Commercial property owners along Clark Street, through the Lincoln Park Chamber of Commerce, are planning to create a Special Service Area (SSA) to help raise funds to maintain the street once the city finishes its planned streetscaping project there.
The SSA, which will comprise Clark Street from Armitage Avenue to Diversey Parkway, will levy a self-imposed property tax on all commercial properties within its borders. The tax will provide locally managed funds for future maintenance needs.
The city’s plans, slated to begin sometime in 2002, call for repaving the Clark Street, widening its sidewalks, adding landscaping and reevaluating bus stop and crosswalk locations.
While surrounded by highly desirable demographics, Clark Street in Lincoln Park—one of Chicago’s oldest commercial thoroughfares—has suffered of late due to a variety of issues such as a lack of parking and general congestion. Many of its current commercial vacancies are in properties owned by a single vacant landlord who has not responded to city and community pressures to find tenants. Clark Street also faces competition for good commercial tenants from the newer and more open Clybourn and Elston avenue corridors which offer larger parcels, many which provide off-street customer parking.
High property taxes, narrow commercial storefronts and changing shopping patterns have also helped encourage the conversion of long-time commercial properties for residential development. The sale, demolition and stalled re-development plans for the City Limits Bus Barn site at Clark and Schubert Streets have only exacerbated the situation as some area residents have taken to avoiding the area altogether.
The Chamber of Commerce has retained the services of two firms to assist in developing the SSA: The Lakota Group, an urban planning firm who has worked on similar projects throughout the Chicagoland area, and S.B. Friedman & Co., a real estate analysis firm.
For nearly 20 years now SSAs have been used in Chicago to provide commercial districts the financial means to maintain clean, attractive and competitive districts above and beyond the city’s basic services. Some communities have used them to fund private security, aid in street beautification and maintenance, landscaping, promotions and marketing. Other areas on the North Side which have instituted SSAs include Lake View East, Andersonville, Halsted Triangle and Lincoln Square.
Clark Street is one of Chicago’s first and oldest commercial streets. Over 400 years ago fur traders first used Old Green Bay Rd. (as it was known then) as a route to bring furs and other products to market from Wisconsin. It originally was an American Indian trail which loosely followed the first ridge line up from the Lake Michigan shoreline to the north, and remains one of Chicago’s most unique passageways in and out of the city today.
The Chamber is forming a working advisory committee to discuss and address issues and concerns brought about by the developing SSA. This group will be made up of Chamber members and business owners along Clark Street. Those interested in participating in the planning can call the Chamber at (773) 880-5200.
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