'Nothing About Us Without Us'

One quote stuck with me after the Chicago Neighborhood Development Awards were given out last night to honor some very impressive projects, organizations and people. It came from Marca Bristo, the longtime president of Access Living, a cross-disability organization governed and staffed by a majority of people with disabilities.

Access Living's new headquarters at 115 W. Chicago Avenue, designed by LCM Architects, LLS, received second place in the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Award for Architectural Excellence in Community Design because it incorporates features that "make the spaces and their functions visible, audible, chemically neutral and easy to navigate for people of all statures and levels of mobility."

The design works well, Bristo said, because the architects worked very closely with Access Living staff to understand the needs of the people who would work in the building or come to it for services. Bristo noted a South African proverb sums up the lesson:

"Nothing about us without us."

It's an anthem used often in the disabilities community but it applies equally well to community development work. If you want to do something useful in a community, it must be done – from planning to execution – with the community.

Back of the Yards Grows Into Community Planning

The many successes of the New Communities Program show what a neighborhood can do once it has a plan and the energy to move it forward.

But how do you get to that point? It's a great question in neighborhoods like Back of the Yards, the original home of community organizing thanks to the great Saul Alinsky. Unfortunately, this once-mighty powerhouse of community work has been through tough times in the last 40 years, weakening many anchor institutions. Though the community still has a very homey feeling among neighbors, changes in population and five ward boundaries cutting up the turf has definitely reduced the sense of political and civic empowerment from what it became in Alinsky's day.

However, much has been done over the last decade or so to build community and raise the neighborhood's profile with city leaders. Very recently, the Peace and Education Coalition of Back of the Yards and LISC have been working together to assess community needs and develop recommendations to address them. Through the fall of 2008, the coalition held seven focus groups with neighborhood stakeholders: religious leaders, principals, police, businesses, social service providers and residents.

From these discussion, three key needs emerged:

A new library/community center
A recreational center for youth, especially those living south of 47th Street
A job development and training center

Last Thursday about 18 people gathered at the Park Federal Bank branch at 47th and Honore to discuss these recommendations and hear a little about next steps. There was some disagreement among the group about how to prioritize the three needs--business reps wanted the job center first, but there has been a longstanding push among neighborhood leaders to get the library (now located in the 47th & Damen shopping center) into a larger and more centrally-located space. However, everyone agreed that these three needs should be top priorities in planning use for available spaces, especially buildings near the intersection of 47th and Ashland, a neutral space among warring gang factions and a key commercial and transit hub for folks in all parts of the neighborhood.

The developer of the Goldblatt's building at 47th and Ashland attended the meeting and gave an update on what's moving in there. The Famsa furniture store is already open, a Bally's is coming, and the rest of the space will be independent senior housing. (Maybe there will be some storage space there, too. My notes are a little hazy, sorry.) There is some chance an Athletico rehab office might coexist with the Bally's, he said. The same developer owns the recently vacated Aronson's Furniture building on Ashland just north of 47th. He said they have one solid tenant with a letter of contract in place, and another in process, but couldn't say more.

There's a lot we don't know yet about where the space will be, how getting it built or rehabbed will be financed and accomplished, nor who exactly will provide all the programming. There was a lot of discussion about having the Chicago Park District run community center programming. A couple of us who know the local parks and work with young people here in the neighborhood were concerned that their staff-to-youth ratios are too high to ensure safe, quality programming and positive youth development.

Consultant Jim Capraro told us about a skating rink at 76th and Loomis that is park district operated with serious local oversight and seems to be doing a good job. "It's very different from most park district facilities," he promised. Some of us hope to go visit and see it up close for ourselves.

Finally, an interesting sidelight at the meeting was there's suddenly interest in getting a bike shop open in the neighborhood. In an effort to beautify a vacant storefront opposite Park Federal, Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council's Craig Chico had a nice facade painted on the front proclaiming, "Back of the Yards Bike Shop." I wasn't the only one at the meeting who wanted to know when the bike shop would open. Based on how many kids come borrow my air pump, I'd bet there's a good market here for bike sales and repairs.

So, Alex Wilson, know anybody who wants to open something similar down this way? The Council would be glad to talk to them.

New life blooms in Washington Park

One remarkable thing about the final planning "summit" in Washington Park on Saturday morning was that the big room at St. Edmund's Church was almost full by 9:30 a.m. despite two inches of fresh snow outside. Another was that after a full year of sometimes-contentious planning meetings – and at least six detailed rewrites of the evolving plan – the crowd was as enthusiastic as ever. These 50 people and about 170 other participants had gotten to know each other across the months of talking, touring and debating the future of their community.

And they were feeling pretty good about the whole darn thing.

The meeting itself was almost perfunctory. After Alderman Willie Cochran welcomed the crowd and cracked a few jokes, community leaders ran through the high points of the plan and then declared the formal part of the meeting over. But there was "Willie's Chili" in crock pots on a table in back, and flowering bulbs in decorative pots for everyone to take home, and sign-up sheets for each of the strategy areas.

People talked, committed themselves on the sign-up sheets, talked some more, took photos and promoted their latest programs. They did business, talked about the economy and wished each other a happy holiday.

They hung together for more than an hour talking about all the things that people in a healthy community talk about, and to me, that's a pretty clear sign that the planning process worked. Now the hard work of implementation can begin.

Read Richard Muhammad's full report on the Washington Park NCP web site. Also thanks to Richard for the photos.

The potential of a new web site

Lynda Jones (right) keeps track of the discussion in the Health and Wellness group.

Lynda Jones presented the brand-new Washington Park NCP web site today to about 65 participants at the neighborhood's third community planning meeting. The site went live late yesterday after about a month of intensive work loading stories, photos, maps, directory listings and calendar items.

As program manager for Washington Park NCP, Lynda jumped right into the decision-making process on the web site, sorting and editing and making decisions about what content would be most useful for users. That's a big trick to web site creation: it's not really a technical job, though there are always glitches and tricks that you have to get past. Building a web site is fundamentally about presenting information, and to do it well, you have to make choices.

Lynda and the leaders of Washington Park NCP have a nice tight focus for the site. First, it will be the central repository for information about the Washington Park planning process -- meeting reports, lists of goals, and drafts of strategies and programs as they are developed. Second, it will be a "neighborhood portal" where residents and others can learn about who's doing what. That includes business and organization listings, of which there are more than 100 already, a calendar of events, stories and plenty of photos about what's going on this summer and beyond.

Today's meeting provided a preview of what's to come. At the youth and education breakout group, Torrey Barrett of the K.L.E.O. Community Center told about how on a recent Friday afternoon, the organization's staff decided to do a barbecue for themselves to celebrate the weekend. They started cooking outdoors "and 20 or 30 kids showed up and asked if they could have some food, so we sent someone to the grocery store for more food and ended up spending five hours out there with the kids, talking and hanging out."

The breakout group liked the possibilities here, and suggested a summer schedule of "corner actions" that would have different organizations and churches sponsoring barbecues on Friday nights, but not just for themselves. All groups would be invited to round up kids from the local corner or anywhere else and bring 'em on over. Their families would be invited, too, and once there the hosting organization could promote its programs and meet others with similar goals.

"Collectively, we've probably got enough things going to keep the youth busy all summer long," said Barrett.

If you want to track how this idea plays out, visit the web site at washingtonparkncp.org. With information from enough neighborhood residents and institutions, the web site could become a binding force as the community plans (and implements) its future.