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.

Contest: "What Makes your Place Great"?

Placemaking Chicago is having a neat little contest for the best photo/250 word essay on what makes your place great. I love little contests like this and want to encourage other entrants. For more info, click here. Here was our submittal:

West Haven is a proud community on the Near West Side. Over the summer a group of students from Crane High School are working to restore our community garden. Led by their high school teacher, the garden will be dedicated to a local community hero of ours, Mable Manning. Mable helped save our community from being wiped out in the 1980s for a new NFL stadium.

What makes our place great are all of the community members working hard to improve West Haven everyday. We got together to create a quality-of-life plan called West Haven: Rising Like the Phoenix and are now in the process of implementing this plan. The community garden is adjacent to our library (the Mable Manning Public Library) and runs along our cultural corridor. Touhy-Herbert Park, the Boys and Girls Club and Major Adams Community Committee are all down the street.

The students responsible for all of the hard work are responsible for the garden design as well. Many of the design principals that Projects for Public Spaces advocates for are taken advantage of. Flower beds, vegetable beds and even benches will be part of a good garden made great with helping hands.

Video: Why Kids Enjoy Neighborhood Sports

A lot of community agencies and sports programs have been working flat out preparing for Spring Into Sports, which runs April 4 to 11 at four Chicago high schools (Crane, Little Village Lawndale, Englewood and Orr). Learn more at Neighborhood Sports Chicago, but first, take five minutes to view this video fresh from the smoking-hot computers of Sarahmaria Gomez and Alex Fledderjohn of TuMultimedia.

It will make you feel good, I guarantee it.

(If this video doesn't feed well for you, try the YouTube version.)


Neighborhood Sports Chicago! from Tu Multimedia on Vimeo.