Where some might see a grimy Loop loading dock, promoters of the vibrant business district see an opportunity to encourage people to stay, play — and spend money.
On Thursday, the Chicago Loop Alliance, which represents the downtown area, begins a series of urban pop-up events, sometimes called placemaking. The idea is to entice people, and possibly developers, to explore overlooked parts of the neighborhood and stoke excitement about its potential.
Thursday night’s event, in an alley that cuts through the Sullivan Center on Monroe Street, between State Street and Wabash Avenue, is the first of five monthly alley transformations this year in which Loop alleys will be filled with art, music, food and drinks.
“It reorients people to how cool the Loop is, because they’re seeing it from a different place,” said Mike Edwards, executive director of the alliance. So that the event doesn’t include uninvited residents — rats — particularly gross alleys will be power-washed.
These placemaking initiatives supplant the big outdoor art projects — you may recall the “Eye” sculpture, the bright “Color Jam” intersection or the “Go Do Good” skyscraper — that were part of the alliance’s arts programming since 2010 but which didn’t drive sales to nearby businesses as much as hoped, Edwards said.
Placemaking, around since the 1960s and now a global trend, reimagines public spaces to help strengthen the connection between people and their communities, facilitate social interaction and stimulate business.
Financed through the Chicago Loop Alliance Foundation, which draws money from sponsors, the initiatives have several aims: to give office workers a reason to stick around after 5 p.m.; to create the common areas that could make Chicago’s downtown a more attractive place to work for young people who prefer not to be chained to a desk; and to give developers ideas for creatively using neglected spots.
“There are some alleys that look like they could be used for something, like a speak-easy bar,” Edwards said. “Cafes in cool alleys are more interesting than going inside a coffee shop.”
If Chicago is going to compete with global cities for global companies, he added, it needs to compete with the world’s other dynamic downtowns.
The Loop, which is home to more than 294,356 daily workers, has become more than an office environment in recent years. Its residential population more than doubled from 2000 to 2010, according to the Census Bureau.
The number of residential units has nearly tripled, to a projected 14,331 this year, from 5,071 in 2000, according to Appraisal Research Counselors. That doesn’t include the housing that accommodates the Loop’s huge student population, which, at 63,000 students attending 21 institutions, is the highest concentration in the state, according to the alliance.
The Loop’s retail vacancy rate declined to 10.8 percent last year, the lowest in 12 years, according to a Stone Real Estate Corp. report.
Most of the Loop’s retail is on State Street, with a focus on “value retailing,” which has kept away some higher-end retailers, said Sharon Kahan, first vice president at commercial real estate firm CBRE. But the stretch of Michigan Avenue south of the river is widely expected to become an extension of the tony Magnificent Mile, with “a litany of new developments” in the works, though it has yet to be seen what kind of personality it assumes, Kahan said.
The Chicago Cultural Mile Association plans to unveil new bronze signage and flags Thursday on Michigan Avenue that will designate the corridor from the river south to Roosevelt Road as the Cultural Mile, to highlight the bevy of fine and performing arts institutions that occupy the area. Organizers also plan to announce a new initiative that will give visitors discounts and special cultural programming on the second Friday of every month.
Such promotional events are always a worthwhile effort, Kahan said.
“When you look at what happens with the concerts in Millennium Park, hopefully it resonates with people and they decide they want to be down there,” she said.
Yet the Loop remains a tough sell.
Ashley Beaumier, a 22-year-old interior designer, has been living in the Loop, near Lake and Dearborn streets, for the past two years. Beaumier, who moved in with a friend who was living there, loves the location for the easy access to all the CTA trains, but when she wants to go out, she heads north of the river because the Loop feels dead after 6 or 7 p.m.
“In a way, it feels like everything is spread out,” said Beaumier, who plans to move to another neighborhood this summer. “It doesn’t feel like a neighborhood or have that friendliness of people knowing each other.”
If she had to handicap the neighborhoods where she’s likely to spend her time, she said, the Loop would probably come in fifth after Wicker Park/Bucktown, Lincoln Park, Logan Square and the West Loop.
Todd Cashbaugh, who teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, said the Loop has improved enormously since he first lived there as a student in the late 1980s, when it felt far more dangerous and eerily desolate. More restaurants, stores, attractions like Millennium Park and Christkindlmarket, as well as residents bustling about at night, have made it inviting, but “personally, I like to get out of the Loop because I work here,” said Cashbaugh, 43, of the Rogers Park neighborhood.
Thursday’s party in the Sullivan Center alley, which runs from 5 to 10 p.m., aims to entice people like Cashbaugh to stick around. The gray space will be transformed into “a walkway of fog that leads to immersive art works such as a neon pyramid with a laser projection reflecting off it, a lone deer configured into a lighted sculpture, oversized pompoms made of synthetic craft materials and a variety of other works that stimulate the senses,” as the news release described it. The alliance partnered with artist collaborative Johalla Projects to make it happen.
Chicago street artist Don’t Fret, whose funny cartoonlike characters and witty musings are plastered about town, this week painted a large mural on the alley wall, dispensing some city wisdom. Guests who RSVP in advance will get a complimentary drink ticket, and there will be beer and wine available for purchase.
The alley series comes after a successful trial run last fall at the Couch Place alley north of Randolph Street, between State and Dearborn streets, which drew 2,000, Edwards said. The locations of the next alley parties — they are scheduled for June 5, Aug. 1, Sept. 17 and Oct. 16 — will be announced a month in advance at loopchicago.com/activate.
Other placemakers are coming down the pike.
On Sunday, the median on State Street between Wacker Drive and Lake Street will again be transformed into the “Gateway to the Loop,” with tables and chairs for up to 50. The Gateway, which debuted last year, “provided a new perspective of the city people hadn’t seen,” Edwards said, and drove business to nearby merchants.
On May 12, the alliance will debut “city seats,” wherein tables and chairs will appear unexpectedly throughout the Loop, and people can find and help select sites through social media (#cityseats).
On June 1, the alliance will debut its Pritzker Park initiative, across from the Harold Washington Library Center, with a more permanent collection of tables and chairs to create a vibrant public plaza that also will be host to artistic programming.
While discussions are ongoing about what that programming might entail, ideas have ranged from art installations to “something as simple as throwing some hula hoops on the grass,” Edwards said.