Bernard Lloyd’s “Boxville” opened last night at 51st and Calumet in Bronzeville. Chicago Magazine previewed the new outdoor plaza and market, adjacent to the overhead Green Line tracks, yesterday morning. Boxville, as you might imagine, comprises four shipping used shipping containers. Janet Rausa Fuller wrote,
Picture four giant metal Lego pieces, plunked down in a grassy vacant lot with a wood-planked plaza in the middle — but those Lego pieces are filled with groceries, prepared food, a boutique, and a bike repair shop.
Boxville has four vendors right now: Green City Market will sell pre-picked boxes of fruits and vegetables; Aplomb, a clothing and home goods store; Friistyle, which sells Belgian-style fries; and the original Bronzeville Bike Box. The market will be open every Wednesday and soon five days a week.
“The monthly rent for half of a 20-foot container at Boxville is $500. That would barely cover the electricity and maintenance costs of a 1,200-square-foot storefront, [Lloyd] says.” Continue reading about Lloyd.
We’ve improved two of our development maps
- The TIF map has been updated to show Chicago’s sole Transit TIF (for the Red-Purple Modernization project), and Cook County TIF districts outside of Chicago.
- The Ordinances map (zoning changes, city-owned land sales) was updated to display different icons for the different ordinance types.
Neighborhood news
- Alder Sophia King (4th Ward) explains the details of a large expansion of Harper Court, which the University of Chicago’s Polsky Center would move into (Hyde Park Herald)
- At a Large Lots workshop in May, a planning department official said, but wasn’t sure, that Streets & Sanitation workers would clean up vacant lots; the department came through (Twitter)
- Crain’s profiles Paula Robinson, who is the Bronzeville-based partner in the winning team that will redevelop the former Michael Reese hospital site in Bronzeville
- Streetsblog Chicago, the city’s only alternative transportation & land use news site, is hosting its monthly happy hour on July 5th at Revolution Brewing’s taproom in Avondale; $100+ donors get a free drink
- Public health students at UIC are working with the Urban Innovation Center in Bronzeville to find vacant sites suitable for solar farms that would power a community micro-grid (Social Justice News Nexus)
- Public housing is not a failure, it was always someone’s home — Urban Omnibus recaps 60 years of history and discusses the pros and cons of Chicago’s current plan for mixed-income redevelopment
- With new attention and growth in Woodlawn, redevelopment could threaten and demolish in-use buildings that have been around since the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893 (Chicago Patterns)