Apartments for rent near downtown Chicago. Kindly advice.

Dear friends,

We are moving to Chicago from Seattle this Sat. At this point, we are extremely confused and in a way tensed up about deciding where to look for an apt for rent.

I have a 11 month old daughter. And I'll have to leave her in daycare for the first time ever. I and my husband would have to work in downtown. So we were looking for options that would keep the commute time as little as possible since we have to add up a round trip for daycare too.

I looked up on many other threads here and gathered that living in downtown would be expensive. I was wondering if anyone could suggest the next closest neighbourhood to downtown that some Indians are there ? Westmont, Schaumburg, Arlington Heights ..they seem far. One of my friends suggested Belmont near lakeshore drive. Could anyone advice ? This info would be very timely and helpful for me.

Thanks in advance.

hiii i moved fro mchicago downtown to lakeshore drive we were living in presidential towers .. the rents have gone down & iti s a renters market so u cna bargain on therent or ask for soem extra things like painting once an year & carpet cleaning once an year ... the accomodation is really good if u are coming with kids & i nwinter it is close to train station ( union station ) ..... the reason i had to move is i was upgrading from 1 bd room to 2 bd room & they were not ready to offer lowered rental prices to old residents they wanted new leasers hence i had to move :) these towers are known as DESI towers ;) ..all the best with your apartment hunting :)

you could also check lakeshore it is nearly 10-15 mins by drive & 30 -40 mins by public transportation ..... but the thing is u cud use apartment people's help i nwhich case u may have to spend some weekends to come down & see & then decide on one :)
the rentals can be expected to be anywhere b/n 1400- 1900 for a one BD room apartment .( in areas which are safer i have suggested as far as i know )

oooh, good to hear that the rents have gone down near lakeshore...!
one of my college ex-roomies stays near The Univ campus...he's very satisfied with the neighborhood and the qualify of life there. not too expensive, not too.
if you decide to move (a lot) farther and have no problems commuting, try aurora..it is well connected too i think, and kinda cheapish compared to the closer suburbs.... (but my info is not uptodate so do verify!)