Developers are proposing adaptive reuse of the historic former Ludlow Typography Company building at 2032 N. Clybourn Ave. [Department of Planning and Development]

A mixed-use campus in East Garfield Park and a residential adaptive reuse planned near the future site of Lincoln Yards are set to headline Thursday’s meeting of the Chicago Plan Commission.

Brewpubs like Goose Island in the Kinzie Industrial Corridor will be able to set up outdoor patio seating under an ordinance set for City Council approval. [Facebook/Goose Island]

Chicago’s proliferation of outdoor restaurant patios will be free to extend into the industrial districts of the city’s Near West and Northwest Side under a rule change set for final approval on Wednesday.

Ald. James M. Gardiner (45) reacts at a City Council meeting where alderpeople voted on the 2022 budget, on Oct. 27, 2021. [Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago]

The city’s ethics board is calling for harsher punishments for alderpeople who violate the council’s code of conduct after Ald. Jim Gardiner (45) allegedly retaliated against constituents who criticized him.

The zoning amendment for the lot near Argyle Street and Long Avenue kills the proposed project by developer American Heritage, which was first introduced in 2014. [provided]

A proposal to bring a 48-unit Northwest Side apartment complex that was already on life support is now officially dead after Ald. Jim Gardiner (45) downzoned a vacant Jefferson Park lot this week, undoing a 2016 zoning decision championed by his predecessor.

The City Council Committee on Finance approved nearly $3 million in police-related settlements on Monday, including a $2 million payout related to a woman killed in a high-speed chase in 2018. [UnSplash/Scott Rodgerson]

A City Council committee advanced a $2 million payout on Monday to settle a lawsuit tied to a 2018 high-speed police chase that ended in a woman’s death. But multiple aldermen resisted the deal in the latest sign of the City Council’s growing restlessness with city attorneys over misconduct lawsuits.

A proposed ordinance will allow bar owners to invite pets inside their businesses — but only if they do not serve food. [Lo Rez Brewing/Archie's Rockwell Tavern]

City rules will allow dog owners to bring their companions into some Chicago bars under an ordinance that advanced out of a City Council committee on Monday.

A rendering of the LeClaire Courts redevelopment plan proposed by the Chicago Housing Authority and two private development firms [Department of Planning and Development]

A years-in-the-making plan to build 725 new homes and a network of businesses on the former Southwest Side site of the LeClaire Courts public housing complex is set to take one step closer to reality on Tuesday.

From left: Chicago Police Department Deputy Chief Larry Snelling, ShotSpotter CEO Ralph Clark and Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35) during a City Council committee hearing on Friday.

The ShotSpotter gunshot detection technology has “exceeded” the requirements laid out in a multi-year contract with Chicago, city officials said Friday. But without a process to vet how often the technology is leading police astray, multiple aldermen said the city needs to raise its standard for the service costing taxpayers $9 million per year.

Greystone homes in North Lawndale. City leaders are proposing to put millions of public dollars behind a campaign to sell and redevelop hundreds of city-owned vacant lots in the neighborhood. [Pascal Sabino/Block Club]

Chicago will dedicate up to $5.3 million in tax-increment financing to help clean up a network of 100 North Lawndale vacant lots so they can be redeveloped into single-family homes and sold at reduced rates under a measure set to be advanced by aldermen on Monday.

Ald. James Gardiner (45) has a date with the Chicago Board of Ethics on Monday to determine whether he incurred enough violations of the city’s ethics code to rack up $7,000 in fines. The City Council’s license committee will take up a host of measures to tighten regulations on various businesses. And aldermen will meet for the last of three public hearings scheduled to discuss the city’s ongoing remap process.

A graphic showing how ShotSpotter's technology works. Representatives of the technology firm ShotSpotter are slated to testify in a meeting of the City Council Committee on Public Safety on Friday. [ShotSpotter]

Aldermen are gearing up for a long-promised hearing on Friday that will give them a chance to grill police leaders and other city officials over their use of a widely criticized gunshot detection technology. Representatives of the tech firm will also be on hand to defend their product. 

The $4 billion Bronzeville Lakefront mega-proposal took another step toward reality with a streetscape revamp ordinance. Speakers called for Chicago’s next ward map to boost Asian American representation. And aldermen on the budget committee approved more than $90 million in new grant funding, including $50 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Ald. Jason Ervin (28) on Tuesday defended a proposal to create a new Special Service Area in West Garfield Park.

A West Side business group is crying foul over what it calls political favoritism in a city-backed plan to create a new special taxing district in West Garfield Park, saying the city’s planning department and the local alderman unfairly tanked the group’s bid to manage the district themselves. But city planners and Ald. Jason Ervin (28) hold that the right group won out.

Chicago Department of Planning and Development officials showed a map of the planned future street configuration on the Bronzeville Lakefront site during a July City Council committee meeting.

A development coalition's nearly $4 billion proposed “Bronzeville Lakefront” mega-development is set to clear yet another regulatory hurdle on Wednesday — this time to lay the groundwork for tens of millions of dollars in infrastructure upgrades.

From left: Ald. Anthony Beale (9), Ald. Walter Burnett (27) and Rush Street Gaming owner Neil Bluhm speak during a City Council committee hearing on Monday.

A shadow war over the future of Chicago’s gambling revenues broke into the open on Monday, as proxies of the city’s pro sports teams tried to assuage city leaders’ fears that allowing sportsbooks at their ballparks and arenas could threaten earnings from a future Chicago casino.

A rendering of the main Regal Mile Studios building, looking south from South Chicago Avenue. [Provided via Block Club Chicago]

A Hollywood producer’s plans to build a seven-acre film studio in the South Shore neighborhood is set to take a leap forward on Tuesday as a City Council committee weighs selling a cluster of city-owned land to back the project.

The Chicago Bulls and Blackhawks are backing an ordinance that would allow them to accept bets at the United Center. [Facebook/United Center]

A City Council committee is set to test aldermen’s appetites on Monday to kickstart a stalled ordinance that would open the door to new sports betting hubs at Chicago’s arenas and ballparks. The measure has spent months on the shelf amid a behind-the-scenes battle between sports teams and a new round of would-be casino operators who are looking to consolidate control of sportsbook gambling.

Cook County Comm. Bridget Degnen [right] pressed CTA president Dorval Carter on Thursday for firmer commitments on decarbonizing the transit agency’s bus fleet.

Leaders of the Chicago region’s three major transit agencies promised on Thursday to purge fossil fuels from their systems’ trains and buses by 2040 — but they haven’t done enough yet to convince Cook County commissioners that they’re on pace to meet that deadline.

Cook County Deputy Chief Information Officer Derrick Thomas [left] and Tyler Technologies executive Mark Hawkins speak during a meeting on Wednesday.

A long-delayed software upgrade designed to liberate Cook County’s tax offices from a decades-old computer mainframe will be delayed by at least another nine months, county technology officials told disgruntled commissioners on Wednesday. And in the meantime, officials suggested the tumultuous switch could put the county’s tax bills in jeopardy.