The popular coffee shop, Filter will soon be replaced by a higher paying corporate tenant, Bank of America. Photo: Devin Breen
June 2007
Shakeup in Neo-Bohemia
With Bank of America displacing a popular Wicker Park coffeehouse, corporate gentrification is threatening to consign Chicago’s artist enclave to the history books
by Mike Drath and Charles Shaw
Jonathan Fine, the President of Preservation Chicago, a non-profit organization whose mission it is to preserve Chicago’s historic buildings and environments, explains, “The Armitage/Halsted corridor is zoned for Pedestrian Retail so they can restrict certain businesses from coming in. There is not much difference between that area and the area along Milwaukee Avenue. Both have retail stores, both have historically significant buildings and both are full of pedestrians.”
David Wilshire, the owner of Cheetah Gym, chooses not to mince words when discussing “the Filter situation.” The popular five-year old coffee shop located on the bustling six corner intersection of North, Damen and Milwaukee Avenues in the heart of Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood learned in March that they are being forced out of their storefront in the historic Flat Iron Building, to be replaced by a higher paying corporate tenant, Bank of America.
“This could be a disaster for the neighborhood. Filter is an icon that influences the energy of the entire area. It won’t kill the community, but it sure may hurt it. You never know if this is the one business whose departure begins a snowball effect in the neighborhood.”
These latest threads unraveling from the fabric of this unique bohemian community reveal the rather extensive plastic surgery the six-sided symbol of Chicago’s underground culture has undergone in recent years. Bank of America becomes the third bank to be sited on the intersection, and the fifth large corporation to displace a locally owned business. A Starbucks, a Sprint outlet, and the nearby encroachment of American Apparel, Urban Outfitters and Potbelly, which took over the old firehouse on Damen, round out the corporate count.
As the news broke in early March many residents and business owners like Debbie Sharpe were understandably upset. Sharpe, the owner of nearby Half & Half coffee shop, Feast restaurant and the Goddess and Grocer, knew immediately the change would negatively impact the neighborhood.
“A bank kills a corner,” she said. “It’s going to create a big void…nobody’s going to come to Wicker Park for a bank.”
Her concern is legitimate. Unlike the locally-owned businesses that Sharpe and others nurtured over the years to revitalize Wicker Park, multinational banks do not generate community revenue from sales tax nor do they generate foot traffic for other retailers.
Scott Starbuck certainly understands Sharpe’s sentiments. The owner for the past twelve years of City Soles, one of the last few locally owned businesses on the six corners, Starbuck has seen the intersection evolve right before his eyes. “Some of the changes here have been positive, but you have to be thoughtful about what types of businesses enter the neighborhood. Some can be good for us, but God knows we don’t need another bank here.”
What distinguished the Filter situation above and beyond the ongoing story of gentrification in Wicker Park was, of course, that it involved the Flat Iron building, the unique urban artist colony that in many ways has served as the locus of the neighborhood’s revitalization efforts over the last two decades. Residents of the community were stunned and outraged at owner Bob Berger’s decision to “sell out” part of his landmark building to Bank of America, particularly after Matthew Greenberg, the owner of Filter’s former next-door neighbor, Swank Frank, revealed that he had spent $52,000 of his own money renovating the storefront just before losing his lease.
Berger himself remains unapologetic. “It was just time,” he offers in his defense. “Bank of America is a wonderful organization that is very involved with the arts on a national level. I think it’s great for artists and great for the community.”
Berger also claims he is “not one bit” concerned about the loss of local businesses in the neighborhood.
“I’m not a sociologist. I don’t understand the dynamics of neighborhoods and everything, but I do know that artists are moving away anyway. I don’t know why. Our rents are very moderate, the building remains full of artists on the 2nd and 3rd floors, and if you ask any of my tenants, they will tell you they are all behind my decision.”
It may be telling that no Flat Iron tenants contacted for this feature would comment on the record. But Filter owner Jeff Linnane made it clear that he has nothing but respect for Berger and his role in the community over the years. Linnane believes the changes to the neighborhood are beyond either his or Berger’s ability to control.
“Bob Berger isn’t responsible for the gentrification of Wicker Park. If anything, he’s been the biggest champion of artists in the area. He gave me the opportunity to launch my business in this incredible location, and worked hard with me to try to move Filter within the building when the deal had been made with Bank of America.”
The six corner intersection at North, Damen and Milwaukee Avenues.
Photo: Xiao Guang Tse
Linnane and crew are attempting to relocate Filter, but it’s a fairly safe bet to assume they won’t reopen anywhere near the six corners. The most likely locations, according to Linnane, are northwest in Logan Square or just south at the next most likely six-corner intersection to gentrify, Division, Ashland, and Milwaukee. The issue, as always, is affordable rent. And with independent landlords like Berger giving way to corporate powerhouses like Baum Realty and @ Properties, there has descended an almost universal feeling amongst the local culturati that the neighborhood has finally been priced out of reach, and the community seems powerless to change it.
And while some called for sit-ins and protests and others talked about filing legal challenges based on potential ordinance contraventions, or re-zoning the six corners to protect retail outlets, the “Save Filter” campaign never really got off the ground, and the potential zeal for resistance was short lived. This was hammered home at a Wicker Park Committee meeting soon after, when Alderman Manny Flores made it clear to the community that this was a private transaction between a landlord and a prospective tenant, in effect a done deal inked before most of the community knew anything about it. The loss of hope felt throughout the room was palpable, and it seemed to be about a lot more than just Filter.
Although few would deny that maintaining the independent and historical character of the neighborhood is a priority, some locals are thinking about the more practical issues raised by the entry of a major bank on the six corners.
“My main issues are ones of crime and infrastructure,” explained Jessica Peterson, a Commissioner of the Wicker Park-Bucktown Special Services Area. “With a 9-to-5 bank replacing a coffee shop and a food shop that used to be open till all hours of the night, you’ll no longer have late-night foot traffic on that corner, which acted as deterrent to crime. There’s also practically no parking here to support a bank…traffic could become a nightmare.”
Still, a traffic nightmare is certainly preferable to the real nightmare that Wicker Park was for so long after the neighborhood began to decline in the late 1960s, when drug dealing, gang activity and prostitution took over as the main industries.
“When I first moved here in 1976,” remembers Wicker Park Committee President Elaine Coorens, “there were packs of wild dogs running around, gunshots echoed throughout the neighborhood, muggings were commonplace and gang symbols were everywhere. At the corner of Pierce and Hoyne, the ‘Candyman’ used to show up regularly in his brown van to deal his drugs. The cops were deaf, dumb and blind to all of this.”
In the 1980s however, Wicker Park started to become a haven for artists because of cheap rents, proximity to Downtown and good transit options. Events such as the Greening Festival and the Around the Coyote arts festival began drawing people into the neighborhood, transforming it from a ghetto into a “neo-bohemia,” so that by the mid 1990s, as Richard Lloyd chronicled in Neo-Bohemia: Art and Commerce In Postindustrial Chicago, Wicker Park had officially become bohemian chic, a cultural crucible on par with New York’s Soho and East Village. Massive investment followed, and by the turn of the millennium, although the area was now vibrant and safe, the artists and unique local businesses that had brought the neighborhood back to life were beginning to be priced out.
The joy felt amongst the residents of the community about the neighborhood’s renaissance was and continues to be genuine, but Elaine Coorens recognizes that the renewed influx into Wicker Park, and the renewed security, came at a heavy price.
“What is happening today is way beyond gentrification. It’s like aging…you don’t notice the changes until they’ve already happened. The pioneers here were dedicated to the neighborhood and their sweat equity gave them a real sense of community. Now you have people investing money but not themselves.”
This is certainly the attitude of Chopin Theatre owner Zygmunt Dyrkacz, who has passionately supported the local art scene for almost 20 years, but is now looking to move or close the theater out of sheer frustration with the “bullshit and corruption” of the city.
“We helped create Wicker Park. We’ve done more than 7,000 performances without any city or state grants. We spent every day of the last 20 years trying to make Wicker Park into the French Quarter of Chicago. How does the city repay us? With $20,000 in new taxes!”
So while some residents and artists are escaping to new frontiers in Logan Square and Pilsen, those determined to stay are making a stand against further corporate displacements, resulting in a recently successful push for a historical landmark designation for part of Milwaukee Avenue. The prevailing attitude amongst this committed minority is that one battle may have been lost but the overall war can still be won.
“We need to continue to have imagination and creativity,” the Chopin’s Dyrkacz adds, “if we want to keep Wicker Park unique, beautiful and extraordinary.”
The only lingering question remains whether or not “imagination and creativity” are still viable currencies in the Wicker Park economy. One thing is for sure, they certainly won’t be dispensed from the ATMs that will line what used to be the windows of one of Chicago’s most beloved, and soon-to-be mourned, gathering spots.
Mike Drath is a Contributing Writer to Conscious Choice. Charles Shaw is the Editor-in-Chief of Conscious Choice.
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