In a community association or HOA meeting, without procedural rules and organization, it’s amazing how quickly a room full of adults can devolve into a room full of toddlers—everyone talking over one another and no one listening, insuri…

 The Streeterville neighborhood in Chicago’s Near North Side is home to tens of thousands of Chicagoans, important  cultural, educational and medical institutions, some of the area’s greatest retail and dining, and a destination for countl…

 Aurora is known as the City of Light, a homage to the fact that the city was the  first city in the nation to install electric streetlights. Though overshadowed  by its big brother Chicago, Aurora can easily stand toe-to-toe with the Wind…

 With the price of gasoline rising, daily traffic snarls, a desire to live a  healthier life and the responsibility to lessen the effect of one's carbon  footprint, there are many reasons to own a bike. Buying the bike is just the beginnin…

 You may not realize it, but your building may be hemorrhaging money. Not in the  form of disastrous lawsuits or maintenance crises like a collapsed roof or  exploded boiler, but in a steady trickle coming from your method of ordering  sup…

 If you want to make a good impression, nothing quite says luxury and elegance  like a vast expanse of polished marble—particularly in the lobby of an upscale condominium or co-op building. Marble  has been used in palaces, temples, and ho…

 As any good condo administrator knows—either through common sense or painful experience - failing to clean up snow or  ice promptly can result in injuries, acrimony, and expensive lawsuits. Any one  of those is reason enough to get seriou…

 Most people assume that as soon as they buy their first home, they will finally  have the freedom to paint their decks purple, to hang fluorescent window  treatments and colorful sconces, or to litter their lawns with political or  yard s…

 According to some sources, the word “tips” is actually an acronym—it's short for “To Insure Prompt Service,” and the list of people who are commonly tipped—at least in the United States—includes everyone from hair and nail salon workers t…

 Sooner or later, every co-op or condo owner will have to deal with the  inconvenience of living through a major capital improvement project—a roof replacement, an elevator rehab, serious exterior work, or something of  that nature. No mat…