‘Renew The Avenue,” the project to rehab the streetscape and underground infrastructure of the Oak Park Avenue business corridor, has wreaked havoc on Oak Park traffic.
The impact on local businesses may be worse. Social media reports that some Oak Park institutions are already hurting, and similar projects in other areas have contributed to business failures.
Driving to the Oak Park Ave/Hemingway District has always been fraught. Traffic is nonstop and street parking is scarce. If we fall back on old convenient habits, it would be easy to just avoid patronizing those businesses until the project is done.
But the winter weather has broken and spring will soon be sprung.
Why not walk?
How long does it take you to get the car out of the garage, drive to a local business, park and find your way to the door? Ten minutes at least, maybe 15.
If we budget 15 minutes for a walk, the Oak Park Avenue business corridor has a large surrounding “walkshed” (https://jvanderberg.github.io/walk15/). A walkshed is the area that can be reached on foot within a set amount of time. In this case, the 15-minute walkshed includes approximately 4,800 households and 11,000 residents [1], all of whom could just as easily walk to support our local businesses.
If you live there, you have no excuse. When the weather is nice in the next week, get out there and support the businesses impacted by Renew the Avenue. Let’s call it “Walk 15.”
Door to door, 15 minutes or less, how convenient is that? No garage, no circling, hunting for that “rockstar” spot, no parking fees, no valet who tweaked your mirror position. Just a pleasant walk through beautiful Oak Park. And along the way you might discover new businesses you previously missed in your frantic search for parking.
So why not slow down, stop to smell the pollinator-friendly wildflowers, and get out there and enjoy Oak Park on foot this spring. Walk 15 for local businesses, not just for The Avenue, but for all of Oak Park.
[1] Using Assessor geographical records and unit estimates for larger buildings, cross referenced with the U.S. Census ACS data estimate of 2.27 people per household for Oak Park.
Josh is a passionate urbanist and entrepreneur who’s lived in Chicagoland for thirty years and has called Oak Park home for over a decade.
