Recent Streetsblog CHICAGO posts about Chicago Loop Alliance

Latest “Activate” Placemaking Event Celebrated Filipino Culture

By John Greenfield | Oct 21, 2014 | 3 Comments

The Chicago Loop Alliance’s ambitious program of 2014 placemaking projects is drawing to a close. Last Thursday, the group hosted a vibrant arts event in a Loop alley, inspired by the sights and sounds of a Manila marketplace. This was scheduled to be the last of the monthly “Activate” series, which transforms downtown passageways into […]

Loop Alliance Hopes New Seating Will Make Pritzker Park Stand Tall

By John Greenfield | Jun 10, 2014 | 9 Comments

Despite the dreary weather, two of the Chicago Loop Alliance’s new placemaking initiatives, the activation of Pritzker Park, located at Jackson and Van Buren, and the #CitySeats pop-up seating program, started off with a bang today. A lunchtime celebration of the park’s new café tables drew scores of people, who enjoyed free coffee, savory pies […]

Summertime Means Seating, Parties in Loop’s Public Spaces

By John Greenfield | Apr 17, 2014 | 6 Comments

The Chicago Loop Alliance, one of downtown’s chambers of commerce, has announced details about its ambitious slate of summer placemaking campaigns. These include monthly “Activate” arts events held in alleys, the Gateway People Plaza on State Street, new amenities for Pritzker Park, and pop-up lunchtime seating throughout downtown. CLA expects to spend $135,000 on placemaking […]

Loop Alliance Gets More Ambitious With 2014 Slate of Placemaking Projects

By John Greenfield | Feb 21, 2014 | 7 Comments

Last year the Chicago Loop Alliance, one of the downtown chambers of commerce, rolled out several successful placemaking campaigns, activating underused public spaces in an effort to make the central business district a better place for people to hang out, relax and socialize. These included the Pop-Up Art Loop program, which turns empty storefronts into […]

“Activate Couch Place” Turns a Humble Passage into a Vibrant “People Alley”

By Lisa Phillips | Sep 20, 2013 | 2 Comments

Chicago’s 1,900-mile alley system is one of our most important transportation networks and not something to take for granted. In New York City, for example, alleys are scarce. In Chicago neighborhoods, these passageways provide access for shortcuts, garbage collection and the odd pickup basketball game or garage sale. Downtown, they’re useful for garbage, deliveries and […]

Chicago Loop Alliance Uses Placemaking to Promote Commerce

By John Greenfield | Sep 10, 2013 | No Comments

[This piece also ran in Checkerboard City, John Greenfield’s column in Newcity magazine, which hits the streets on Wednesday evenings.] The State Street shopping district has come a long way since the seventies and eighties when the strip featured a motley assortment of discount stores, theaters showing exploitation flicks, adult bookstores, strip clubs and flophouses. […]

Downtown Median Becomes Chicago’s First People Plaza

By Steven Vance | Jun 25, 2013 | 9 Comments

The Gateway, Chicago’s first “People Plaza” seating area, recently opened at what Transportation Commissioner Gabe Klein described as an “under-acknowledged public space” in the median of State Street between Wacker Drive and Lake Street. The installation is funded by the Chicago Loop Alliance, one of the downtown chambers of commerce, via a Special Service Area, […]

Why Was the State Street Pedestrian Mall a “Failure”?

By John Greenfield | Mar 11, 2013 | 20 Comments

[This piece also appears in Checkerboard City, John’s weekly transportation column in Newcity magazine, which hits the streets on Wednesday evenings.] When I was a bicycle messenger in the early nineties, the State Street pedestrian mall, a car-free, bike-free zone between Wacker and Congress, was the bane of my existence. In 1979, under Mayor Jane […]

CTA and CDOT Unveil Proposed Designs for Central Loop BRT Corridor

By John Greenfield | Feb 20, 2013 | 41 Comments

Chicago just got a step closer to first-class bus rapid transit. Today the CTA and the Chicago Department of Transportation released proposed lane configurations for the Central Loop East-West Transit Corridor, a downtown circulator route connecting Union Station with Navy Pier, as well as renderings for a new transit center next to the train station. […]