Chicago trying to figure how to attract as much retail opportunity as possible

Where does Chicago go shopping?

Leaving the South Side

There’s time when it appears we don’t have much of a clue. As much of it may well depend upon which demographic we happen to have been born into – and whether retailers are all that anxious to have our business.

A PAIR OF stories in the news of late would impact the ability of us to purchase the goods that enable us to get through our lives.

For some of us, that has now become something we do on the Internet from our homes, with items shipped to our homes (or what other address they happen to find most convenient).

While others of us still prefer the concept of a physical store to shop at. Which is why interest is being paid to municipal government trying to figure out how to get Target to back of off its intensions to close two of its stores in South Side neighborhoods.

Specifically in the Morgan Park and Chatham neighborhoods, both of which are majority African-American populations. Which has some people convinced that Target is dumping those locations because they’re not interested in selling goods to black people.

AFTER ALL, IT’S not a cutback by the retailer whose fanatics like to mockingly think of it as a French-like outlet. Because Target has plans to open new stores in the Rogers Park and Logan Square neighborhoods. Along with various other locations throughout the suburbs.

But none of those are majority non-Anglo like the locations of the two stores that are to be closed.

Target supporters try to argue that the retailer will still have South Side locations. Although you have to admit, the Hyde Park neighborhood is noted most for being so unlike the rest of the South Side in so many ways – including in its racial composition.

Putting Chicago off to the side

I won’t be surprised if Target decides to merely ride it out, and figure they don’t have to do anything to change their stance on store locations.

SO IT MIGHT be in vain the city’s efforts to offer millions of dollars in tax increment finance benefits – which allow the property taxes the company pays to be put into a special fund by which they could get it back to pay for future improvements.

It might not be enough to sway Target officials, who likely will tolerate the racial rhetoric of the next few months that claims the retailer is deliberately snubbing people based on race.

Even though I’m sure they’ll claim it’s mere demographics – even though I often wonder if such talk is merely a way of covering up a desire to be more selective about how they do business with.

Not that Target is the only retail issue that has city officials concerned. There also are concerns over the second corporate headquarters that Amazon.com wants to have beyond Seattle, Wash.

THE REPORTER RUMOR mill of recent weeks says that Amazon is about to choose a site – and it ain’t Chicago.

Supposedly, Amazon is interested in the Virginia-based suburbs of Washington, D.C., and the borough of Queens in New York. Which some will try to say means they want to be in D.C. and Noo Yawk. Although it’s really more like they want to be on the fringes of those two major cities where they can escape the grittier aspects of urban life.

Which might well include people of the same types of economic demographics that Target is trying to avoid by pulling their stores out of Morgan Park and Gresham.

The key to comprehending businesses and where they choose to locate is that they usually pick locations where their self-interest is fulfilled, with the underlying idea being that the day will eventually come when their self-interests are better served elsewhere. Meaning even if Amazon.com were to pick Chicago, it’s likely the day would come when they’d decide to move elsewhere.

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Illinois is normal to the United States, and not just because of Normal, Ill.

Some people want to quantify everything with numbers, and that has led the FiveThirtyEight.com website to do some mathematics comparing the populations of various groupings to see how they compare to the United States as a whole.

Illinois a little of everything, just like U.S.

How representative are they of the nation? Do they truly deserve to be thought of as being just like us?

FOR WHAT IT’S worth, the Chicago metropolitan area (which by their definition stretches north to Kenosha, Wis., and east to Gary, Ind.) is the seventh most like the U.S. city in the nation.

Also, Illinois is the state most like the United States as a whole. We’re what this country is all about.

Personally, I don’t find this unusual one bit.

For the fact is that Illinois is a place consisting of so many different types of people that it is a wonder we can seriously think of ourselves as a single state. And Chicago truly is the kind of place that has a little bit of everybody.

THE FACT IS there is no “typical” American, and our populations reveal that all too well.

Considering there are times when I think northern Illinois communities would be more comfortable as a part of Wisconsin, while central Illinois municipalities might well think of either Indiana or Iowa as a better fit.

Unless they happen to live near East St. Louis, in which case they align with Missouri.

And when it comes to the 30 or so southernmost counties of the state, Little Egypt probably really does think more highly of Kentucky and wonder how their home state isn’t a part of Dixie.

OF COURSE, those in metro Chicago often joke about how we’d be a better state if we didn’t have to carry all those other rubes who probably wish they were a part of some other state.

From Chicago to Cairo, ...

 We don’t have a common identity in Illinois like they do in, say, Texas.

Just like we don’t have a common identity for our nation. We are a collection of regions, each with their own character. We manage to come together to amass a single nation – but that doesn’t mean any single region is willing to subvert itself to the character of the whole.

So Illinois’ split really does make us a microcosm of the nation as a whole. We have a little bit of everybody that makes up the nation.

HECK, THE NEW York Times came up with a study of how the 50 states should be done away with and replaced by seven regions – which would unite those of similar character.

As it is, Illinois would be split in that study into three regions – Great Lakes, Great Plains and the Southeast Manufacturing Belt.

Our Chicago would be in a “state” with Detroit, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Kansas City and Minneapolis.

Which I’m sure some would say have more in common than being in a state with Rockford, the Quad Cities and Marion.

NOW I’M NOT calling for any split like this. Personally, I always found the distinct regions that felt like separate places in and of themselves as being what made Illinois a unique place.

I enjoy sharing a boundary with a place like Champaign or Bloomington (where I went to college), or even the afore-mentioned town of Normal (which is a nice place to visit, but with 85.1 percent white people living there is not the norm for the United States).

 

... we have quite the variety in Illinois

Besides, I found it interesting to see that while Illinois was the state most like the nation as a whole, Indiana was a place third-most like what the U.S. was like back in the 1950s.

We in Illinois have progressed while our Hoosier neighbors haven’t. Which may be why no amount of political rhetoric about the superiority of Indiana will ever be believable.

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