River North, South, East or West?

What's in a name? A lot! It's about public perception and the branding a developer wants to evoke when marketing a new development. Here is an article on the push to "create" a new neighborhood in the area just south of Congress to 18th street and from Canal to Clark. This "hot new neighborhood" --very hot but not so new-- has thousands of units in the works in the coming years and they are pushing to get a name that sticks and makes its image one which the developers can market around:

Here is a partial copy of the article written in Crain's magazine. For the full story go here

Realtors will tell you south Uptown is Buena Park and east Logan Square is actually West Bucktown. Now if some developers succeed, part of the South Loop could become River South.

Developers in one of the city's fastest-growing areas want to rename a large swath of the South Loop. It's an age-old exercise in real estate brand-building: slap a new name on a neighborhood to make it more appealing to buyers. Yet it often fails, even in a place like the South Loop, where an attempt to call the area SoLo in the 1990s drew mostly ridicule.

Just remeember, Bucktown is part of Logan Square, Andersonville is really in Edgewater and Ravenswood is really a part of Uptown....all according to National Census data (which is how the MLS is organized). So, it all depends upon who you're talking to and where you are talking.