City lets Gibsons expand sidewalk cafe — by narrowing the street
BY CHRIS FUSCO AND TIM NOVAK Staff Reporters cfusco@suntimes.com May 28, 2012 12:38AM
A woman walks her dog on a recently added sidewalk next to Gibsons Bar and Restaurant, 1028 N. Rush St., Tuesday, May 22, 2012, in Chicago. | John J. Kim~Sun-Times
Article Extras
Maps
Updated: July 3, 2012 9:08AM
T he sidewalk wasn’t wide enough to accommodate everyone.
So, in warmer weather, the 11-foot-wide patch of concrete on the north side of Gibsons Bar & Steakhouse — the Rush Street-area restaurant that’s popular with politicians, professional athletes and other celebrities — turned into an obstacle course. Moms with strollers, dog-walkers and other pedestrians had to avoid tables and chairs, as well as diners, waiters and busboys, as they walked by. The local alderman, Brendan Reilly (42nd), wasn’t happy. So Gibsons owner Steve Lombardo offered a solution: Widen the sidewalk. “Steve Lombardo of Gibsons is proposing to extend his sidewalk into Bellevue and have use of the public way. At their expense, of course,” Reilly’s staff said in an email last year to a city transportation engineer. That would mean narrowing Bellevue Place — a two-way street — from 36 feet wide to 30 feet wide between Rush and State streets. That would ease the hassle for pedestrians — and also give Gibsons more room for outdoor tables on city-owned property. Not such a good idea, Gabe Klein, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s transportation commissioner, told Reilly in a letter opposing Gibsons’ plans. Narrowing the street, Klein wrote, could create traffic problems for people living in a nearby condo building and make it harder for vehicles to pull over to make deliveries without getting in the way of traffic. That was last June. By Sept. 28, though, the position of Klein’s Chicago Department of Transportation had changed.
Gibsons had help in negotiating with City Hall. It hired zoning lawyer Jack George, a law partner of Michael Daley, former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s brother. Reilly asked Gibsons to notify nearby condo owners about the project, on which McHugh Construction broke ground in March. But that didn’t happen, prompting complaints. “The only notification we got was construction workers on the street,” says Douglas Switzer, an architect who lives just east of Gibsons on Bellevue. Switzer says he would have liked to offer his ideas about the project but met with Gibsons’ owners only after construction began. They apologized for the oversight, Switzer says. “Ask for forgiveness instead of permission,” says Switzer. Lombardo didn’t return calls seeking comment. Today, his restaurant has a bigger outdoor area to serve customers and to help it compete with Tavern on Rush and other nearby restaurants that have big outdoor-seating areas. Reilly has gotten nearly $44,000 in contributions from Gibsons but says that had nothing to do with him ultimately supporting the project.
