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.

Want the Story Right? Do It Yourself

The Tribune ran a nice story by Jon Davis this morning about Spring Into Sports, noting that the program kept 1,500 students busy – and out of trouble – during spring break.

But you can't please everyone. Earnest Gates, one of the event's organizers and executive director of the Near West Side Community Development Corporation, thought Davis missed the bigger point: that the finals took place at Crane Technical Prep High School, 2245 W. Jackson Blvd., just 13 months after student Ruben Ivy was killed at the school.

Here's Gates' email: "They didn't talk about Crane hosting the finals and having this diverse group of young people from across the city competing in a healthy environment. No fights no arguments just fun and a competitive spirit. Crane has received a bad rap because of the young men who were slain near the school last year. The finals marked a turning point in the perception of the school."

He's right. Last month we ran a story on newcommunities.org about how Crane has become a "safe haven" in the neighborhood, and I saw for myself on Saturday that under new Principal Richard Smith, the school is a different place than it used to be.

But with the Tribune cutting another 20 percent of its already gutted staff, and the Sun-Times bankrupt, we can't look anymore to the big media to tell these stories. If we want to get the word out about something going on in the neighborhoods, we're going to have to do it ourselves.

What They're Saying at Spring Into Sports

In the news biz you listen for "good quotes." During the first days of Spring Into Sports, the drop-in-for-fun-and-competition festival going on during spring break in four violence-prone neighborhoods, I've been getting an earful.

"They feel like superstars." That was longtime activist Jenice Sanders at Englewood High School after Sunday's opening ceremony, with 200 in the stands, that featured the Imani African Dance and Drum Troupe (photo) and her own creation, Englewood Idols, the talented local singers who had made the cut down to 14 finalists.

"That was awesome." A child at Little Village Lawndale High School after time in the pool.

"They act at first like they're too cool to play volleyball, but once they get started their competitive juices kick in." That was Oji Eggleston at Crane Tech Prep, talking about the b-ball players who got serious at the volleyball net.

I counted about 155 kids and adults at Crane on Monday afternoon in the two gyms, hallways and food room. It was more than just a good natured and safe environment. There and at the other venues the youth were not just learning new athletic skills but social ones as well, from taking on something they hadn't done before to interacting with other youth and adults. Even the teenagers sitting in the stands, waiting and watching, that looked good to me too.

Top photo of Orr High School participants by Juan Francisco Hernandez. More photos here.

Mapping for Neighborhoods, the Google Way

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If there were a prize for Innovative Use of Web Tools by Community Organizations, I'd have to nominate Michael Quinlan of Near West Side Community Development Corp., who is an aggressive user of embedded videos, slide shows and photos to spread information about the West Haven neighborhood.

Now he's gone and placed the area's attractions on a Google "My Map," which is a remarkably easy-to-use tool to literally walk people right up to places that you want them to see. Click on the markers above and you'll see what I mean.

Intrigued? Here's a Google training video to get you going on your own maps. You need to have a Google account, and to embed photos or video you'll have to upload the material to a sharing site like Flickr or YouTube.

We'll pass on more examples as we create them. If you build a map or know a good one, please share with our readers.

St. Leonard's House

Eight months ago, my photographer partner and I decided to embark on a short video documentary on St. Leonard's House, a residential program for ex-offenders in Chicago's West Haven neighborhood. After talking to the residents and staff for only a few short hours, I knew that this story was something special and that it would take more than a couple shoots to get across just how important this organization is to the future of our community.

This 54-year-old grassroots organization helps ex-offenders rebuild their lives according to individual needs--everyone who works and lives there is focused on a positive future. Whether visiting a group therapy session or job training program, I could feel the hope around me. No one is forced to be there-- St. Leonard's is a place of recovery, growth and honesty. Twenty percent of residents return to jail, compared to more than 50 percent nationwide. It is one small example of what an organization can do when it focuses on people rather than numbers.

St. Leonard's House truly changes lives... those of formerly-incarcerated individuals and everyone who is touched by the incredible work that they do.


If you have a high-speed Internet connection, you can view a high-quality version at:
http://www.tumultimedia.org/tu/projectpages/stleonards.html

Two more takes on youth violence

Photo by Alex Fledderjohn

A big event took place at United Center this weekend as the Near West Side Community Development Corporation kicked off its Safe Summer Basketball League. A table next to the stage was covered with 30 pairs of gym shoes, representing the youth lost to violence this school year in Chicago. Earnest Gates delivered a heartfelt speech about this loss to society, and how youth can choose the "shoes of success" instead.

The league's games will be played on Thursday afternoons at Crane High School, where 18-year-old Ruben Ivy was killed on March 7. Check out the speech below.




Another take comes from Community Beat contributor Maureen Kelleher and Gabrielle Lyon in a story from Catalyst-Chicago about Jason Gill, a boy whose curiosity and drive wasn't enough to escape gang violence in his Back of the Yards neighborhood.

"Putting people on the street who know the neighborhood and are trained to interrupt violence works," wrote Kelleher and Lyon. "How many more times will we leave young men like Jason Gill to play the odds before we have the strength to do what we know is right?"

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.