The Slow Death of Chicago Factories

Another very notable Chicago industrial relic, Gutmann Leather Co., is shutting its doors. North Siders might recognize the tannery (shown above in a photograph I took in 1998) as the oddly vertical building which sits just west of the Webster Place Theater, right on the Chicago River. The North Branch of the river was once lined with tanneries which were supplied with animal hides from the great slaughterhouses of the South Side, but Gutmann's demise now leaves just one, the much less imposing Norween Leather Co. on Elston Avenue.

Crain's Chicago Business, which first reported the news two weeks ago, is now reacting to the closing of Gutmann and the pending relocation of the nearby Finkl steel plant with barely concealed glee, calling for the industrial sites to be redeveloped into -- you guessed it -- more retail stores and condominiums. To make this possible, Crain's is calling for the end of the Clybourn Corridor planned manufacturing district (or "PMD") in which properties are restricted to industrial uses, in the city's very admirable goal of keeping good-paying blue-collar manufacturing jobs in the area. In making their argument, the magazine cites the declining number of factory jobs in the PMD (from 1,146 in 1998 to 336 in 2004) as evidence of the district's supposed irrelevance, though I'd argue that an entire block of retail establishments along that stretch of Clybourn probably don't employ any more than 336 people in total -- and I guarantee those aren't good-paying union jobs, either.

The last thing the Near North Side, and the Clybourn and Elston corridors in particular, needs is more retail and condo development. The corridor areas were already ridiculously congested six years ago, when my wife and I left the city for the suburbs, and it's undoubtedly grown much worse since then. A touch of sanity needs to be maintained on the subject of Chicago's economic development, to maintain both the quality of life of area residents and good opportunities for blue-collar workers. It's not only possible to have both, but also good for everyone involved.