By Barry Pearce

Trying to keep up with new construction projects in the South Loop is a little like trying to count stars in the night sky, only with each passing year, there's less and less dark empty space between the bright points south of Van Buren. After years of gradual growth, the South Loop is casting off the last vestiges of a dingy, industrial past and beginning to glow with the light of a diverse, livable neighborhood.

The area, bounded roughly by the lake, the river, Van Buren and Cermak, has long had the city's greatest cultural attractions - the Art Institute, the Museum Campus, the Harold Washington Library, Soldier Field, Grant Park…But for years, residential development occurred in isolated bursts that seemed like they might never coalesce or take full advantage of that impressive institutional base.

It's only in the last couple of years that the neighborhood has hit something like critical mass. For some, the watershed was marked by the opening of a Starbucks on Roosevelt Road - the green light for gentrification in the eyes of many - while for others, the neighboring Jewel grocery store signaled the birth of a real neighborhood.

Now it's hard to keep up with the commercial development.

A new Target has opened at 1154 S. Clark, and State Place, a mixed-use project finishing construction at 11th and State, includes a full-service Walgreens, a 26,000-square-foot Multiplex Clubs health club with spa services and a Charter One Bank - all part of the 65,000-square-foot Shops at State Place. The block-long development also includes 243 condos in a 24-story tower and three mid-rise buildings above the retail.

Pointe 1900, another mixed-use project, at 1900 S. State, includes 38,000 square feet ground-floor commercial, including Bank One, Subway Sandwiches, a nail spa, a dry cleaner, Athletico and Palaggi's, an Italian restaurant and café. A number of other new residential developments include at least small retail components, and other commercial ventures are opening in existing space, such as a Potbelly Sandwich Works and a new wine shop, both planned for Printers Row.

The new shops finally are starting to provide the goods and services taken for granted in most city neighborhoods, but just as important, they're building foot traffic and friendly facades and street life - the milieu of a neighborhood and not that of an ersatz collection of bunker-like townhouse and condo developments.

Now, enough restaurants have opened that the South Loop actually is becoming a destination for diners from other parts. The stock of Printers Row establishments - Hackney's, SRO, Bar Louie, Trattoria Caterina and others - has been steadily augmented by spots throughout the neighborhood.

The Chicago Firehouse Restaurant, built in a renovated firehouse at 1401 S. Michigan, has gained neighborhood fans with its steaks, seafood and charm. Owner Matt O'Malley recently opened Grace O'Malley's, a cozy spot serving pub food, at 1416 S. Michigan, and the Wabash Tap, an informal restaurant and bar with live music on weekends, at 1152 S. Wabash.

The Chicago Firehouse Restaurant, built in a renovated firehouse at 1401 S. Michigan, has gained neighborhood fans with its steaks, seafood and charm. Owner Matt O'Malley recently opened Grace O'Malley's, a cozy spot serving pub food, at 1416 S. Michigan, and the Wabash Tap, an informal restaurant and bar with live music on weekends, at 1152 S. Wabash.

Restaurateur Jerry Kleiner is starting to do for the urban mystique of South Wabash what he and partner Howard Davis did for the former packing and produce houses of West Randolph. In addition to Gioco, a regional Italian restaurant at 1312 S. Wabash, he has opened Opera, a modern Chinese restaurant with "the color and feel" of the Chinese opera, and Saiko, which serves sushi, steaks and other Japanese dishes with French and American twists - all on the same block.

Other new restaurants include South City Tavern, 1530 S. State; Orange on Harrison, 75 W. Harrison; Room 12, 1152 S. Wabash; the Butcher's Dog, 649 S. Clark; and Oysy, 888 S. Michigan.

Like new retail, the restaurants are building foot traffic and giving pedestrians something to look at besides blank walls, fast food joints and surface parking lots. But the main ingredient in foot traffic is feet, which is why the most important development in the South Loop continues to be residential. Nearly every block these days hosts a construction crane, a sign touting new homes for sale or a condo building that didn't exist last year.

At press time, New Homes counted more than 30 new residential developments underway, totaling more than 4,500 housing units marketed or under construction in the neighborhood, and many more are on the drawing board. The city's Central Area Plan projects that 70 percent of residential growth downtown between now and 2020 will occur in the greater South Loop.

Too much density is a problem in many city neighborhoods, especially downtown, but for years, the South Loop suffered from too little. Early residential projects there often were low-density developments of townhouses and single-family homes, which did little to liven up the area's sparse streets. However, as property values and comfort levels have grown, developers increasingly have turned to highrise construction, which is bringing enough population to support new amenities.

The pace of building is dizzying in Chicago's fastest growing neighborhood.

Sales, at least at many projects, appear to be moving at a brisk pace. More than 500 potential home buyers showed up recently at a grand opening for the Columbian, a 46-story tower with 220 condos priced from the mid-$200s to $1.5 million and marketed by Equity Marketing Services, at Michigan and Roosevelt. Equity also hit a homerun with Metropolitan Tower, taking 100 deposits in the project's first weekend. Buyers have flocked like moths to the famous blue light atop the former Britannica Center office building as Metropolitan Properties converts the classic art deco structure into 245 condos at 310 S. Michigan.

Neighborhood boosters can say with all seriousness, if you haven't been to the South Loop in six months, you haven't been to the South Loop.

A diverse community

So, who are all these people snapping up new homes in the South Loop?

The question may seem simple, but it's not an easy one to answer. The South Loop is the best place to be if you're young and single, the young singles say, because if it's not where the action is, it's close and comparatively affordable. Young parents think it's a great place to start a family, and empty nesters tell you it's the place to go after you've raised one.

Students and stockbrokers, stay-at-home moms and retirees. Straight, gay, married, single. African American, Asian American, white. Among the neighborhood faithful, wildly different people all seem to feel that the South Loop was tailor made for them, and in a sense, they're all right.

Diversity is important to the highly diverse crowd that lives in the South Loop, though few mention it without prompting. Heterogeneity is a fact of life here perhaps more than anywhere else in Chicago, and the mostly middle-class residents are as unselfconscious about it as they are appreciative.

This is literally a new neighborhood. Not an old one rediscovered, but carved whole cloth from industrial loft buildings, old railroad land, junkyards and parking lots. Starting from scratch wasn't easy, but it has allowed the city to plan for growth and put a solid new infrastructure in place. In the same way, an unusual social infrastructure has emerged, one that is solidly middle-class, diverse and down to earth. The South Loop's status as a "new neighborhood," careful attention from the city and a location that allows the South Loop to identify with both the South Side and downtown have combined to create a place unlike any other in the city.

Prices have been rising in the South Loop, but the neighborhood still offers some comparatively affordable units as well as a stock of larger homes that attracts families.

June Gin grew up in Chinatown, which these days, is considered just outside the South Loop. Her husband, Bruce, is from Elk Grove Village and after they married 18 years ago, they lived first in Chinatown and then for more than a dozen years, in the Near Southwest neighborhood of Bridgeport.When two sons came along - one now four and a half and the other nearly three - their1,600-square-foot house suddenly felt cramped.

South Siders as a rule are suspicious of the North Side, and North Siders attach as much reality to the South Side as they do to Mandalay. Somehow both can feel comfortable in the South Loop: North Siders perhaps because they consider it a quiet corner of downtown, and South Siders because they see it as an extension of the South Side, a spot with some of the Near North Side's advantages and none of its snobbery.

In some ways, Gin is surprised to find herself in the city with two children. She always thought she'd raise her family in the suburbs. But she says, the public schools have improved (she likes the new teaching academy on Cermak, which includes a working grade school, a pre-school, daycare and a community center) and there are private schools nearby.

"I grew up in the city, so I can appreciate the benefits of having a diverse neighborhood and for my kids to have friends who are diverse," Gin says, noting that there should be plenty of children for them to play with. "There are always a ton of mothers with strollers when you walk down Indiana."

The neighborhood also is home to plenty of couples who packed away their strollers years ago. Vince Hartigan and his wife, Kitty, moved to the South Loop after their youngest daughter went off to college. They'd raised a family in Lake Forest and were ready for a change.

"In the '80s a lot of yuppies started to move into Lake Forest," says Hartigan, a retail stockbroker with Salomon Smith Barney. "There was a lot of wealth and all the toys, and we decided to move."

Diversity was key for Steve Scott and his partner as well. Scott, 52, is an associate producer at the Goodman Theatre, and his partner works as an actor and teaches at Roosevelt University.

"We decided we wanted to be closer to downtown and have more of an urban lifestyle," says Scott, who lives in Folio Square, a loft conversion in Printers Row. "We both moved to Chicago because we wanted to be in the city. We found the South Loop to be interesting and varied and very convenient, and at that point, very affordable."

They'd lived in Lakeview too, but he likes the fact that this is a new neighborhood. The South Loop, he says, has grown naturally into a diverse community, a fact on which few residents dwell.

"That's one thing that really appealed to us," Scott says. "In terms of race, age, ethnicity, a fairly sizable gay community interspersed, it seemed in many ways the perfect city community: very heterogeneous and diverse in the right way, unselfconsciously."

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