I know.

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General Jim wears Fort Bragg down... to get it!

went here last month. it was ok. thought it be a little bit more.

Why would you be embarrassed? You have no real connection to it's planning or development. That is the work of the group of owners who spent millions building it and will make many millions from it. I doubt they are embarrassed about it though, as it seems very popular and will be another financial boon to the ownership group. Perhaps you miss the old car wash and Yum Yum Donuts?

I see lots of people enjoying it and it is decidedly more attractive than the old car wash, so I say "Well done".

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Go Cubs!!!!

You are using an old developer's trick.

"It's better than what was there" isn't really the standard. When you work from a blank slate with a relatively unlimited budget, I expect better than Rosemont.

Of course people love it. Go to Rome and the Mc Donald's is packed with Americans.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

The city is flooding with yuppies who were raised in the suburbs across the Midwest. Developers are simply giving consumers what they want. A suburban lifestyle within city limits.

They only want that because of their limited sophistication. Give them a better design and they will want that as well.

I'm not saying they had to design the Taj Mahal. However, wouldn't you have wanted to make something contextual with landmark stadium surrounded by vintage buildings. If they really wanted to break free and design something modern with some aesthetic features that addressed that it was a baseball facility, that would be cool as well. Instead, they worked with a stock strip mall design. You could plunk that same design onto some old car dealership on Ashland with almost no changes. They even used colors that scream "space designed for a Starbucks and chain restaurant".

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

The "triangle building" is an architectural abomination.

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General Jim wears Fort Bragg down... to get it!

Those idiots only want certain parts of suburbia though. Wrigley Park/Plaza, YES! Wrigley night games and concerts, NO!

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I like it.

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Hawaii (fuck) You

Haven't been to the wrigley one yet, but went to the new suntrust field in ATL when the Cubs were in town. Outside of center field they have the whole plaza lined with restaurants, shops and water geyser feature for kids to run in. Definitely a much better vibe than walking up to the park than the old turner field. Stadium is buried among office buildings where the biggest issue will be parking. Very little public transportation to the stadium as of now. It was interesting to see more Braves fans at the game. Last year it was a Cubs home game with probably 75% cub fans. This years it felt like an even split.

Came back on Sunday night when the Braves were in LA to walk around it with our 4 year old. The braves were just starting the game against the dodgers and there were a few hundred people mulling around a jumbotron watching the game. The bars also had a decent crowd. The boy thoroughly enjoyed water jets with 20 other kids that were running around like crazy.

It is an architectural equal to Comiskey II/the joan/guaranteed rate. It is a purely utilitarian design. The trained seals are clapping for their fish today but I think in a few years it will be looked at as a lost opportunity.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

People like Rosemont and those little suburban downtown areas.

I share your disdain.

The "triangle building" is an architectural abomination.[/quote]
In before the Kramer quote

It undoubtedly would have cost more, but they should have made the building to look as if it were built in the same time period as the ballpark. Missed opportunity.

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General Jim wears Fort Bragg down... to get it!

Those kind of places ARE great but it is because of their land planning concepts, not their architectural designs.

PBS had a interesting documentary on a still working British architect whose firm does great work on rehab work and new construction that is both contextual and new...and affordable.

Here is his firm website.

http://www.adamarchitecture.com/

How would you like something cool like this when the next big subdivision proposal comes up in your neighborhood

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Would.

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Elections have consequences.

What's cool about it? We've all probably lived in apartments before.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

I would say it is cool because it doesn't look like every other living structure in suburban America. I also like when towns make the chains adopt their codes for structure appearance.

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Elections have consequences.

Mike, have you heard of a book called Suburban Nation? It's pretty good about explaining what's wrong with modern planning but their solutions (like Seaside, Florida, a town so creepiily fake that The Truman Show was filmed there) are sketchy at best. You can't enforce quaintness.

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All you have to do is take a commuter rail in Chicago to see things like that all over the suburbs. However, if I wanted that, then I would just move to the big city instead of trying to create a small and far less cool version in the suburbs rather than having a garage and yard and patio.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

it looks like a slice of "downtown" arlington heights.

Yeah you are probably right but some of it I have seen looks better to me than most suburban landscapes that I see. I am not an expert on it just my passing opinion given 30 seconds of thought.

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Elections have consequences.

Yeah I'm no expert myself. I don't have the book on me right now but I think one of the big things they go on about is how streets and turns are designed to be too wide and too accommodating of drivers to the expense of anyone else, and that cities need to lighten up their codes (which they meant well in doing, it was mostly about having space for fire trucks and stuff) so that streets are narrower and cars drive more slowly. That and neighborhoods are built with no parks or schools or places to walk to, that's big too. You can have all the darling little cottages and granny-sheds in the world but it doesn't amount to a hill of shit if the grocery store is still 20 minutes away.

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When I see those mini downtowns I just think "ooooh pretend Downtown!"

But most of those cities on the Northwest Line (since Arlington Heights came up) are really old railroad suburbs and as such were built around their train stations. What are Park Ridge, Des Plaines, Arlington Heights, and Palatine supposed to do? not have downtowns?

EDIT: I forgot Mount Prospect but who in this world doesn't

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Architecturally it has a diversity of lines, materials, colors, facades and heights. There is no structure that is the same yet they were all built at the same time and still everything is contextual.

Planning it has walkability, a logical coupling of public outdoor space near high traffic commercial, higher density uses close to public and commercial, a diversity of residential options

Neither is an exhaustive list.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

So basically a city, but worse. For college I lived in an area like that. I am now ok with driving to the store rather than walking with a foldable shopping cart.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Those "railroad" suburbs are ok with me. Reminds me in the slightest way of the idea of European towns with the train station as center. Btw, I always liked downtown Lemont even though it was pretty much abandoned when I was around there.

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Elections have consequences.

Exactly. Most of these towns are 25K+ residents. Plunk a place that size in the middle of nowhere and you would expect it to have a town center.

I think the planning on them is pretty sound. Sometimes they fail architecturally. It really takes an expert hand to walk that line between sentimental and modern in design. Some towns want that Anytown, U.S.A. look. I think it works as you get to the far flung places towards the end of the train lines that are neighbors to corn fields. Some want that urban glass and metal look. I don't like that as much in most suburbs as it looks like they are trying to hard to be something they are not. It kind of works in Evanston but that has always been a free standing city that happens to border Chicago.

I like what Park Ridge has done but they always maintained a mature city center with cornerstones like The Pickwick. All they had to do was fill in around.

I think some of the military bases that have been redeveloped have done a pretty nice job

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Don't move.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.