Chitownproperty

Yesterday, city aldermen approved project plans for the Fordham Spire, a 2,000-foot residential and hotel tower designed by architect Santiago Calatrava that will become the country’s tallest building. Although originally met with skepticism, the project, which will be built at 420 E. North Water Street in Streeterville, sailed through the city council on a unanimous vote. It seems that they were taken with the building’s twisting design, even cold-hearted old Ald. Burt Natarus, who asked to keep the sketches. The building will feature 300 condos in the $1 million to $2 million price range, and could be completed by 2010.

Two bedroom Old Town condo with all the upgrades

Price: $589,900
Take a Virtual Tour

Absolutely stunning home in the heart of Old Town. This high floor south facing two bedroom, two bathroom unit has outstanding city views from every room. It is highly upgraded with custom kitchen cabinetry, high-end stainless steel appliances, custom paint and rich cherry hardwood floors. The bathrooms are spectacular. The marble master bath features a separate shower with frameless shower door and body sprays, large tub and double bowl vanity. The second bath features mosaic marble. Large garage spot included in the price. This is a truly beautiful home situated in an impressive, intimate elevator building in an amazing location.

Editor’s note: This post was my daily entry today at Chicagoist. I’m not normally this lazy, but I cross-posted it here because it seemed especially relevant to our clients

Still waiting for that $100 refund from Peoples Energy? Yeah, so are we. And it seems that we’ll be waiting a little longer while they haggle with the Illinois Commerce Commission over the wording of the settlement in which they agree to reimburse natural gas customers $100 million, or $100 each, for allegedly overcharging them between 2000 and 2004.

The ICC was expected to finalize the settlement yesterday, but Peoples Energy balked at a final change to the wording that indicated they had acted “imprudently.” The Sun-Times reports that Peoples Energy filed a statement with the ICC saying they, “have not and do not admit any wrongdoing or liabilities in the settlement.” And here’s $100 million to remember that too, because we always hand out nine-figure settlements when we don’t do anything wrong. Once Peoples Energy is finished passing the buck, it will take up to 30 days to begin crediting customer bills with refunds.

Of course, they might be a little testy with the ICC because they just nicked them for $500,000 for failing to comply with gas meter inspection regulations. State and federal law requires that gas companies inspect meters for leaks on a regular basis, but over the past five years Peoples Gas has only checked only 25 percent of its quota. Of course, that’s not their fault either: they blame residential customers who aren’t home or ignore requests to let inspectors in.

We apologize for the poor performance of this site lately. We have been having problems with our web host and will be migrating to a new one today. This may cause the site to be down for a few hours later today, but hopefully things will be back to normal by tomorrow.

UPDATE – The site migration is complete and things should start picking up again. Thanks for staying with us.

While one should always be skeptical of the veracity of Wikipedia articles, it’s hard to find fault with this guide to the Neighborhoods of Chicago. It features maps and brief descriptions of 76 different neighborhoods in the city. It may not be a definitive guide, but the next time someone tells you they’re from Portage Park or Beverly, you can get a rough idea of where exactly that is.

This week’s New York Times Magazine is all about real estate. It includes a look at how we view our homes when we take financial risks to buy them, a profile of Harvard real estate expert Edward Glaeser, a critical take on the mortgage interest tax deduction, and the story of a 400-year old house in Amsterdam and what it can tell us about the housing market. Plus, Freakonomics authors Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt continue their jihad against real estate agents, couched in their best, non-assuming, “Aw shucks nothing personal, we’re just crunchin’ numbers” kind of language.