If indeed it will be another strip center, make the developers front the stores on Broadway and put the parking behind them and out of sight. Nothing defaces the urban landscape like parking lots.

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  6. Honestly, do we need more retail? The building right next to this one was actually going to be demolished and they ended up renovating it and rented the apartments, but the retail space has sat there available for about three years now.

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  7. Yet, another strip mall and parking lot is a blight idea! Broadway north of Foster (NOFO) could never look better than Avenue des Champs-Élysées a Paris, no matter what cheap a-- billionaire develops it. What ever happened to Chicago Urban Planning?

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  8. Not another strip mall. Seriously. Unless it were to have a Trader Joe's...

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  9. http://www.loopnet.com/xNet/MainSite/Listing/Profile/Profile.aspx?LID=18391288

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  10. I worked at this beautiful funeral home in the 90s. The building itself was a diamond in the rough. It was built like a brick shxx house. Anyone who wanted to could have turned it into a church or something useful to the community. Gorgeous totally remodeled interior what a shame

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