Bringing Retail to Underserved Neighborhoods

In case you missed it, LISC/Chicago was featured in a September 1 WBEZ story about "retail leakage" on Chicago's South Side. YOu can check it out here. The lack of retail on the South Side is a well-known phenomenon; what isn't so well-known--and what LISC regularly points out--is that South Side and other city low-income communities have more spending power than suburbs full of retailers.

The piece also features the Greater Auburn Gresham Development Corporation's efforts to lure in retailers. One of their promotions, the annual 79th Street Renaissance Festival, is coming up next weekend. It's a great opportunity to check out a great neighborhood.

In a related story on the same issue, The Chicago Reporter takes a look at the West Haven neighborhood and how longtime efforts to lure in retail only took off when whites began to return to the area. Earnest Gates and the Near West Side Community Development Corporation are featured.

Report on the Economy, via the Hair Salon

There's a price war going among the hair salons and barber shops on Clark Street in Rogers Park, and that's bad news for Alicia, the woman who's been cutting my hair for the last 10 years.

When I stopped in at La Bella Unisex today, she got right to the point. Business is bad. It's not just that people have lost jobs and are pinching pennies; it's the price competition. The place right next door has a big sign in the window: Hair Cut $5. And there's another down the street charging the same amount.

I asked how anyone can make money charging only $5. They can't. With storefronts renting for $1,200 a month, she said, even if you could fill the chairs all day long it would be hard to make it. And the chairs are rarely full.

Alicia asked when I thought the economy would turn around. I told her I've been working on a foreclosure-response project and the experts aren't optimistic; they are worried, in fact, that things could get much worse in some areas as the hundreds of boarded and abandoned buildings trigger a free-fall in what's left of the market.

Why a free fall? Alicia's husband had good work for years doing construction on condominium conversions. But no work lately. Her son, just out of high school, is an apprentice at an auto repair shop on Jarvis. It's a good opportunity but the pay isn't there. And her own business is way down. She's nervous about the family scraping together enough money to pay the mortgage on their own condominium . . . and it's a good bet that the people working next door, at $5 a cut, are having similar troubles.

As Alicia finished up with the razor, trimming the wild hairs off my ears, a man walked in and asked "How much for a haircut?"

"Ten dollars for a normal haircut," Alicia replied, sizing up the potential client. She hesitated a split second, then added, "and if you need just a simple cut, five dollars."

"Yes, just a simple cut," he replied.

So that's the view from Clark Street, where people are hurting.

Migration North on Clark Street: Why Now?

The evolution of a commercial district is usually a subtle, slow-moving thing. You have to watch for clues as buildings lose tenants or gain them over a period of decades, which is what I've been doing for many years on long walks through Rogers Park and Edgewater.

What I'm seeing lately is a long-dormant strip of Clark Street, between Bryn Mawr and Devon, coming back to life.

It's been a good spring for this wide stretch where Ashland and Clark converge into a four-lane speedway through west Edgewater, just north of the wildly successful Andersonville retail zone. In the former Clark Furniture storefronts north of Hollywood, Joel Hall Dancers and Center just opened an expanded studio. Next block up is Community Auto Parts in the space recently vacated by La Raza newspaper. On the block after that, a long-vacant funeral home now sports the snazzy brown awnings of Know No Limits: "Your Neighborhood Gym."

How did this happen, especially in this economy? Here's my theory.

First, you've got long-time institutions anchoring each end of the strip: Clark Devon Hardware on the north, which attracts hundreds of janitors and fixer-uppers each day and recently installed a very clever hardware-inspired clock on the building's corner; and Gethsemane Garden Center on the south, which over the years has purchased one adjacent lot after another and filled them with flowers, bushes, trees, statuary and fountains (and they do a beautiful job maintaining the traffic island where Clark and Ashland split).

But that's not enough to bring back a half-empty, mile-long stretch. Eight or nine years ago Raven Theatre converted a grocery store at Granville into a theater and proclaimed themselves with a bold stainless steel sign. At Peterson, the Chicago Fire Department built a new fire house where a tire shop and used-car dealers had been. Other old-timers, like the Uni Mart Philippine Plaza and Minas TV & Video, kept things going on their blocks.

Another driving force: Community Auto Parts, Joel Hall and Know No Limits all moved north from high-rent Andersonville, finding larger spaces at lower prices.

None of these companies is new. They've been around for years, serving customers well enough to not only survive, but grow. And with enough growing businesses, even a worn-out, half-empty business district can turn into something new.

Getting Around on a Trolley Bus

A lot of neighborhoods talk about creating a "circulator" transit service that brings people from their homes or workplaces into the shopping district. South Chicago Chamber of Commerce has done it.

Every day from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (with a break from 2:30 to 3:30), one of those buses-that-look-like-trollies runs a route in the old Steel City from 106th and Torrence up to 83rd Street via the Commercial Avenue shopping district, with stops conveniently located next to small businesses, from Exquisite Flowers to Mexico Auto Repair.

Rides are free until March 1, and then will cost just a quarter by way of a ticket booklet that can be bought from participating merchants. The chamber is financing the $138,000 project with funds from the local Special Service Area (a district that taxes property owners and uses the funds for needed services). The goal, says chamber executive director Neil Bosanko, is to keep retail dollars in the community.

Other neighborhoods will be interested in how things work out.

Read more on the Claretian web site. Below, a Google MyMaps shows the route.


View Larger Map

Is Wal-Mart Solution to 'Food Deserts'?

The Tribune reported Friday that Wal-Mart is back at it, trying to get approval for stores in inner-city Chicago neighborhoods against resistance from unions, the City Council and others who fear the colossus will hurt small businesses and undercut wages at Chicago's other chain grocers.

Wal-Mart's argument is that bringing new stores to "food deserts," such as Englewood or the West Side, will bring inexpensive food and fresh produce to areas that badly need them.

And Wal-Mart is using the recession to press its case, promising tax revenue and construction jobs at a time when the city badly needs them.

So, is this a bad idea or a good one? What would happen if Wal-Mart moved into more neighborhoods?

New site pitches West Haven retail space

The thing about the digital revolution is that new things keep coming every day, and while that isn't always comfortable, I am often pleasantly surprised by some ingenious new application of new-media tools to serve community development goals.

For instance, I was elated the other day when I clicked through on a link sent to me by Mike Quinlan, program manager for the West Haven Revitalization Initiative. He had just launched the new West Haven Now web site for the Near West Side Community Development Corporation, and on that site I found property listings and photos for retail spaces along West Madison Street and Western Avenue, an area that has changed almost completely since I worked on the neighborhood's first quality-of-life plan in 2000.

The site showed me how the 2400 block of West Madison (photo above) is filling in with new condo-over-store buildings, and gave me the heads up that the Sweet Dreams Cafe will be opening soon in the historic "skyscraper" on the northwest corner of Madison and Western (photo right).

Other new buildings are at 28 S. Western, 115-125 S. Western, 2000 West Warren and elsewhere. These areas were once known for the Rockwell Gardens and Henry Horner Homes public housing developments, both of which are being redeveloped as mixed-income communities.

The West Haven site is the second I've seen that is very consciously trying to attract retailers to once-forgotten corners of the inner city. The other is the Quad Communities Development Corporation site, whose directory section is filled with hundreds of listings of existing businesses as well as available commercial properties, complete with photos. The group has already lined up more than $80 million in new development along the Cottage Grove corridor, and just announced a $12 million loan program to spruce up existing properties.

"Phantom Gallery" comes to East Garfield

Download map with artists, exhibit hours and locations.
Map by Nicole Miller, DNMdesign

Out west on Madison Street in East Garfield Park, the local chamber of commerce is mounting a community development two-fer called a Phantom Gallery.

Here's how it works. Local businesses, empty storefronts and other locales are recruited into a program that turns them into temporary art galleries. Local artists get some nice exposure, the stores and the street gain a colorful new look, and residents have a chance to see some artwork in their own neighborhood. Wait, that's a three-fer.

Anyway, it's been done on Commercial Avenue in South Chicago and in Rogers Park and other 'hoods, and this week it debuts in East Garfield with a VIP reception (you're a Very Important Person if you attend) on on Saturday, February 9, from 4 to 8 p.m. at the Supper Club Chicago, 2715 W. Madison Street, with a showcase, refreshments and live music.

The exhibit runs from 1 to 4 p.m. each day from Friday, Feb. 8 through Sunday, Feb. 10 at eight locations:

Arthur Swirgon, LTD, Antiques and Modern Art, 320 S. Sacramento
Class Hair Salon, 2446 W. Madison
Legler Public Library, 115 S. Pulaski
Divine Home Remodeling, 115 S. Francisco
Clark Construction, 2421 W. Madison
Clark Construction, 2423 W. Madison
Art Exhibit Location, 3439 W. Madison
Switching Station Artist Lofts, 15 S. Homan

Call 777.722.6650 or 773-638-1217 x 3 for more information, or check out samples of the artists' work at www.phantomgallerychicago.net

The Phantom Gallery is sponsored by the Greater Garfield Park Chamber of Commerce, the Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance and others. It was organized by East Garfield artist Alpha Bruton. The event is one of many activities that are part of the Madison Revitalization Initiative.