Mapping the Andersonville Business District Andersonville Cartography Committee Sarah Santerelli Madison Stolzer Sean Swaggerty Maureen McHugh Jon Gustin GEO 242 3/17/09Project Summary The Andersonville Cartography Committee (ACC) undertook a project in January 2009 on behalf of the Andersonville Development Corporation (ADC) to map the Andersonville business district. ADC is a nonprofit community development organization that works to foster sustainable community and economic development in the Andersonville commercial district. The organization needed a map to visualize information about the businesses in the business district along Clark Street, bordered by Ainsile Ave on the south and Victoria Ave on the north. They plan to use this information to track business uses in the community and the relationships between business attributes. When they first came to us, they requested a map detailing numerous attributes of the businesses. These included address, parcel, business name, business type, whether it is local or non-local, tenure, and its membership in eco-Andersonville. They ideally wanted all of these attributes mapped for both the first and second floors. To begin this project, we did some research into Andersonville Development Corporation to familiarize ourselves with the organization’s mission, goals for the project, and end use of the map. ADC engages businesses and property owners, attracts retail, runs the eco-Andersonville project, maintains streetscapes, and maps the business district. The Andersonville community is well known for its local businesses, and ADC would like to keep the neighborhood locally-owned. Recently, Newcastle Ltd. bought 22.5 million dollars worth of property in Andersonville, making it the largest retailer in the community. There is a worry that the large retailers will take away the authenticity of Andersonville, but Newcastle understands the value of locally-owned businesses. Locally owned businesses were proved to be particularly valuable for Andersonville, because in a 2004 poll, 72% of those polled responded that the locally owned businesses attracted them to the area. Other relevant literature on GIS practices was also reviewed in preparation for this project. From an article on mistakes often made by planners using GIS, we determined that the ADC map is a reference tool, so we focused on providing information about the maps features (businesses) rather than creating a map suitable for presentation. The map will be used in ArcMap as a tool by the employees of ADC, so it was designed with that in mind. The use of GIS in planning was also reviewed, since the map will be used like a planning tool. After doing the relevant research for the project, the system requirements were determined. Since the data was provided to us in Excel spreadsheets by Sara Dinges of ADC, we needed to use geocoding, database retrieval in DBMS, and visualization through colors and symbols to create the map. The data was also assessed for its quality. Since the data was updated by Sara specifically for this project, it was of high quality. Many of the attributes were incomplete though, thus preventing us from mapping all of the attributes originally planned. There was no eco-Andersonville or parcel data, so those attributes were excluded. However, space was created to add eco-Andersonville data when it becomes available. Since second-floor use was not a priority for ADC and since it mostly consists of residential uses, a second-floor map was also omitted from the project. After the data was assessed for quality, it was analyzed through normalization, geocoding, and mapping. The end result of the project is a reference map withseveral layers that can be turned on and off. Business use, tenure, and locality are visualized through color, shading, and symbols, respectively. The results of the project were largely as expected: Andersonville consists of predominately locally-owned businesses. We also found that 42 of the mapped businesses had been in operation for over 10 years, 19 of the mapped businesses had been in operation for over 5 years but less than 10 year, and 46 had been there for less than 5 years. These results show a very even distribution of business tenure, on average, in the area. The businesses that have been in Andersonville for longer than 10 years were 91% locally owned. Since the map we have created is designed to be updated, there are some recommendations for future use. A more-functioning primary key system needs to be developed. Currently, every matched business has to be coded twice: once in the join table and again in the attribute table. A primary key needs to be created in the base map attribute table, but it cannot be the Parcel PIN or Building Number since multiple businesses share the same building, even at times, the same address. An easier system needs to be developed to allow the ADC to quickly make additions and changes to the list of businesses without the need to make changes to the underlying base map attribute table. In the future, any additional information, such as eco-Andersonville data, can be added to this base map, along with any changes or other new business information. This will be valuable for the tracking and retention of locally owned and sustainable businesses within the district. Table of Contents 1. Introduction 2. Needs Assessment 3. System Requirements 4. Data Acquisition 5. Data Analysis 6. Results 7. Conclusions + Recommendations 1. Introduction The Andersonville Development Corporation (ADC) is a nonprofit community development organization that services the Andersonville neighborhood in Chicago, Illinois. The mission of the organization is to foster sustainable community and economic development in the Andersonville commercial district. It does this through engaging business and property owners, attracting retail, the eco-Andersonville project, events planning, streetscape maintenance, and most important for this project, business district mapping. ADC approached the Andersonville Cartography Committee (ACC) to assist with this mapping in January 2009. ADC needs were relatively straight forward: an ArcGIS map of the commercial district (Victoria Ave on the north, Ainsile Ave on the south, and the east and west allies behind Clark Street), detailing businessuse, tenure, and whether the business is local or non-local. Initially ADC requested