CHICAGO — Kids, noise and homes — none of which are related in this installment of What We're Reading:
Baby on Board: You don't have to be a tourist to benefit from a recent travel piece in the Minneapolis Star Tribune detailing what to do in Chicago when you have a kid. Writer Tom Horgen, a regular visitor to Chicago with his wife before they started breeding, gives us a shot again (even though the couple now have a 1-year-old.) Using the Hotel Lincoln, 1816 N. Clark St., as their "fortress of solitude," Mom and Pop manage to find alternatives to their usual hip haunts here (Little Goat Diner instead of the Girl and the Goat; Xoco instead of Frontera Grill.) Horgen recommends the Shedd Aquarium (of course) but also Little Beans in Bucktown at 1809 W. Webster St., where parents can get coffee while kids play in miniature homes and storefronts.
It has been a few years since senior editor Andrew Herrmann has been in this situation but can confirm Horgen's best tip: pace yourself because travelling with a baby on board is not going to be the same. "Trust me," Horgen writes, "an adult tantrum in the middle of Navy Pier is not a good look."
Little Beans Cafe in Bucktown. [Little Beans]
O'Hare Ranks 1st in Nation for Noise Complaints: No huge surprise here — plus reporter Heather Cherone has written dozens of stories about neighbors living near the airport. A Better Government Association and Sun Times investigation released on Tuesday shows that O'Hare ranks first out of 10 busiest airports when it comes to noise complaints. Norridge Mayor James Chmura heartily disagrees with a statement from a Chicago Aviation Department spokesman about O'Hare being a unique airport in that it was built, and communities built up around it. "People say, `You moved by the airport,’ ’’ Chmura said. "No we didn’t. The airport moved by us’’ by switching flight paths. Read the full report.
The South Loop's Real Estate Has Come Full Circle: The South Loop, which was the 2000s epicenter of Chicago's downtown construction boom and bust, was one of the city's hottest real estate markets in the first half of the year, reporter David Matthews is reading in Crain's Chicago Business. The 415 condominiums and other attached homes that sold in the neighborhood so far this year moved in an average of 58 days, down from 77 during the first six months of 2014, Crain's reports. "The neighborhood has really gotten on the map," South Loop-based realtor Colleen Harper told Crain's. "People are seeing that we're getting more restaurants and we've got a park every two blocks." Home sales across the whole city rose nearly 11 percent in the first six months of the year.
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