Why I Oughta...

We were out and about when I parked the van next to a normal-looking car.  But, the license plate was anything *but* normal-looking.  It was a diplomatic license plate.  What do I mean?  Instead of having a state listed on it, it instead read: CONSUL.  And had a seal in the top left from the US Department of State.  Here is a photo of it below.   Note...I'm posting a photo of a license plate that I normally would blur out, but since the photo doesn't show the vehicle, nor am I stating the location, I feel pretty good about sharing this photo.  Kinda cool, right?  I went online to figure out what the story is/was with the plate and I turned up at this tool from Quartz:  a Diplomatic License Plate Decoder .  Pop in the plate number and you discover this is from a Japanese diplomat.  And...based on the location, that *totally* makes sense. From Quartz's tool: I learned something today.  What do they say?  Get smarter everyday.  Done and done.

If you head down York Street, you'll now notice this massive scaffolding setup in front of (and down the alley of) the old Plass Appliance store on the west side of the street. You can check out what the plan is for the site here on the blog .  It is a terraced-looking building that appears to have retail on the first floor and condos(??) up on the upper floors.   The Plass building is two stories and based on the rendering this new structure is going to be three stories.  It isn't just York Street that will be impacted.  Check out what the 'alley' looks like going west towards Nu Crepes. I posted a few days ago about the Nu Crepes sign, but after hearing all the chatter about their sign-issues, I can't help but wonder if this construction is going to make things A LOT worse for them. But...on the good side, I'm wondering if the opening of the new parking deck will help them with foot traffic? And, they're going to save the Plass sign, right ?

I *think* this is the parking deck topping out over on Addison Street in the Elmhurst City Centre.  I was walking down Schiller across from the Jewel and took this photo as I walked up to the light. When I say topping out, I think this is the total height of the new structure.  But there's still plenty of work left to be done to finish the construction. Here's a post from June of this year showing a different angle .  And here is a post showing the beginnings of the construction back in early May 2015 .

Over the weekend, I found myself in the little parking lot behind the businesses on York and Addison Streets in the Elmhurst City Centre.  What is (obviously) most striking about the space now is the towering garage that is being built right in the center of town. I posted about the beginnings of the deck going up in early May here .  There's been some discussion about the impact the garage is having on the 'skyline' but I for one, am just fine with it.  The long-term gain we'll get out of adding the much-needed parking in this huge deck will be a win for the Elmhurst City Centre and hopefully fuel some new additional commercial growth in our downtown.

A few weeks back, I posted the first photo of the 'changing skyline' of the Elmhurst City Centre from York Street.   But, I recently went down Addison Street and was confronted with a new 'look' of the parking deck from a new angle and had to take this photo you see above.  It certainly is pretty imposing compared to what was there (a parking lot).  The first section here went up really pretty fast as it appears they're mostly a bunch of pre-fab'd sections/panels.  There will be first floor retail/office, so I'm looking forward to seeing that part go up and see what it does to the downtown and in particular what impact it has on other/future growth along Addison Street.