Dispatches from Chicago's south side.
An early-morning fire on the city's South Side put seven people out in the cold, and some were rescued from the fire without their clothes on.
As CBS 2's Kristyn Hartman reports, the outcome of the blaze at 9654 S. Indiana Ave. could have been significantly worse, but quick thinking and quick action by passersby saved the day.
The fire broke out around 1:45 a.m. at the Indiana Avenue house, fire officials said.
Some people who live in the area and happened to be passing by apparently heard the smoke detectors and smelled the smoke. They grabbed a ladder alongside the house and helped a man who was trapped inside escape the smoke and flames.
After the rescues, the situation flared up severely. Firefighters said the flames spread up to the attic from the basement through the walls, and the roof collapsed.
In all, seven people were displaced, including three children under the age of 10.
One firefighter who slipped on the ice and fell and three men in the house suffered minor injuries. One was taken to Advocate Trinity Hospital because of exposure. When he got out of the home, he had little to no clothing and no shoes.
The other two injured men suffered cuts
This is actually an old shot taken almost three or so years ago of the Jays plant that was closed recently. This looks like a nice sunny day when the photo was taken. Another shot I found on Flickr.
Spelman College is a four-year liberal arts woman's college located in Atlanta,Spelman's Glee Club will be here in Chatham at St. Mark United Methodist Church on Friday March 14 at 7pm.
Georgia. The college is part of the Atlanta University Center academic consortium in Atlanta. [1] Spelman holds the distinction as America's oldest historically black college for women.
BY FRANCINE KNOWLES
Leonard and Donna Harris, founders of Chatham Food Center have had some "aha" moments, since linking with the program.
"The primary 'aha' was that as a CPA and MBA from the University of Chicago, I'm thinking that I'm an entrepreneur. I came to the understanding that I wasn't," Leonard Harris said.
"I was a small-business operator No. 1. No. 2, I wasn't a growth business. I was a lifestyle business, but the third thing was as long as I was working in the business and wearing all these hats and not necessarily doing any of them really well, I was never going to grow the business."
The Harrises opted to hire a general manager to run things at the store, so they can fully take advantage of the program.
Since being in the program, they've examined research conducted by the Local Initiatives Support Corp./Chicago, which found that in 12 South Side communities, roughly $250 million is spent on groceries outside those communities because of the absence of stores.
That's opportunity, the couple said.
"Our goal is to come up with a new model, to open stores in a couple of different communities simultaneously," said Donna Harris.
They envision their stores as anchors in the development of new South Side shopping centers that include other businesses that meet the needs of inner-city communities. That way, dollars that are now leaving will stay.
"What this program is all about is jump-starting, revitalizing small businesses in the community for the purpose of economic development," Donna Harris said. "We're talking about employing people from the community, about wealth creation, about being a part of the revitalization of communities, so it's about more than just opening more grocery stores."
A Chicago family is pleading for a hit-and-run driver to come forward Saturday night. Police say Bobby Jackson died after he was hit by a car and dragged several feet. CBS 2's Mike Puccinelli reports.
"It's hard to tell my mother that my brother was gone," said Matthew Jackson.
But it was Matthew Jackson who was first notified by authorities that his brother was dead. So it was up to him to give his sister and Bobby Jackson's four kids the bad news. As hard as it was to tell them, it was harder still to tell his mother that her oldest son was dead.
"Telling her was hard," Matthew Jackson said.
That's because the facts are almost too horrible for words. Bobby Jackson was killed at about 3 a.m. Saturday by a driver at Damen Avenue and Garfield Boulevard who didn't care enough to stop and instead dragged Jackson some 20 feet before speeding from the scene. So Saturday evening, Jackson's family appealed to the drivers conscience.
"I know whoever did it, they couldn't have hit him and think it was nothing," Matthew Jackson said. "Turn yourself in. Turn yourself in. "
At the south side school where Jackson worked as a security guard and coach, there was an emptiness in the hall that mirrored the emptiness Jackson's colleagues were feeling upon learning of their co-worker's sudden death.
"Pretty devastating," said Ted Tines, dean of Harlan High School. can't replace a man like that.
Another Chatham neighborhood house with a fence extended all the way to the curb on an adjacent street. I suppose it's protecting the lawn, but of course it doesn't affect people who are only using the sidewalk. This is one of YoChicago's Flickr pictures which asks who do you have to be in order to get away with a fence like this?
Some say commercial projects will come to black neighborhoods, but they won’t arrive as quickly as they have in the city’s white communities. Retail experts say big-box developments are likely to make more appearances in black areas, like the Target in Chatham and the Wal-Mart opening in 2006 in Austin.BTW, Ald. Lyle was in this. Hey if you're going to talk about this talk about a mostly middle class area that is starved for these opportunities but won't get it because the perception exists that where blacks live it's the ghetto. How little people know. You know I should include 5th ward Alderman Hairston as well...
With their success, other smaller stores are likely to follow, said John C. Melaniphy III, formerly of Melaniphy and Associates, a retail consulting firm. “Look how long it took for retailers to go on Roosevelt Road, to serve the South Loop after all of the housing was developed,” he said of the area that has sprouted a Jewel and a Target in the last five years. Much of the area’s upscale housing has been there for years.
Mary Pattillo, author and associate professor of sociology and African American Studies at Northwestern University, believes that shopping choices for blacks should improve. “I think there is starting to be more attention paid to that and I think that would bode well for the future,” said Patillo, who attributes some of the spark to the realization among retailers of an “incredibly” untapped market.
“Of course this is happening at a time when many neighborhoods on the South Side are gentrifying, many of the closer mid-South neighborhoods,” said Patillo, who has studied Chicago’s black middle class and is finishing a book on North Kenwood and Oakland.
Leslie Hairston was brimming with ideas after winning the election to head Chicago’s 5th Ward in 1999. She surveyed constituents to find that they wanted shops like Starbucks, Old Navy, and Bed, Bath and Beyond. Starbucks was a popular symbol of city life and social status, but none of the company’s stores was located in a predominantly black area, like Hairston’s 5th Ward.And how about a local area business owner...
She contacted the city’s planning department and was rebuffed. “I was looking for their assistance in making the connection,” she said. “They didn’t say no. They said it was far-reaching.”
Around the same time, retired NBA star Magic Johnson was launching a line of Starbucks in underserved parts of Los Angeles and New York City. Hairston phoned a longtime friend, who worked for Johnson, and arranged a call with him that day. Five years later, in July 2004, they were able to get a Starbucks at 71st Street and Stony Island Avenue---the first to arrive in any of the city’s black neighborhoods. “There were a couple of times that we were told we were going to lose them,” Hairston said. “It is pretty comical that, in an African American neighborhood, it takes five years to get a Starbucks. And, on the North Side, they’d operate out of a shoebox if you’d let them.”
...
Still, some black aldermen say much of their energy is devoted to attracting businesses to their wards. They find themselves trailing city staff to the annual International Conference of Shopping Centers convention in Las Vegas each spring to establish contacts with major retailers, some of which are arranged through Retail Chicago, a city program designed to assist developers with retail market opportunities.
“It was like a job fair. Very few were very serious,” said 6th Ward Alderman Freddrenna Lyle, who made the trip in 2000. “They were like lemmings. They were saying, ‘If Target comes, we’ll come.’ Somebody will have to take the first step.”
...
But there are several smaller establishments flourishing in black neighborhoods that keep away better tenants, some said. “The dollar stores are replacing [shuttered stores] like rabbits,” said Lyle. “You’re not going to get a Gap to come in and open next to the dollar store.”
Musa P. Tadros was 10 years old when his family moved from Jordan to an apartment at 45th Street and Union Avenue in the 1970s. The family opened its first grocery store, where Tadros would ring up sales, mostly Tombstone pizzas, for his grade school classmates during lunch. After school, he’d return and work until 9 p.m. “I felt I was stuck in the grocery store business,” said Tadros, who went on to partner with his brother to open more grocery stores. But the grocery industry got competitive. “Walgreens started selling bacon and bread,” he said. “They were taking business from us.”Well apparently it's a slow process and it's very unfortunate!
Tadros altered his business plan, got a realtor license and began developing property. The Target project started forming in August 1993 when he paid $3 million for the 17-acre site at a bankruptcy sale. The project has been his largest to date.
Initially, he was snubbed by Target. “We’re working on our A-list right now and, when we work on our B-list, I’ll give you a call,” Tadros said he was told. “Some felt they didn’t want to be in a rough community. ‘That’s a risk. We don’t want to take that chance.’”
But Tadros didn’t buy it. He had operated Horizon Foods there for years without major problems. “It was a safe community,” he said. “I think corporate America didn’t figure they could make money in the black community until six or seven years ago.”
An example of a home in the Chatham Club development a couple of blocks south of 87th Street between the Dan Ryan Expressway and Indiana Avenue. These houses have been around for the better part of a decade. The lot used to be a Canfield factory and this area is surely but slowly losing the more industrial aspect that it once had.
I took this pic almost a couple of years or so ago. It looks like an office building a little doesn't it? It's somebody's house. It's amazing that something so big can fit on a relatively small lot in a neighborhood full of middle-class single family homes. This is on 87th Street a block away from the Dan Ryan.Rod Blagojevich, tax cutter?Tomorrow I might gather more info about this budget. I'll keep them all in one post.
Illinois’ unpredictable governor is reaching for that mantle, unveiling a proposed fiscal 2009 state budget that dangles the prospect of a credit for families with children and for some businesses while jacking up taxes on business overall by far more.
The $31.7-billion spending plan relies heavily on a series of tried-and-true Blagojevich fiscal tactics, including closing business tax “loopholes,” a proposed partial privatization of the state lottery and heavy borrowing. At the same time, it has a new twist: Most notably for business, the possibility of a one-year, 20% cut in the corporate income tax.
Lawmakers are just hearing of the governor’s plans and were not yet prepared to comment, but key elements of Mr. Blagojevich’s proposal have been floated and shot to pieces by the General Assembly in previous years, and this plan is likely to get a rocky reception.
The good news for taxpayers in the proposed budget is that the governor wants to duplicate in Illinois the child tax credit recently enacted nationally by Congress in an effort to stimulate the economy. The refundable credit of up to $300 per child for dependents under 17 would apply to any family earning up to $150,000 for a couple and $75,000 for a single parent.
More info on Chicago style Bungalows here. Perhaps there might be more about neighborhood bungalows on this blog.
I haven't decided whether or not I'll post this e-mail icon on the blog itself or not but expect to see this link courtesy of Contactify in the near future. That way you won't have to worry too much about having to remember the email address just to send us a message. OK!Chicago Public Schools officials said Thursday they need an additional $180 million in state aid to balance the fiscal 2009 budget. But they stopped short of threatening to shut schools, lay off teachers or take other severe steps if the money doesn’t arrive.
In a news conference that provided the first peek at finances for fiscal 2009, which starts in September, schools CEO Arne Duncan said the system faces a hole of $340 million in its $5-billion budget — mostly due to rising costs, but also because of a few new spending initiatives.
Mr. Duncan said he’s already identified $90 million in achievable administrative cuts, partly by shrinking support staff to mirror declining enrollment. CPS would take in $50 million from drawing down reserves and $20 million in proceeds from a higher property tax. That leaves a potential shortfall of $180 million.
Mr. Duncan called on state lawmakers to “step up and do the right thing.”
Arguing that Illinois pays a smaller share of the local school bill than almost any other state, Mr. Duncan said legislators and Gov. Rod Blagojevich — who rarely agree on much of anything — need to “find the political courage to put education on the agenda.”
Mr. Duncan conceded that won’t be easy, given that the state faces severe fiscal problems of its own with a reported $600-million to $700-million deficit in this year’s budget.
But Chicago schools have worked hard to raise student test scores and physically rebuild schools, and the system has operated for 25 years without a teachers’ strike, he said.
Chicago schools got an additional $130 million in state aid last year. The city system generally gets about 20% of the state’s school dollar, so boosting Chicago aid by $180 million would imply a $900-million increase statewide, an unlikely figure without some major new state revenue source.
These monthly meetings rotate throughout the ward, so each area has a chance to meet with the Alderman near their home.
Park Manor has just 3 people
Englewood , though a small part of the 6th, has 52 members!
Chesterfield, West Chesterfield & Roseland Heights aren't even mentioned.
There are also "groups". The Uptown neighborhood for example has at least two, as well as for Uptown Baptist Church (several different) and block clubs like Clarendon Park. The 6th ward doesn't have one specific to the area. One of the largest is calle "I was raised on the south side, therefore I am better than you." Started by white youth from the Beverly area, it has attracted people from all over the South Side, who might not think of the South Side as being "Irish" for example.
How about your neighborhood? Are you on Facebook?For more than a year now, GPS systems on board the CTA Route 20 buses have helped riders log onto real-time maps and arrival information. Called Bus Tracker, the pilot program can even be accessed via Blackberry at the bus-stop.
But the same system putting bus arrival times in the palm of our hands can also be a useful tool to those trying to avoid bus bunching in the first place.
"If there's a problem that looks like it is going to appear, this allows us to take more preventative action," said Wai-Sinn Chann of the CTA.
From the CTA's command center it's possible for controllers to use Bus Tracker to see gaps in service along the route, theoretically notifying field supervisors what's happening, who then can take appropriate action, for example delaying departures of buses on bunched up routes.
The program is still in its infancy, but also in recent months the CTA has given its drivers on all routes new power to navigate around a bunch.
"Drivers are now allowed to pass each other up to adjust their schedule so they do something called leap-frogging," Huberman said.
Small moves like leap-frogging have helped the CTA reduce bus bunching by 8 percent over the past few months. But the goal is double digit reductions and the CTA admits that will take time, all while commuters like Goedde are losing time at the bus stop.
Far below the radar of the presidential primary, voters also decided some intensely local turf battles in Chicago’s 50 wards, electing Democratic committeemen.Does this mean that we'll see the emerging Jackson "dynasty" coming into it own being a force to reckon with in the future? We'll have to see! They can't keep pouncing on the Beavers machine just to prove they are.
Being a ward boss doesn’t come with nearly the clout it meant in the golden era of machine politics, as the power of local ward organizations has declined sharply under Mayor Richard Daley.
But defeat in a committeeman race can hasten the fall of a local elected official, while victory can help an unstable new council member solidify his or her power base.
In the 7th Ward, freshman Ald. Sandi Jackson won a landslide victory over incumbent committeeman William Beavers, a county commissioner. The win helps further consolidate power in South Side black wards in the alderman’s husband, U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.).
Daley Voices Support For Obama, Urges Voters To Follow
Suit
CHICAGO (WBBM) -- Mayor Daley is joining other local officials
campaigning for Barack Obama on this day before the crucial Super Tuesday
primaries.
WBBM Political Editor Craig Dellimore caught up with the Mayor at a South
Side pancake house.
After enjoying breakfast at Chatham Pancake House with Senate President
Emil Jones, several Aldermen and others, Daley worked the room. He urged voters
old and young to support Barack Obama and vote for delegates committed to
Obama. Illinois is not a winner take all state when it comes to democratic
delegates.
And, like the African-American officials by his side, the Mayor bristled at
any suggestion that Obama’s strength lies mostly in the African-American
community. He says there are strong Obama supporters throughout the state and
the nation.
Still, the Mayor sees Barack Obama as an underdog, much like the Giants in
Sunday’s Superbowl. He can beat the odds, suggests the Mayor.
Chicago aldermen spent today grilling the CTA over a proposed hike in the city's real-estate transfer tax.
It's little wonder aldermen scrutinized the real-estate transfer tax hike proposal so closely. It would cover a $2 billion bond issue for CTA pensions and retiree health funds.
But Alderman Isaac Carothers says, as the proposal stands now, the city gets little in return.
CAROTHERS: I'm of the opinion that if you're going to be taking this much money from the City of Chicago, that we need to be involved in the process of who's going to be handling and doing this underwriting for this two billion dollar deal.
In particular, aldermen want minority and woman-owned firms to do half of the bonds' investment work. The CTA says it can not guarantee that, but will return with an updated agreement Wednesday. That's when the full city council could vote on the real-estate transfer tax hike.
In one of the vids that I presented on Monday, Alderman Lyle mentioned that her service office actually used to be a small grocery store. Interesting isn't it! They cycle of a small business sometimes they just fade away and close.
Hey I took a bus there once to buy a city sticker so it's very accessible by public transportation. Of course to the west is some eating establishments but the only one I'm most familiar with is Lem's BBQ. Of course the area also has some bar/lounge action as well. That is if you feel like going out for a drink or a good night on the town!
I know that office location changes from Alderman to Alderman in ward but would this office be considered a ward seat of sorts. Meh, why make that distinction anyway?
