If I ran the world, West 7th Street would be great. In addition to cool shops and bars, a long history, and excellent transit, West 7th Street would have a series of linear parks. Parks with benches. Parks with tables. Parks with trees. Anyone could walk or hop a street car from one cool shop to another and on to a historic brewery and enjoy safer intersections and trees and benches.
How? In my world, this would be super easy. West 7th Street is diagonal compared to the street grid. This is confusing at times, but offers a ton of possibilities. Currently, there are lots of intersections where three or more streets come together and form a mish-mash, zany intersection. Each of these is a traffic free-for-all where everyone just goes when they think they should as I stand there paralyzed as a pedestrian. Sometimes I idle there paralyzed in my car, and sometimes I am a zippy, annoying cyclist that people write letters to local papers about. Either way – it’s confusing.
It would be so much less confusing if there were fewer streets at intersections. Like two. Two streets should meet at an intersection. So, let’s take seven of the worst intersections and make the quietest street into a short, linear park. None of my seven have houses facing the short street. A few have commercial drive-ways that could be moved. At most three or four parking spaces would go away, but we would be walking so it wouldn’t matter.
Intersections that could be parks:
- McBoal between West 7th Street and Smith Avenue (how about some tables for Bad Weather Brewing?)
- Dousman Street between Goodrich Avenue and West 7th Street (Mancini’s has a HUGE parking lot anyway)
- Ann Street between Goodhue Ave and Superior Street and West 7th Street
- Western Avenue between Superior Street and West 7th Street and Michigan Street
- Oneida Street between Jefferson Ave and West 7th Street
- Osceola Avenue between Randolph Avenue and Juno Avenue and West 7th Street
- Milton Street between Eleanor Avenue and West 7th Street and Otto Avenue
Now, let’s wave my magic wand and make it wonderful.
Already almost a park.
The little shoe repair place closed so maybe this all could be a park? I ask a lot.
Church parking access only, please.
I’m sure Chicago’s Taste Authority would LOVE some benches were people could enjoy some hot dogs.
It’s already practically a park. Seriously.
This would require moving the clinic’s parking entrance to Juno, but this is magic so that won’t be hard.
This is the bravest ask, but that SA parking lot is a hot mess.