Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Another One Bites The Dust



A long-time Uptown business closed its doors this month:  Beck's Books, supplier of textbooks and school supplies for Truman College students, located for years at 4520 North Broadway.

Why?  Blame City Colleges of Chicago if you want to point fingers.

When it came time to extend Beck's contract with the city as textbook supplier, the city went with someone else.  So Beck's closed its brick-and-mortar stores servicing Truman College and Harold Washington College, although it maintains ebook sales through its website.

The CCC went instead with an online book vendor based in Connecticut called Akademos.

As the sign says, Beck's is still open at its other locations serving universities like Northwestern, NEIU and Loyola.

For us in Uptown, another empty storefront.  If you know anyone interested in renting the space, call 773-972-8241, the number of the McJunkin Building management.

2 comments:

  1. Another thanks to our lovely alderman, His big master plan was suppose to bring all kinds of new business. The only thing it has brought is more crime and lots of open retail space.

    Hopefully somebody will run against him that has a spine in the next election

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  2. Nice to see someone living up to their name. I'm afraid that Cappleman has no influence on the CCC's decisions, and it's pretty clear that the CCC's decision led to Beck's closure. I don't always with the decisions that the Alderman makes, but I know that there IS a lot of improvement compared with the state of the neighborhood that the previous alderman left. As for your last claim, please tell us what you're basing that on--what are the crime rates and numbers in the 46th before and after he took office? What number of vacant store fronts before and after he took office? How much square footage of retail space before and after? What percentage of vacant space is in new construction? You may be right (or wrong), but I want to see reality in hard numbers instead of someone hallucinating something out of wishful thinking. What I *do* see is Cappleman actively working with the CPD and community to address crime as it happens--instead of going on vacation for a few weeks like Shiller did and sending her girl Deniece Davis out to keep the gangbangers from being arrested. And I see Cappleman actively working with developers and the community to get private development that benefits everyone--instead of the tactics Shiller used to run private interests of all kinds out of the neighborhood and trying to tax dollars to finance things that ONLY benefitted her cronies and "her constituents" (meaning only the people who would reliably protest against "The Condos" or who lived on the public dole or her gang buddies).

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