Dining on Clark in Andersonville

One proposal that has has been made by some is to turn city streets into pedestrian zones. This can be beneficial because people would be able to spread out and keep better social distancing from each other. One neighborhood on the North Side where this could work well is Clark St. in Andersonville. I have noticed when I am walking on the sidewalk it has felt a bit too crowded this spring. There is an additional benefit for closing Clark. We could have outdoor dining on the street which would definitely make it easier for restaurants to spread people out. As you can see below it would not be a big deal for drivers to detour around the closing. They would just need to take Ashland which I have outlined in green in the Google Map snippet below.

There is just one big problem why this wouldn’t work. When Mayor Daily decided to privatize the parking in Chicago they made a clause that forces the city to reimburse the parking meter company every time a street shuts down. The Chicago Tribune explains it well: “The mayor mentioned downtown, Andersonville, Logan Square and Wicker Park as neighborhoods where city officials may want to close streets — a complicated and potentially costly proposition due to a provision in the city’s parking meters deal that means the city has to pay for meters put out of commission.” Clark is shut down already once a year for Midsommar but of course it would cost the city a lot more to reimburse the parking meter company for 6 months to a year versus a weekend.

I found out yesterday from Streetsblog Chicago that the city is proposing to close Glenwood which is a residential street which runs parallel to Clark and does not have paid parking. It is marked blue on the map. Today there is already a bike line for a good portion of Glenwood so this would work well.

I did call my alderman in the 48th Ward to make the suggestion to close Clark. I know this is a long shot considering the parking meter deal fiasco. But if you feel motivated to call please do. Strangely Andersonville is split into 3 wards as you can see on the map from the city. Notice that Clark splits the 40th and 48th Ward unless you are “SOFO” (South of Foster) which is the 47th Ward.

Ward	Adlerman	Phone Number
40	Andre Vasquez, Jr.	773-654-1867
47	Matthew J. Martin	773-868-4747
48	Harry Osterman	773-784-5277