On the Market

A Pre-Fire Farmhouse in Lincoln Park

List Price: $1,574,900
The Property: Just off the thriving Armitage Avenue shopping strip, on a Lincoln Park street filled with homes from different eras, stands a house that watched them all arrive. Built in 1861 as the farmhouse for a truck farm that delivered its produce into Chicago, the house still has several of its original elements...

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Top 5 Things to Do This Week

On your agenda: The Seldoms dance their way through Harris Theater … a Southern-style tragedy strikes Stage 773 … CSO’s composers in residence premiere works inspired by a farm, Fermilab, and Franz Schubert … plus, what the Chicago Dramatists resident playwright and actor-about-town Jon Steinhagen is doing this weekend

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More Chicago Ward Mapping and Other Political Reads

The possibility that a lawsuit could be filed over the recent ward remapping of the city is still in play. But not everyone's dissatisfied: a small, active Polish coalition made significant gains on the northwest side.

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CME Turns Down City Money, and the TIF Debate Continues

The CME Group, fresh off its tax-break legislative victory, declined a TIF deal that originated in the Daley administration and would have given them $15 million. And with that, another round of tax increment finance talk kicks off.

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Chicago Ward Remap: A Lawsuit Waiting to Happen?

The Latino community blasts Rahm Emanuel and the City Council for approving a ward remap that underrepresents minority constituents.

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Owners of Algonquin’s Montarra to Open Terra in Evanston

Earth to Evanston
Here’s the dirt on Terra, scheduled to land in three weeks or so...

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RIP Don Cornelius, "Soul Train" Host

The creator of television's longest-running nationally-syndicated show is a Chicago broadcasting legend, but he had to head for Hollywood for "Soul Train" to become what it was. Plus: James Brown, David Bowie, and Gladys Knight on the Soul Train stage.

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Housing Bulletin

Condo Swaps in Itasca

A little over three years after they downsized from a house in Elmhurst to a condo in Itasca, Phil and Connie Mangano are getting ready to move to another new condo—without spending a dollar. With just seven of 70 condos sold at Two Itasca Place, its developer, Don Morris, is converting the building into apartments and moving the Manganos and other buyers there into nearly identical condos next door at One Itasca Place...

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Chicago: Less Segregated, Still Really Segregated

Harvard sociologist Edward Glaeser, author of "The Triumph of the City," notes another civic triumph: declining segregation nationwide. But one city's triumph is another's failure.

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Randolph Street Market Holds Inaugural Winter Bazaar

Season Premiere
Randolph Street Market (randolphstreetmarket.com) kicks off its 2012 season early with the inaugural Wonderful Winter Market on Saturday, February 4 and Sunday, February 5 at Beaux Arts Plumbers Hall (1340 W. Washington St.)...

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Rodkin on Why Sellers Ignore Offers

Readers ask questions, and our real estate expert answers. This week, a reader named Tom from the West Loop asks why a seller would ignore a reasonable offer from a potential homebuyer.

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Chicago's Warm Winter Weather and Global Warming

Does global warming have anything to do with the fact that Chicago might break a January record for high temperatures today? Yes, probably, and probably not. It depends on what you're asking, and whom.

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What to Do This Weekend: Explore Leelanau Peninsula’s Wine Trail

Despite what the greeting card industry would have you believe, there’s no reason to wait for Valentine’s Day to indulge in a weekend of passion. This weekend (February 3 through 5), the Leelanau Peninsula in Northern Michigan hosts the Taste the Passion wine tour, at annual showcase for local vintages from the same parallel as the renowned wine growing regions of France’s Rhone Valley and Italy’s Piedmont region...

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Saul Alinsky, Satanist, and Mitt Romney's Radical Protest Past

Is the community organizer's name intoned by Newt Gingrich to exploit anti-Semitism? No, just anti-Satanism, something we can all get behind. It's just the latest smoke from the embers of the culture wars.

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A Very Important Graph About Illinois's Budget Crisis

The state continues to labor under budget deficits, debt service, and unpaid bills extending far off into the future. And the drivers of those debts are increasingly difficult to rein in.

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Weekend Photos: Frank “Big Hurt” Thomas @ Public House

What would America's pastime be without beer? It was only a matter of time before a baseball legend would slap his nickname on some tall boys, and that legend is former White Sox slugger Frank “Big Hurt” Thomas...

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