Odds and ends with some a bit odder than others:
‘In the near future’: Not exactly big news that Golub & Co. last week told the faithful at Unity Temple and its architectural acolytes that it would not press ahead on its plan to build a 28-story high-rise just a Hail Mary pass, or the Unitarian equivalent, east of Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece.
Even after the full village board, which includes Mayor Anan Abu-Taleb, needed smelling salts at the prospect of defending shadows from a 299-foot apartment tower at that site, Golub continued to quietly press its case, offering incentives and warm wishes to a congregation and architectural foundation which had just invested tens of millions into the Wright experience. It was a no-go, go-away response in a non-judgmental but clear congregational context.
To me, the news was in Golub’s declaration of love for Oak Park and its promise of a quick return to the high-rise competition. “We look forward to working on other potential opportunities in Oak Park and engaging with the community in the near future,” said Golub in its so-long-for-just-a-moment letter.
Get out your Google map of the Metra tracks running through Oak Park and pick your next likely location.
Meanwhile, I’d say the 28-story stunner at 835 Lake St. — currently a bank drive-thru and parking lot — has softened the turf for a 10-12 story replacement plan. Clearly the site’s owner is disposed to sell and US Bank has signed off on a plan to contract its square footage on both Lake Street and at its main building on Oak Park Avenue.
Design An Ad: Tucked into this week’s Journal is our 31st annual Design An Ad section. School kids in Oak Park and River Forest learned about how to create a persuasive ad for a local business. And thanks, as always, to our local teachers and our local businesses for supporting this project.
Just how long have we been doing this project? A few years back we had a staff member coordinating the project who had won a prize in the contest when they were a kid. We’re all happily older.
Click bait: On occasion we are accused of publishing crime stories at OakPark.com or on social media simply to drive up page views to our website. No doubt a good crime story attracts interest. But if it was our strategy, you’d see a story about every stolen Amazon package and bike gone missing.
That said, it is interesting to see what stories go (our modest version of) viral. Most often they are not the stories I would have predicted. For example, last week in winter-weary Oak Park, we dropped a little item on Facebook via our OakParkEats page reporting that Hole in the Wall, the bite-sized custard shop on Oak Park Avenue just south of the Ike, was opening the following day. Last time I checked 7,021 people had seen that breaking news.
Also on the food beat: Really sad to see Prairie Bread Kitchen getting ready to close after 24 years on Marion Street. Doran Payne, the longtime owner, gave a candid interview to our Tim Inklebarger saying that spiking real estate taxes and two small kids at home had changed his outlook on continuing in business.
Nate Rouse’s exit: It was at a town hall meeting at OPRF after the final broadcast of America to Me that the already challenged future of Nate Rouse as principal of the high school was, to me, sealed. Near the end of audience questions, the mother of one of the students featured in the documentary rose to ask a question of Rouse. But it wasn’t a question. It was an extended slicing and dicing of Rouse’s tenure as principal. It was calm, it was razor sharp, it was fair. Rouse’s response was grasping, blaming past superintendents. Those superintendents did Rouse no favors, it is true. But it was when neither Joylynn Pruitt-Adams, the current superintendent, nor Jackie Moore, the sitting school board president, said a word in his defense that my countdown clock was set.
