And for the reason Butchertown got its name, it surely was not for the $10B multi-national corporation that currently slaughters 10,000 pigs a day within neighborhood limits. This historic neighborhood significantly outdates the company’s earliest traceable roots. Instead, it was named for the dozens of German immigrants that operated butcher shops in their backyards 100 years prior. Unfortunately, the very word “Butchertown” conjures—not the neighborhoods history or heritage—but thoughts of grotesque odors spewing from the Swift plants rendering operations.

And yet our housing values remain strong. With each year, more and more housing units are added and previously unlivable houses are restored. People want to live downtown, and more and more people are calling Butchertown—with the wide array of housing with everything from low-cost dwellings to luxurious ones—home. Businesses, too, move here.

It’s foolish to suggest we should tolerate grotesque odors and irresponsible manufacturing because of our neighborhood’s name. 200 years ago, blood from our earliest butcher shops flowed to a creek where residents collected fat in the winter to make candles. 150 years later, disgusting and unhealthy odors spewing from the plant’s operations were considered an acceptable consequence of doing business. Time has, and will continue to, prove spillover effects from polluting and irresponsible industry to be unacceptable, and I can’t imagine Swift will have a future in Butchertown unless they choose to reduce their spillover effects on the environment. It is entirely up to them.

—

I’m not responding to the tax issue because it is irrelevant, other than to say that for the last 20 years the city and plant have been negotiating a move to a more suitable location within the city limits that would save both jobs and the tax-base.

It’s all well and good to get niche manufacturing making things Yuppies will pay a premium to buy “locally” … , but I don’t see how this addresses more macroeconomic gaps in industrial capability such as the high strength steel needed for the Bay Bridge or persistent balance of trade deficits.

What you’re seeing is the cycle of import replacement starting in its earliest stages.

The yuppie economy is not going to help our macroindustrial processes. Not yet.

The high-value goods serve a market that is in a reaction to the factory-and-Wal-Mart model that is the modern consumer economy. The question is what will happen to it in 25 years — the next generation.

The initial reaction is a middle finger to mass marketing and mass consumption. So, the enterprises are every bit as solipsistic as they are idealistic.

What happens as time goes on? Very few of the businesses will end up becoming institutions that can essentially run off their legend. The next category is where the businesses rode a fad or a demographic niche that ran dry. The third category is reinvention and repurposing.

This is where a different party takes over the business and decides to run it his or her own way. While the previous owner may not have wanted to become a mass-market icon, the new owners realize what a gold mine they have.

In this case, growth requires the transfer of lower-value functions to lower-value environments. Previously, this had been done in the hinterlands near a major city. Now, the theory is, lower-value processes can be produced anywhere in the world.

This is the process where a local market item can become the component of macroeconomic policy.

The somewhat comedic part about the above posts was the incapability of the supplier to build the product. I have a feeling that this happens A LOT with offshore companies.

You almost made it. You were on message about the variance being the issue – right up until the point where you called the plant a “corporate menace”.

Again, there’s a reason that neighborhood is called Butchertown – and it ain’t the corner meat market.

By the way, that plant is important in a way you might not understand. Like most city-county mergers, Louisville has the concept of an urban service district. So only taxable property inside the old city limits goes to pay for some services there. If that plant moves out the “county”, there’s a net tax base loss to the urban core – and that matters to residential tax bills.

When I first moved to Lincoln Park in 1992, only the area east of Racine was high dollar value property. The explosion of high rend residential and retail in proximity to the Goose Island corridor is of recent origin. One would think that before buying a million dollar home, one might do some due diligence in the area one is moving. It’s like saying you didn’t know the L was right behind your house. All of these businesses were there long before most of the residents. Remember, it was not long ago that North Ave. and the bridge would be the place to go to grab a hooker off the street.

Perhaps with enough incentives, you could get the companies relocated (no net job creation). But plenty of places have even outright folded.

Vienna Beef at one point threatened to simply close up shop if a new housing project were approve near them.

James Mellon, I don’t want to suggest that the type of products I blogged about are the only things we can manufacture. Germany and Japan show that relatively high cost industrial nations can make a range of things successfully. Obviously, they’ve got their own deindustrialized zones and I won’t say focusing on manufacturing is a Rust Belt turnaround strategy or anything.

Your mention of steel mills interesting. There are heavy industrial zones in America, but when people want to put things in them, they are, in fact opposed. That’s actually the anti-industrial mindset I’m talking about.

One thing that always bothers me is the fact that the few times the President,Congress, or any politician ,seems to meet with someone from the industrial sector ,it usually is someone like the auto exectutives .Excuse me for being blunt , but these guys helped run their companies into the ground.They are failures.

Just for once i would like to see Congress and/or the President meet small scale manufacureres that still make things in America .And WITHOUT taxpayer handouts! I would like for the politicians to ask the manufacurers how they are able to keep production in America.And what could be done to keep more production in America.They could also ask them what their biggest problems are. And what the government [whether National,State or local] could do to help .Or how it could keep out of the way.After all, these small scale company owners are the real experts on these things.

My point is that our politicians should listen to people that actually DO succeed, instead of big companies that have lawers for CEO’S and who alway seem to be looking for a handout from the taxpayers.

I also wish that some of our mayors would talk to these small businessmen/women. Instead of just talking to big campaign contributers and/or the big companies that only inhabit the downtown areas, and not the actuall neighborhoods.

Many people say that it is impossible for things to be made in America nowdays.Yet i use an “Eastwing” hammer everyday that is made in America. And the chisel that i sometime use was actually made in Baltimore! It was made by a small company called “Baltimore Toolworks”. I would more curious to hear what that company owner had to say than one of the auto exectutive.

I simply wish that our politicians would listen to some of the SUCCESFUL company owners instead of just the failures.

On the other hand; if you’ve ever taken one of the marvelous Chicago Architectural Foundation river boat tours, you know that they travel north to Chicago Avenue then turn around and head back south. The reason is that from that point on, you have to be interested in 19th century industries to continue. This is not so much case for Goose Island which has managed to attract “clean” businesses but once you are north of North Avenue, a river cruise would provide only the back sides of big box retailers and the horrors of a steel recycling business. Until you are north of Armitage a river cruise should issue gas masks and a sleep mask to save your finer senses.

It ain’t pretty, visually or otherwise.

The Lincoln Park area of Chicago is one of the most exclusive and expensive neighborhoods in the country. A single family house will cost you 7 or 8 figures, a small condo, maybe, $250,000. And if you live, as I did, what you get for your money is a next-door mini-mill (Finkl Steel) and a leather tannery. Finkl Steel is a pretty quiet place but it’s input needs to be shredded and this shredding provides noisy explosions and fine steel filings that drift throughout the area. You tend to keep the windows closed so this debris doesn’t filter in but also to keep the odor of the tannery out. I wish I could bottle the smell of a tannery so you could appreciate how horrible it is.

And why? Finkl Steel was bought by a Canadian company (?) and will be relocating their facility to a one-time industrial area on the south side and will, presumably, sell their acreage on the north side. As far as I can tell, the metal recycling facility will remain where it is, on a half mile stretch of the Chicago River from North Avenue to Armitage.

Chicago has hundreds of acres of ex-industrial, read brown field sites, Finkl Steel is moving there, with I’m sure, many incentives from the city.

Why not move the tannery? Why not move the metal recycling facility to where it’s most needed?

As a final note, the biggest effect of the north side PMD’s (except for Goose Island) is that the one-time industrial buildings have not been converted to residential lofts (which was the great fear at the time) but have been either adapted for retail use or torn down to provide space for retail use.

I hope I don’t come off as judgmental about urban industrial policy — if I do I apologize. I only wish to report what I see and have seen about me.