Alan May

Claire Sucsy 1936 - 2026 Yesterday I went to the memorial service for someone who meant a lot to me during my Coldwell Banker Evanston years — Claire Sucsy. Claire wasn’t just a top producer for nearly 30 years. She was the person I watched, listened to, and learned from simply by sitting a few desks in front of her. I absorbed more from overhearing her handle clients, stress, negotiations, and everyday conversations than from any class or training I ever took. I used to call her the velvet hammer.

Monday I was downtown walking two visitors from Denmark around some of Chicago’s greatest architectural treasures, the Monadnock, the Rookery, the Fisher, the Auditorium, the Marquette, the kind of buildings that make you want to stand a little taller and say, “Yeah, this is my city.” And every few minutes they’d ask the same question: “So… when are we going to see the Picasso?” Not the Monadnock. Not the Rookery.

There was a time when Chicago turned its back on the river. For decades, this was an industrial corridor. Working water. Not a place you came to linger. In fact it was waste water. Not a place you came to sit. And then, piece by piece, over time, that changed. Today, the Chicago Riverwalk stretches for more than a mile through the heart of downtown, from the lake west to where the branches meet. But what makes it remarkable is not just its length. But in how it was built. We're reclaiming the river.