Metropolitan Planning Council
Community members use building blocks to plan the future of Logan Square's CTA Blue Line station plaza and adjacent parking lot.
On Tuesday, Sept. 16, almost 170 Logan Square residents came together at the Hairpin Arts Center to “build” their ideas for the future of the Logan Square Blue Line station plaza and adjacent parking lot. The event was the second meeting in a three-part Corridor Development Initiative series hosted by the Metropolitan Planning Council (MPC) and Alderman Rey Colón. The goal of the process is to engage local stakeholders in developing a proactive community plan for important publicly owned land.
The meeting this week allowed residents and stakeholders to use blocks of varying shapes and colors to create models of future development on top of aerial maps. Residents sat at 16 tables filled with their peers from around the community. Once a plan was created at each table, participants worked with volunteer developers and architects to assess financial feasibility and work out design details.
Here were some of the ideas proposed for the Logan Square Blue Line station plaza and adjacent parking lot:
- Emphasizing retail uses in buildings facing Milwaukee and Kedzie avenues, with a specific focus on dense buildings lining the streets to improve the pedestrian atmosphere;
- Refashioning the station plaza and adjacent parking lot as open spaces, with fountains, playgrounds and other features meant to improve the public environment in the neighborhood;
- Developing a community center/indoor farmers market hybrid, with space that could host meetings and other gatherings, as well as food stalls during the colder months; and
- Building housing, such as townhouses or mid-rise developments, along Emmett Street, to keep in line with the relatively low-scale aesthetic environment of that street.
These scenarios are just a sampling of the full spectrum of ideas developed by community members, and MPC staff will be working over the next two weeks to review the design and financial feasibility of all of the scenarios generated by the public.
Review the night’s presentation and agenda, as well as background materials for discussion (see the Spanish presentation and agenda). MPC will post updates at metroplanning.org/logansquare and via our Logan Square newsletter to workshop participants, which you can sign up for at our site.
Please join us for the last meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 30, at 6 p.m. at the Hairpin Arts Center, 2810 N. Milwaukee Ave., to help think through your preferred scenarios and hear from a panel of developers about their thoughts on the proposals.=