At Home in a Store

Old customers returning to a North Side Chicago shoe-repair shop for new heels or a shine are confronted by a discreetly blackened window and an avocado green door--firmly latched. The new tenant, Artist Ron Rolfe, is not interested in their patronage. All he wants is the privacy of home in his converted storefront.

Like 500 or so other Chicagoans, Rolfe has rejected the steep rents and monotonous layouts of high-rise apartments and opted instead for storefront living near downtown business districts.

His neighbors, many of them also artists, are living in what were once taverns, pizza parlors, barbershops and grocery stores--and liking it. "I dig the flexibility that this allows," says Chicago Art Institute Teacher Phil Morton, who beds down in an overhanging loft at the rear of his converted junk shop.

"In an apartment you can't do too much to change things," explains Architect Marvin Ullman, who remodeled another old junk shop and furnished it with sanded wooden soap crates. "Here, there is a third dimension that comes from the space and lends itself to creating."

Every Nook. Indeed, it is space--at a budget price--that most attracts members of the new storefront community. Though the warehouse-like interiors with 14-ft. ceilings often cost $60 per month to heat, the rent averages only $150, half that charged for Chicago apartments of similar size. Tenants use every nook and cranny, partitioning off sleeping berths, closets and workshops with hanging plants or plywood. One innovative interior decorator, who moved into a former ice cream parlor, now serves cocktails instead of sarsaparilla from behind the old soda fountain.

The storefront cultists generally move into the fringes of ghettos, from which storekeepers have fled to safer and more profitable neighborhoods.

Sensing this surge toward storefront living, some landlords have bought and remodeled storefront blocks, and are now renting to eager tenants. In one South Side area, Developer John Podmajersky has constructed a communal courtyard surrounded by arched stucco walls. Here storefront tenants cultivate vegetables, and hold an annual summer art exhibit.

One of the most impressive conversions has occurred on the North Side of Chicago in a decaying area near Lincoln Park. There some 50 tenants have rented and remodeled not only storefronts but the shabby brick apartments directly over them. As a result the 15-block storefront area now has a new face. The store windows are decorated with gaily patterned curtains, the sills with plants and art works, and the street has become busier and safer.

Though many of the converted shops fail to meet zoning or building regulations, Chicago officials apparently welcome the infusion of law-abiding tenants into the decaying neighborhoods and have looked the other way. Explains one candid building official: "Sure, they are violating the law. But there are laws against ladies' hatpins in theaters and spitting on the sidewalks, too." But living on the ground floor in the central city has its drawbacks. There are still frequent robberies in the area; some tenants are now barring their windows and doors. Freelance Writer Gretchen Brown wards off burglars as well as Peeping Toms with heavy wooden shutters. When she first moved in, Book Designer Muriel Underwood had to discourage passers-by who tried to enter to buy the spider plants in her jumbo display window. Says she: "They thought that my home was a plant shop."

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