Tuesday, November 08, 2005

The farce, continued. Pity the residents of West Town.

So, surprise, surprise, the Landmarks Commission voted to landmark a good chunk of West Town. And what did they base it on?

Well, apparently the area exhibits the "theme" of what was termed "ethinic succession." That is, its multiple architectural styles and building types that were popular in the 1880-1920 time frame is reflective of the residences constructed in Chicago's German, Polish, and European immigrant working class neighborhoods. (Next up: landmark the CTA's housing projects on the South Side, as evidencing the compelling theme of misguided attempts by 1960s "activists" to bring about socially-engineered utopia).

The Landmarks Commission arrived at this conclusion via the City of Chicago's preservation expert. This "expert" conceded that he had never testified that there was not a landmark-worthy area when retained by the City of Chicago. Hmmm, no bias there.

He testified that he had NOT compared early photos of the properties in their original construction to the properties in their present form. This is a critical issue, for one of the landmark challengers introduced proof that her home's so-called historical features had been added to her home AFTER she bought it. It was ignored. As such, even though the Landmarks Commission legally cannot approve a landmark district unless the original integrity of the struture has been maintained, they voted to landmark anyway.

Oh, and the City's expert admitted that he only spent three, maybe four days wandering the neighborhood to arrive at his opinions. Even if we assume that the guy was a little trouper, and didn't stop to eat lunch or take bathroom breaks over the course of his eight hour days, and we assume he did this over four, not three days as he first stated, that means that his analysis of homes within the area under consideration deemed landmark-worthy averaged less than 7 minutes per home. (4 days x 8 hours x 60 minutes/hour = 1920 minutes; approximately 300 properties are in the scope of the district).

Think about that for a second: People's property rights (to at least their facade and beyond) are permanently GONE, based on a seven minute walk around by some hack academic. Does that sound like the homeowners were given Due Process of law??? Nope.

And now the proposal goes to City Council, where if they don't vote to reject it within a year, it becomes an effective district (guess how often they vote to reject...). Oh, and the average Joe citizen can't exactly stand up and move the City Council to vote to reject it. And I don't think Manny Flores is really up to the job either; I think he'd rather start laughing as his campaign coffers start to fill from everyone who will need him to sign off with approval on their building projects.

Proof yet again that the totalitarian impulse is everywhere.

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