7-Eleven Clark and Southport, 5 August 2020
Polaroid SLR 680 SE/Polaroid Color 600
The intersection of Clark and Southport is prime real estate on two busy streets, with a bus stop right next to it, and immediately adjacent to an affluent residential neighborhood. A prime location for a convenience store.
Well, over the last few years 7-Eleven has made owning a franchise store harder and harder and combine that with a (previously) booming real estate market and many franchisee owned locations across the country have been closing. I don’t know if that is what happened here, but a year or two ago this location closed kinda abruptly. Competition in the area had increased and word was that rent had gone up made it seem likely it had been priced out by the landlords. So speculation mounted that it would be replaced by a transit-oriented development as is all the rage in Chicago’s highly desirable, but sparsely populated north side neighborhoods.
Now with the pandemic and the collapse of the economy, it feels like it will remain in this state for a long time.