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Originally posted by USRufnex
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Originally posted by we vs us
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Originally posted by Conan71
Starbucks is never my first choice for boutique coffee. I'd just as soon support Shades of Brown or the Coffee Shop on 15th.
However, it usually takes someone with deep pockets like Starbucks to start a revitalization of an area, so I don't think they are all bad. There's plenty of empty lots along Harvard from 11th to 5th.
I had a friend who sold real estate in Chicago. He would check the local planning meetings, the abstract companies, and the Starbucks website, looking for new store information. He'd then start courting possible sellers in the neighborhoods where new ones were going in, knowing that getting a new Starbucks meant that a neighborhood was turning around, and that property values would soon shoot up.
Getting a Starbucks = the Yuppie stamp of approval.
Funny how the "Starbucks Effect" worked on me... I got into the Starbucks habit over a decade ago when they opened one down the street from where I worked in the Chicago loop.... then when they opened a Starbucks down the street from my apt off Greenleaf & Sheridan (Rogers Park), I discovered I had a perfectly good neighborhood coffee shop down the block that I'd never visited... Starbucks turned me into an elitist boutique coffee drinker who shops local... [
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IMO, the problem with this in Chicago is that there was so much market speculation/condo flipping, that I am suspicious that Mayor Daley & the aldermen used special tax incentives in the name of "urban renewal" to attract Starbucks (and Borders... and Whole Foods, etc)... to artificially inflate property values...
Daley can then keep his political promises and tell people he hasn't raised their property taxes, but then property taxes go up because property values go up... due to market manipulation... while longtime residents of the neighborhood are forced to either pay substancially higher property taxes or "cash out" and move elsewhere...
Chicago's dirty little secret: nearly 30% of the city's land mass is made up of creatively gerrymandered TIF's... Tax Increment Finance districts... [
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Wow, Ruff, we were neighbors, sorta. My wife and I lived down in Andersonville at Balmoral and Clark, and we had some great friends who lived on Sheridan just south of Greenleaf. I'm intimately familiar with your hood! [
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Yeah, the TIF situation in CHI is out of control, but at the same time, it's had an undeniable effect on the city, and at least at this point for the better. It's the eternal Daley conundrum: if the dictator is by and large benevolent, does that cancel out the dictator part? Not to say that Daley is a saint or that he could've done differently and done better, but still. CHI is on a definite upswing and I have to say a lot of that credit goes to King Richie.
But look at me, talking Chicago politics on a Tulsa board.
Anyhoo, I was never much of a Starbucks guy, here or abroad, but have to credit it for popularizing the coffee-shop lifestyle, which I think is valuable.
