2001-12-09 - 11:29 p.m.

From my window, I can see the boarded hulk of an empty building, lifeless as a mound of dirt, beyond an empty parking lot and the elevated train, where Broadway and Racine avenues meet. The name �Goldblatt�s� is plastered across one curving side of the triangular mass, and beneath it is some slogan about bargain stores that I can�t make out from here. It does not matter � the sign advertising nothing now, its owners having packed up for good in 1998.

I thought I�d pay the old thing a visit one day � the building, always in view from the spot by my computer, seemed to call to me, and the sun was making me squint. I�ve always liked walking along the building in a perverse way, like walking through ruins. It reminds me that while this once-formidable building has been reduced to a shambles, I am still here, still alive. Besides, visiting hours for this gravestone to bargains past may soon be up; a pending plan would turn it into condominiums and two new stores, including a Borders Books.

Today, the closest place to shop for books from my apartment is the Book Box on Broadway, a little independent place run by an agreeable man named Rick, full of cheap old books, magazines and records. I stopped in and picked out an old Hemingway paperback from the back. Stacks of unread books await me at home, but still I like buying books here.

�This looks a little beat up. Make it two bucks,� Rick said.

I thanked him for the discount (I�ve never paid more than three bucks for a book here), then stopped as I reached the door.

�I saw you at the hearing for the Goldblatt�s building,� I said. �So you�re all in favor of a Borders coming in?�

�Yeah,� he said. �You know, people will buy books at the Borders and sell them here, and other people will buy books here. More people will be coming through.�

He paused to tell a man in the back not to take those books out of their plastic covers, but that�s all right, go ahead and flip through it now that it�s out.

�I�m in favor of any new retail in this area,� he said as he turned to sign for a package. I thanked him again and left with my book.

Rick was one of dozens of people who spoke up one recent Tuesday night to discuss the Goldblatt�s building�s future. It�s been in the neighborhood since 1915, first under the ownership of Loren Miller, who supposedly coined the term �Uptown� for the entertainment district at Lawrence Avenue and Broadway. The Goldblatt Brothers acquired it in 1931.

Someone is finally proposing to bring the building back to prominence as part of the Lawrence-Broadway TIF, a taxing plan that brings money to projects to revitalize Uptown. Developer Joseph Freed and Associates have proposed to create 37 condominium units and two retail spaces in the building, one likely for the Borders. Two of the three buildings on the triangular property would be preserved, while a third at the southern edge along Leland Avenue would be demolished. Tied to the development is the rehabilitation of the Leland Hotel, which is currently operating nearby on Leland.

The redevelopment would be a reversal for the building, a metaphorical resetting of the giant clock that still ticks at the tip of the building�s triangle, oblivious to the actual time. Perhaps at a brighter moment in Uptown�s past, the clock was installed to ring in a new day, a time when money still flowed into the neighborhood and people came here to shop. Then one day, the clock lost track of the time, and people stopped caring; the doors of the bargain department store had closed forever.

Today, the minute hand of the clock is twisted outward and a few specks of green paint cling to its chipped face. The sidewalk behind it, which I walked around this day, had also been largely ignored � shattered glass settled into cracks in the pavement, a pile of bread and bagels awaited the birds, a shopping cart sat overturned. Approaching Leland Avenue, where the property reaches an end, I saw a woman being patted down by the police for reasons unknown � the vacant building provides a fertile gowned for drug dealers, police complain. Nearby, the Darlington Hotel advertises Daily, Weekly and Monthly Rates, while across the street, the Leland Hotel waits for the redevelopment deal that could bring it rehabbed apartments complete with kitchenettes and with them, more stable residents and higher rents.

As for Goldblatt�s � what to make of this triangular mass of brick and glass? It stands here waiting, bricked and boarded, plastered with painted-over posters that proclaimed last month�s concerts. Two stone marker announce �Goldblatt Brothers� at the main entrance and a sign still warns visitors that shoplifting is a crime. But a look inside reveals there is nothing to shoplift but broken glass and fallen beams; a fire (presumably set a vandal) destroyed a section of the buildings earlier this year.

Perhaps the building represents the good and bad of capitalism, the bright colors of prosperity that fade with time, giving rise to decay. In the urban decay of Uptown came the seeds of rejuvenation, a home for new immigrants to eke out a living, but also a hotbed of crime, a place where those who did not fit elsewhere in the city, the poor, the homeless, the drug-addicted from around the city, were dropped off and forgotten.

Now they would let the pendulum swing back, the clock reset, the chipped old �Goldblatt�s� morph into a shiny new �Borders� and history be paved over like it never happened. Why can�t we ever find a happy medium in a neighborhood, why must we always move up or down, locked in a tug-of-war between rich and poor? Why must we choose between a fire trap and a combination condominium/chain store, between big money and no money?

Some have a mind to say, get lost, big money, Uptown won�t be pushed around, the big money left and the poor came in. Now the poor won�t be pushed back out because the big money is looking for new real estate. Uptown doesn�t need to become a new Lincoln Park, it can get along fine without a chain bookstore and condos, what residents here need are their own businesses and low-cost housing. Only nobody�s offered to fix up the building for independent stores and low-income housing; Joseph Freed�s proposed this project because it will make him money.

Trying to stop gentrification in a neighborhood can feel like trying to stop a storm � you can only brace yourself, make provisions and try to limit the damage. It doesn�t have to be, though, if you can find a happy medium between rich and poor; if you can, say, let the poor enjoy the fruits of prosperity by preserving cheap housing. Some are trying to do that here, pushing for more low-income housing than the eight $155,000 �affordable� housing units that Freed proposes for Goldblatt�s.

But if the owner of the Book Box can handle Borders coming in, then I guess I can. No sense in preserving this old building the way it is, a monument to past prosperity and current decay. Only, I hope that by putting on a shiny new face, it doesn�t become a monument of another sort, to the few who remember � a reminder of the poor who were let into to Uptown because the money had gone, and then were sent away again when the money decided it was ready to return.

previous - next