Three more portals for Smart Communities

The three Southwest neighborhoods in Chicago's Smart Communities program launched their portals yesterday, creating a wide new avenue for interaction among residents, businesses and organizations.

They are works in progress, with some empty spaces yet to fill, but already the portals offer new stories and photos highlighting activities not easily found elsewhere on the web.

Check them out:
Auburn Gresham: auburngreshamportal.org
Englewood: englewoodportal.org
Chicago Lawn: chicagolawnportal.org

The three sites have automatic cross-links to each other to build connections among the communities, but each is likely to develop its own personality over time. Give them a visit and, if you live or work in one of those areas, submit some information to make the portals better.

Stimulus, Neighborhoods and Schools

A couple of recent news items from the Chicago Public schools related to stimulus spending have caught my attention. First, today's hot CPS story is the announcement of details about the district's $30 million, stimulus-funded plan to reduce youth violence. WBEZ's Linda Lutton did a good overall piece on it, which you can read or listen to here. Back in September when the plan was first announced, Englewood pastors loudly complained about a Philadelphia-based agency taking on the task of, and the pay for, working with at-risk youth. For the next five months, the district's chief executive officer, Ron Huberman, zipped his lip about the plan.

According to the Catalyst Notebook blog, Huberman unzipped his lip at a press conference at Englewood's Robeson High School yesterday just enough to let us know that the work with high-risk youth will now be split among community agencies, plus the Philadelphia group, Youth Advocate Programs. Looks to me like the pastors' voices were heard. The Philadelphia group will be paid to work with the 250 highest-risk students, while community agencies will be hired to work with another 2000 students. The two efforts will eat up $10 million, or one-third of the total funds available. Another $2 million will go toward community patrols to ensure students have safe passage to and from school, like the effort Huberman helped kickstart last March in Little Village, which I wrote about here.

I certainly hope this will be an opportunity for NCP neighborhoods with strong antiviolence work in place, like Little Village and Auburn Gresham, to put more gas in their tanks, as well as helping other neighborhoods plant new efforts or help their seedling projects grow.

Second, last week Mayor Daley and the district announced significant new bonds for school construction made possible through stimulus. According to the press release, CPS used approximately $22 million for emergency repairs at Bond, Caldwell, Ebinger, Harlan, Gallistel, Schneider, Sumner and Yale schools, plus $7 million to renovate four CPS turnaround schools: Bethune, Dulles, Fenger, and Johnson. While urgent repairs are key in an underfunded system with decades of deferred maintenance, and turning around a school ought to include needed repairs, only one of these schools (Ebinger) is on the heavily overcrowded Northwest Side. And none of the early spending addresses the long-neglected problem of overcrowded schools on the Southwest Side. (Full disclosure: I'm a Southwest Sider, though I don't live in the bull's-eye of the overcrowding zone.) Back in 2005 a colleague and I analyzed where the kids were and where CPS capital dollars went; the numbers didn't match up well. You can read our analysis here.

Back then, the district cried poor, saying there was no money left to address overcrowding. Well, there's new money now. Unfortunately, there's a lot of new faces in district leadership, which means new priorities and lost institutional memory. Let's hope some of it gets spent this time on longstanding overcrowding in places like Chicago Lawn, Gage Park and Brighton Park. Jimmy Dispensa (head of demographics for CPS), can you put a bug in Ron's ear on this?

Changing the Face of Science, One Neighborhood at a Time

I've blogged here before about the idea of community science workshops where neighborhood kids and families could go mess around, build rockets, and so forth. Earlier today my friend Gabrielle Lyon took the idea a few steps farther in an op-ed piece on the Huffington Post. Gabe is the co-founder of Project Exploration, which expands access to science by
connecting minority youth and girls with scientists and creating opportunities for youth to explore scientific problems alongside them. Project Exploration is one of Elev8 Chicago's extended-day providers. Their Sisters4Science program is going great guns with middle school girls at Reavis Elementary and Perspectives Calumet Middle School. For a taste of what they are all about, read the article here.

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.

Sold-Out Neighborhood Tours Deliver the Goods

It seemed like a good idea, that neighborhood groups should get involved in the Burnham Centennial's Bold Plans Big Dreams program and put on tours of their often-unseen communities.

And it was. On Saturday, May 16, six neighborhoods led sold-out bus and walking tours in South Chicago, Bronzeville, Pilsen, Albany Park, Auburn Gresham and West Ridge. Reports are flowing in and it appears that both participants and tour guides had a ball. Here's some of the commentary:

Indian snacks -- Dorothie Shah reports that the West Ridge tour spent more than an hour in small groups, walking into shops along Devon Avenue and chatting with the owners or sales clerks. They sampled jalebis and other snacks at Royal Sweets, met the owner of the Sahil Sari shop and talked with Mafat Patel, founder of the Patel retail and wholesale food empire.

Pilsen culture – Tour leader Alex Morales focused on the neighborhood's history of activism and organizing but also pointed out the local attractions, and considered it a sign of success that people wished there had been time to get inside the National Museum of Mexican Art and spend some time shopping and eating on 18th Street. He wants them coming back (and spending money when they do).

Bronzeville development – This tour attracted guests from Canada, the south suburbs, the University of Chicago and the Field Museum, and "all were amazed by the amount and quality of development" in the area, says Bernita Johnson Gabriel of Quad Communities Development Corp. Even better, "all said they would recommend the tour to others."

South Chicago discoveries – The way Jackie Samuel tells it, visitors to the former steel mill district were absolutely charmed by the tour guides and the unexpected sites along the way, including the spectacular view from St. Michael's Church, the local gardens and the big ore walls at the former U.S. Steel site.

It wasn't obvious to Samuel and others, when the training and hard work of developing these tours got started a few months ago, just what the benefits might be, especially since most of these neighborhoods have a lot of rough edges and unfinished business.

The first training session, in fact, was on a day when three youth were gunned downed in broad daylight in South Chicago. "I left the meeting so happy and then this senseless act of violence just hit our hearts so deeply," Samuel recounts. "I questioned if we were doing the right thing by showcasing the community. (But) I realized that so much hard work has been put in place over the past 10 years that I could not let a group of thugs steal our communities' thunder. When we started doing the research it clearly pointed out that we have a story to tell, with all of our lumps and bumps."

Download brochures and maps for each tour here.

Photos are of the Pilsen and West Ridge practice tours, by Vince Michael.

Tours: Daniel Burnham Would Be Pleased

Six real-life neighborhoods will be on display May 16 during the Great Chicago Places and Spaces Festival, which is branching out this year to feature more than the usual tours of central-city architecture and hotspots. As part of the Burnham Plan Centennial, tour buses will be heading to Bronzeville, South Chicago, Auburn Gresham, Pilsen, Albany Park and the Indian shopping strip on Devon Avenue in West Ridge.

Mr. Burnham would be pleased, because the changes in these places reflect a less-quoted section of that "make no little plans" statement that we hear so often.

"Make big plans," he continued, "aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency."

I've seen that ever-growing insistency in most of the New Communities Program neighborhoods, where the noble, logical diagrams laid out in their quality-of-life plans keep rising up in the conversations. Insistently. As in "if we want to be great, or just survive, we've got to do this and that." And think big, too, which is another Burnham dictum.

Six neighborhood groups have been preparing the tours with help from the Burnham Centennial team and professional tour consultants, and the stories are shaping up nicely. The Bold Plans Big Dreams Community Showcase Tours will start from downtown, with details to come at Explore Chicago. Here's the lineup:

Albany Park: Chicago's Gateway to the World, will highlight that neighborhood's rich multi-ethnic base, its bungalow belts and retail assets, and its culture, nature and movement. Hosted by the North River Commission.

Bronzeville: Civil War to Civil Rights and Beyond, will trace back to the beginnings of Chicago's African-American experience, show off many historic sites, and preview the "second urban renaissance in the capitol of Black America." Hosted by Quad Communities Development Corporation

Pilsen: A Healthy, Vibrant and Well-Organized Community will focus on that neighborhood's long history in labor activism and organizing, with a focus on the work done by Mexican-American community organizations since the 1980s. Hosted by The Resurrection Project.

South Chicago: From Pollution to Solution will show how the formerly gritty steel town is transforming itself into a "green" community of affordable energy, efficient houses, organic gardens and talented artists. Hosted by Claretian Associates.

Auburn Gresham: A Classic Chicago Community will show off the bungalows and two-flats and 79th Street commercial district that have attracted and supported generations of families. Hosted by Greater Auburn-Gresham Development Corporation.

West Ridge: Gateway to India in Chicago will feature walking tours of the Devon Avenue retail strip, complete with visits to sari shops, video stores and snack shops that attract Indian and Pakistani visitors from across the Midwest (and plenty of locals, too). Hosted by the Indo-American Heritage Museum.

The tours will be repeated during the summer, so check with the host organizations if you can't make the May 16 event.

South Chicago photo above by Eric Young Smith for Chicago Neighborhood News Bureau.

"Remembering Our Children"

On December 17, 2008, I attended an event about youth lost to gun violence titled “Remembering Our Children.” I thought I had vision until the many faces of innocence flashed across the screen. I finally saw death at its worst.

I can see now that there has been a shift in the value system. The worth of our children has been minimized, from priceless to being priced for the highest bidder. Guns and the gun industry are robbing us of what was once considered treasures, our children.

My face rained tears over a child that could not have been more that seven years of age, lying in a casket. She was surrounded by a sea of grief and pain, loved ones, family and friends, crying. Internally, I screamed, "Where are the voices, voices advocating for Common Sense Gun Laws?” This is not much to ask for, the preservation of life.

How can I, an Elev8 Director, focus on the quality of education and the integration of services to improve the quality of life for our children, when I can’t be assured that they will safely make it to the next day?

-- Michelle Mason, Perspectives Charter School

Auburn-Gresham's Litter-Free Zone Keeps on Bagging

One of the more frustrating parts of being a South Side Chicagoan is lack of access to recycling. I speak from experience. As a South Sider without a car, it's been impossible for me to get recycling to a drop-off station, and now the city's much-criticized Blue Bag program has been discontinued, with only a handful of neighborhoods involved in the new Blue Cart recycling effort.

Things would be much better if I lived even further south, in Auburn Gresham. Last spring the Greater Auburn Gresham Development Corporation kicked off a one-square-mile Litter Free Zone, which includes both door-to-door and curbside recycling. They got way ahead of the city's curve, which had Auburn Gresham slated to begin recycling until 2011. So far they've collected more than 65,000 pounds of recyclable materials.

According to this recent article at the GADC website, the Shedd Aquarium came down for a visit and is thinking about how to take the idea and work it into their own community partnerships.

Perhaps there some wisdom in here for the Obama administration to consider when thinking about green-collar jobs and neighborhoods.

Auburn Gresham's Rising Star: Ronnie Mosley

Ronnie Mosley, pictured here in his prom tux, is a young man of many talents. Now a senior at Simeon High School, he's been an intern with the Greater Auburn Gresham Development Corporation and served on the planning team for Elev8 at Perspectives-Calumet Middle School. He's also received an award from the National Foundation for Youth Entrepreneurship. (Photo credit: Carlos Nelson.)

This week, Catalyst Chicago published an interview with Ronnie in his role as an honorary student member of the Chicago Board of Education. He shadows board president Rufus Williams, attends board meetings, and will soon sit down with his fellow honorary student members to craft an action agenda and bring it to the board by June 2009. Check out his take on funding, safety and health as they relate to Chicago schools, among other issues, by clicking here.

'Our children and future are dying'

Gun protest at the Thompson Center. Photos by Gordon Walek.

When word came through about the latest killing of a Chicago teenager – the gun death on Sunday of Julian High School senior Kiyanna Salter on a CTA bus – it hit me as it always does, with sadness and anger that the affected families and communities must absorb this terrible hurt and somehow move on.

For the people around that young person, the pain must be debilitating. How can it not create a feeling of helplessness? The senseless killing of a child knocks down whole networks of people and institutions, or at least slows them down in whatever work or progress they might have been making. It ripples through classrooms. It travels down blocks and through neighborhoods and within families. It is personal.

And so it hurts even more to learn that Kiyanna Salter was a cousin of Southwest Organizing Project organizer Rabbi Joshua Salter, who works on safety issues on the Southwest Side. The death touched that neighborhood, too.

But violence can also galvanize responses, and two came across my desk today.

First, the Sun-Times reported that Chicago schools CEO Arne Duncan refused to accept an anti-violence award from the Illinois Coalition Against Handgun Violence. He cited the eight students killed in the first month of the school year, and left the award on the table. "I don't feel I can accept this award, not quite yet," he said. "I don't feel I've earned it."

Second, I heard from Ernie Sanders in Auburn Gresham, who alerted me to a gun-control protest planned by members of St. Sabina Parish at 11 a.m. this Friday, October 10, at the Thompson Center. This is a return visit after a similar rally on September 24 (photos) and obviously just as needed.

Below, the notice of the protest. The second paragraph packs a punch.

"Our Children and Future are Dying"

"In response to 3 more of our children being killed due to gun violence we will meet on Friday at The Thompson Center from 11am to 12pm.

"It is still our mission to have "Common Sense Gun Laws" enacted in this state. This school year, 2008-2009, has already seen Chicago Public Schools lose 11 students. Understand we have only completed one month of school, and we have lost 1/3 of a classroom.

"Please help us get the word out, raise awareness, and put an end to the destruction of our children, our future. If you need to ride the bus to the rally please call the Rectory at 773-483-4300, the bus will be leaving the church at 10 am."

Coverage of neighborhood news? Not so bad

Trainee Larry Smith leads a tour at Growing Home's open house on June 28. Photo by Patrick Barry.

Was a time, when I was a boy delivering the afternoon daily Chicago American, that our fair city had four big daily newspapers and half a dozen smaller ones covering ethnic groups and suburban regions. On top of that were dozens of weeklies covering the neighborhoods, or in the case of the Lerner papers, twice weekly. So it's no wonder that today's lament about weak coverage of the neighborhoods is so often heard.

But wait. From what I've been seeing lately, the growth of new-media outlets is changing the game, and since they can be updated often at much lower cost than print vehicles, we might even be seeing more news than before. Some of the grist comes from community groups, some from journalism students, but even the old media are in on the act.

All that's by way of prelude to this little roundup:

At Chicago Talks, Columbia College journalism student Brian Patrick Roach tells how students on the Southeast Side interviewed retired steelworkers to capture their stories from the mills. On the same site, Bryce Wolfe provides an update on the Bloomingdale Trail, which when built will provide a three-mile elevated bike and pedestrian path bisecting the Humboldt Park and Logan Square neighborhoods. Land is being acquired alongside the trail to provide mini-parks and access ramps.

At a new site called windycitizen.com, formerly the Chicago Methods Reporter put out by students at Medill, there's an in-depth piece by Elizabeth Riley featuring the defense of a certain block in Auburn Gresham. Riley has done a few stories down there, according to local host Ernie Sanders, carving out something like a beat.

Not bad, but stick with me. At Greater Auburn-Gresham Development Corporation's site, you can learn how three South Side restaurants, BJ's Market, Lagniappe and Soul Vegetarian, made out at the Taste of Chicago. You'll get hungry just reading the story. Go east to the NCP Woodlawn site and find out about a planned health fair and kidney screening, "another example of how a small but determined group leverages relationships to promote health education and provide access to health services."

While the new media are definitely adding depth to our reading choices, the old is still in the game. This morning's Tribune had a good piece about how Oji Eggleston and Earnest Gates organized a basketball league at Crane High School, offering mentoring alongside ball-handling tips.

And in today's Crain's Chicago Business? There's a short piece on Growing Home's executive director Harry Rhodes. That's the group that runs the Wood Street Urban Farm in Englewood, which is adding two more mini-farms nearby and constructing a small building for training, office space and a produce stand.

In my book, that's a pretty solid list of stories about action in the neighborhoods.

Foreclosure in the news and in the neighborhoods

This week's Crain's Chicago Business has a big cover story, "Foreclosure Fallout," on the impact the subprime mortgage crisis is having in Chicago neighborhoods, both city and suburban. Since you can't read it online unless you subscribe, stay with me here for some of the details.

Over 800 Austin homeowners lost their homes to foreclosure last year, the most of any Chicago neighborhood. Although home prices have fallen in Austin after a steep three-year rise, prospective buyers are finding it harder to get a mortgage due to the credit crunch. Homes sales have plunged to 79 in the last six months, from 192 in the same period the year before.

It's well known that empty houses often become nests of drug dealing and prostitution. I see it firsthand. We have an empty house on my block, and it's been a constant battle to keep squatters involved in those illegal activities out. Right now we're winning, but that could change any minute.

The Crain's story also profiles a pastor fighting drug trafficking in abandoned houses in Humboldt Park and a Logan Square business owner whose cafe, Cherubs, has seen sales fall 20 percent since December.

Times are tough and will get tougher. Many homes bought with adjustable-rate mortgages will shift to higher interest rates over the next two years. This includes the house next door to me, which is in worse shape than mine and costs my neighbors at least $200/month more than mine costs me. They are talking about selling when the mortgage resets, but I shudder to think how hard it will be for them to find a buyer. There's a brand-new brick three-bedroom house across the street that's been on the market for nearly a year.

Despite all the gloom and doom, a few relentless optimists remain in action. One is Carlos Nelson of the Greater Auburn Gresham Development Corporation. I stopped by his office a couple of weeks ago and asked how the mortgage crisis and slowing economy were affecting Auburn Gresham. Rather than give me a long list of new businesses on 79th Street or an explanation of how one person's challenge is another opportunity, Carlos and board member Byam Alexander shifted gears from community developers to rap artists and delivered a quick remake of this famous Public Enemy song:

We ain't in a recession
We in a progression
On the 7-9
Don't. . . don't. . .don't. . .don't believe the hype!

A community slant at Vocalo.org

One of my ongoing interests on this blog is exploring the new forms that communications are taking as the old broadcast and newspaper models fall apart. I can't tell yet how important web/radio might end up, but I'm certainly intrigued by the possibilities being kicked around by Chicago Public Radio's offshoot, Vocalo.org.

One of Vocalo's host-producers, Dan Weissman, told me yesterday that the station stirs things up by trying a new programming format every six weeks. The latest experiment will be a neighborhood-focused program centered around visits to the studio by community activists followed by journeys out to the 'hood to see things and meet others.

Interesting.

It gets started on Tuesday, March 11, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., with a visit from Jermont Montgomery of Imagine Englewood If, an organization that works on projects related to open space, youth and beautification. Two weeks later on March 25, Dan will visit with Ernest Sanders of Greater Auburn-Gresham Development Corporation, again from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Ernest is one of the New Communities Program's most prolific communicators, not simply writing stories and taking photos for the web, but making audio slideshows and using his cell phone to send reports to Vocalo.

To get more people in on that action, Vocalo is sponsoring another of its anyone-can-be-a-broadcaster trainings next Monday and Tuesday, March 10 or 11, at Batey Urbano, 2634 W. Division. "You'll learn the basics, including recording, editing, licensing, music selection, using your telephone as microphone and uploading content to the Vocalo.org web site," said the e-mail I received. "You'll also get to test some inexpensive recording equipment and free software." You can register online at the Vocalo "store" or call 312-893-2956. You can catch Vocalo at 89.5 FM if you live on the far South Side or Northwest Indiana; otherwise the best way to listen is by streaming it on the Vocalo browser. A more powerful antenna will start working this summer, Dan says, spreading the broadcast through metro Chicago.

Where's it all going? Who knows. But it sure is interesting watching the new media evolve.

CNDA report: And the winners are . . .

Carlos Nelson (with his children) won the Norman Bobins Leadership Award.

The best neighborhood development work in Chicago was honored last night at the Chicago Neighborhood Development Awards. A reported crowd of 1,400 turned out for the event, which featured a seriously funny show by Second City followed by the awards and the best cocktail party networking event in town, at least for the community development crowd.

And here's who won:

Lawndale Christian Development Corporation received The Chicago Community Trust Outstanding Community Strategy of the Year award.

Center on Halsted, the new home of the Horizons Community Service Center, received The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Award for Outstanding Non-Profit Real Estate Project.

Chicago GreenWorks received the Outstanding For-Profit Neighborhood Real Estate Project Award for the Rancho Verde industrial park built for Christy Webber Landscapes and other landscaping companies.

The St. Leo's Campus for Veterans in Auburn Gresham earned the Special Recognition Award.

The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Awards for Architectural Excellence in Community Design went to:

First Place: Landon Bone Baker Architects for La Casa Norte's Solid Ground Supportive Housing Building in Humboldt Park, a residential and service center for 16 homeless teens.

Second Place: Stanley Tigerman for the new home of Pacific Garden Mission, which can provide food and shelter for 1,000 men and women a day.

Third Place: Murphy/Jahn for Mercy Housing Lakefront's Margot and Harold Schiff Residences, which provides energy-efficient housing for low-income residents.

The Driehaus Awards are now 10 years old, and in a fitting tribute, Richard H. Driehaus himself won the Friend of the Neighborhoods Award.

And last but not least, the new Norman Bobins Leadership Award honoring emerging community development leaders went to Carlos Nelson, executive director of the Greater Auburn-Gresham Development Corporation.