Ye Olde Staging Point

Hyde Park can't seem to figure out its own identity. I have given thought over the years as to why Hyde Park just can't seem to clean up its act, and not surprisingly, I have no real answers. But my personal opinion is that much of Hyde Park's difficulties are rooted in a very poorly managed business environment.

There is a lot of money in Hyde Park. The University (Hyde Park's main feature) and the people it has transplanted into Hyde Park bring a lot of wealth with them. The University Hospital is a major, well-respected place of medicine. The University itself represents a near-captive audience of thousands of students with money to spend. But despite the potential pool of wealth it has in its midst, Hyde Park is not at all set up to benefit from that wealth. There is nowhere in Hyde Park to spend it.

There are businesses, of course. Some of them are quite respectable and seem to be doing well. But the vast majority of businesses on 53rd St. are simply unappealing to the average citizen. I can't remember ever stepping foot in 95% of the businesses in Hyde Park because they either a) had no relevance to my lifestyle, b) featured outrageous prices and horrible customer service due to a lack of competition, or c) didn't sell the sorts of basic items that I needed.

You can buy large quanitites of alcohol from any of the several liquor stores on 53rd Street. You can buy bedding from one of the two (!) adjacent mattress stores. You can buy all sorts of weight-loss products from the fitness store. You can cash your payday check in advance at the "Cash Advance" place. There are plenty of businesses on 53rd St. But what if you want to buy normal, everyday clothes? Or a bookshelf? Or silverware? Or any of a hundred other everyday items that people actually need? To get those items, you have to leave Hyde Park--taking your money out of the neighborhood where it'd do the most good, and investing it somewhere else in Chicago.

Hyde Park wants to be its own little self-sufficient community (and that would be exciting to see!), but it doesn't have the "normal" businesses needed to actually support one. The "normal" businesses that exist in Hyde Park, such as the local grocery store, are poster children for what happens when one business has a monopoly on goods in the area: super high prices, atrocious customer service, and the lowest quality they can get away with. After a few months of buying past-the-expiration-date milk for twice its actual value, the prospect of driving to Cicero to shop at the Sam's Club out there started to look more and more attractive to me. And while I was out there, I could stop in the Cicero Mall and buy the winter jacket that wasn't available in Hyde Park, and the set of dishtowels that wasn't available in Hyde Park, and the... you get the idea. The local movie theater--the only movie theater for miles--was so run-down that it went out of business. How does a movie theater next to a huge, wealthy American university, in a neighborhood utterly devoid of other weekend entertainment, go out of business? Were they even trying?

I'm not putting down the value of having quirky, fringe businesses; they are part of what gives Hyde Park its character, and I wouldn't want to see them go. But what Hyde Park needs is to foster a more mainstream business environment, or it will continue to see all that wealth diverted into other parts of Chicago. We don't need Hyde Park to be overrun by chain stores, but the presence of a Target or similar store in the area would do wonders for meeting local "basic needs" without impinging on the territory of the neighbordhood's quirkier businesses--and it would mean people could keep their money in Hyde Park without the need to go elsewhere. The Office Depot that just went into Hyde Park is a great step in the right direction--it's not unfairly competing with the existing local businesses, which don't sell anything that Office Depot does; but suddenly we can buy furniture, electronic equipment and computers, and office supplies in Hyde Park whereas previously we had to take the Metra downtown to do so.

I realize this has taken the form of a rant, and a fairly uninformed rant at that. But Hyde Park has been stagnating for far too long, and pouring more money into preserving its local businesses has not yielded any appreciable results. The storefronts are just as dingy and empty as ever; the range of business types is just as narrow as ever; and lack of competition continues to destroy the integrity and quality of those stores that do sell basic goods such as food and groceries. What is needed are incentive programs to encourage outside businesses, big or small, to lay down roots in the neighborhood; and careful studies about what sorts of businesses are most needed. In what areas would competition be healthiest? What basic commodities are unavailable in Hyde Park, and what sorts of businesses could best provide them? There is a lot of wealth in Hyde Park just waiting to be tapped, and when it is, Hyde Park stands to really shine as a cultural center--and a wonderfully diverse culture at that. Here's hoping that the spirit of capitalism can restore some vigor to this "blighted" region.