Since the end of the year is rapidly approaching and various news sources are looking back at the decade, we figured it's a good time to have a post about what this decade has meant for the Sloop. Although the neighborhood has been around for a long long time, it probably can be argued that this past decade was one of the most transformative ones for the Sloop.
With the real estate boom, came a big boom in buildings and high-rises in the South Loop. With this came more people, shops and restaurants. The neighborhood looks much different then it did in 2000.
We know some readers have been in the neighborhood for a long time and some are relatively new, so we wanted to open up this post and have people comment on what they liked or didn't like about all that has transpired over the past ten years within the Sloop. We also encourage people to predict what will happen in the next ten. So here is our take:
Looking Back
We like that the neighborhood is increasingly becoming a desirable residential neighborhood. In our opinion it's a great hybrid of downtown living mixed with the characteristics of a calm and peaceful residential neighborhood. We like how the character of the neighborhood continues to evolve and is hard to stereotype. We like that the neighborhood is diverse. Go to Jewel on Roosevelt and Wabash and you will see all walks of life. We like that there are more and more artsy college students shooting movies in our allies, we like that there are more and more families playing with their dogs and kids in the South part of Grant Park. We like that Mayor Daley moved into our hood. We like that we can live so close to the lake and world class museums. We like a lot of things about this neighborhood.
Looking Forward
We're excited for the next 10 years in the Sloop. We predict that we will have two more El stops at Cermak and 18th. We predict that Cermak will evolve into a major retail/restaurant corridor that will bridge McCormick Place to Chinatown. We predict that Roosevelt Road will increasingly become a headache in regard to traffic congestion. We predict that there will be plans to house Obama's presidential library/museum in our hood (ok, this might be a long shot, but it seems like a good fit to us). We predict we will have a new NFL football coach in the Sloop (probably within the first year of the new decade). We predict that at least one more residential high rise will be built on Roosevelt Road east of Michigan by 2020. We predict that the neighborhood will continue to grow, but at a much slower pace then we saw this last decade.
So please look back and look forward and let us know what you think about the Sloop!
(image from chicagoreader.com)
