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I'm not sure if you meant to respond to this post or to a different one, but that link is to a rack on the same level of Dominick's, not downstairs. I suspect it's the rack you mentioned earlier next to the atrium, except that it's at the midpoint of the parking lot, certainly not at the opposite corner. Personally, I always found it perfectly convenient to walk to the market from there (it's just two stores down in the strip mall), but obviously YMMV. I realize some people really hate to walk. It's roughly the same distance I'd walk to my car when I've driven there. I think we get a little spoiled with front-door parking.
Personally I've never had a problem parking my bike there, but if you've often found it full, then obviously it's not adequate. However, there can be no doubt that it's more than "no racks at all or one rack installed so close to a wall that it can only be used by a few bikes". Dominicks isn't going to win any prizes for excellent bike parking, but there's parking for at least half a dozen bikes at virtually every north side store, often much more (I think Roscoe/Western would be the only exception, though Clybourn/Division comes close). If somebody is telling you or Steven that it's corporate policy to have no bike parking, that person is simply lying.
Anne Alt said:That one was added more recently and is even further away from Dominick's - downstairs on the other side of the atrium. That's not a 30 second walk, especially not with bags of groceries. Being in front of the security office is the only plus, IMO.
David said:The link to the bike rack is below, there's about a dozen bikes parked there but still a few empty spaces. It is a wave rack as I remembered.
Admittedly, the main rack at that strip mall isn't absolutely directly in front of Dominicks, it's a less-than-30-second walk away on the other side of Marshall's, but that's not exactly an onerous trek. The upside is that it's directly in front of the security office.
http://maps.google.com/?q=1792+Birchwood,+chicago,+il&ie=UTF8&a...
Are there other major stores you visit in the city that need better bike parking OR stores that are an example of excellent bike parking?
the bucktown/wicker park library has a one-piece rack that spells "books." while a creative idea, it only works if you get one of the good letters to lock up to. i wonder if the people who design these racks ever actually try locking up bikes to it.
Let's be specific, because I find the issue pretty interesting. I'm always trying to convince people that living car-less in Chicago isn't difficult and that it's easy to go grocery shopping on the bike, so I generally take notice of what bike parking is around. Since Dominick's is unionized I usually try to do general shopping there, so here's the stores I know, along with some occasional pictures:
Chicago/Damen: 5 u-racks scattered around the store, plus some heavily used signposts and (sadly) trees on Chicago. I go here all the time and I've never not found parking, so it's hard to complain. But for such a bike-heavy neighborhood, they could do better.
Fullerton: like the one above, they rely on a ton of city u-racks on the sidewalks surrounding the store. But there's a *lot* of bike parking at this store since it's at DePaul.
Halsted: 3-4 u-racks along the front, but there's a grating in front that's the perfect height for locking up bikes, so in practice there's plenty of parking. In the background here, you can see bikes locked to the grating
Division/Clybourn: There's this:
Now, that's really not so bad because it's installed correctly. There's enough room to do a wheelover so you could fit 8 or so bikes pretty easily if people parked vertically. OTOH I'm not here that often, but I've never seen more than a bike or two. I seem to remember that the Dominicks across from Superdawg has a similar rack installed.
Clybourn: This is a weird one. Technically, there's this directly across from the entrance.
A decent wave, and a stupid worthless rack next to it. But there's also this, just around the corner
But nobody uses it because it's easier to just lock to the sign posts near the store entrances. So there's a decent amount of OK bike parking, but it's not used very much.
Broadway: as mentioned above, two long waves plus the two bike lids (I'm not sure the bike lids are functional).
Lincoln: There's plenty of bike parking at this store. Someone provided a picture in another post.
Damen/Ridge:
This is an interesting rack, I'm not really sure how I feel about it. There's also a 3-wave rack just around the corner from it, so if you really hated it you could use the standard wave rack.
Roscoe/Western: This is really the only hall of shame example for Dominicks, at least on the north side. The Dominicks on McCormick is about like this, but I don't think that one is in Chicago.
Anne Alt said:Are there other major stores you visit in the city that need better bike parking OR stores that are an example of excellent bike parking?
The one you show at the Dominick's on McCormick (Lincolnwood) is a bit of a joke for a store that size.
Just to clarify, that picture was one of the store at Roscoe/Western, where there's really no excuse for poor bike parking. The one on McCormick in Lincolnwood is even worse, although I'll admit that's not an easy store to get to for bikes. I especially love the safety cone, as if the bike rack were some small pothole in the sidewalk.
Just to clarify, that picture was one of the store at Roscoe/Western, where there's really no excuse for poor bike parking. The one on McCormick in Lincolnwood is even worse, although I'll admit that's not an easy store to get to for bikes. I especially love the safety cone, as if the bike rack were some small pothole in the sidewalk.
Although it's not my favorite, the rack style at Division/Clybourn doesn't bother me much because it's installed far enough away from the wall to do a wheelover:
However, it's easy to install this rack poorly. Here's the one at Howard that you mentioned, they've managed to install this rack backwards, rendering it almost completely useless (sorry for the picture quality):
PS. I meant to get pictures of one or two racks at stores near me, but as you can perhaps tell, it was such a gorgeous night last night that we wound up riding around the entire northside. It was really fun, it makes me want to organize a bike rack documentation project where we visit, say, all the libraries in town or something.
Anne Alt said:The one you show at the Dominick's on McCormick (Lincolnwood) is a bit of a joke for a store that size.
Broadway: as mentioned above, two long waves plus the two bike lids (I'm not sure the bike lids are functional).
Has anyone here tried engaging a property owner to improve their bike facilities? If so, what approach did you take and what was the response?
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