A North Lawndale development group is picking up where Dr. Martin Luther King left off when he came to Chicago in 1966. King and his family moved into a tenement apartment at 1550 S. Hamlin on the city's West Side to protest the lack of affordable and decent housing for poor urban blacks during the civil rights era.Read the whole thing and check out the plans for this project.
Some 40 years later, the West Side still grapples with the lack affordable housing. But the Lawndale Christian Development Center aims to change that. The center plans to develop the site where Dr. King stayed during the summer of '66 into affordable rental housing. But the project does not mean a completion of his dream for affordable housing.
"His dream was that every person should be able to live in decent housing," said Benjamin Kendrick, of the Marcy-Newberry Association, a member of the MLK Taskforce, which spearheaded the project.
"By no stretch is this a fulfillment of his dream, but this certainly becomes our attempt at doing our part to see to it that the dream and struggle continue," added Kendrick, executive director of the association, a 125-year-old community social services agency.
Called the MLK Apartments, the 45-unit mixed-use development will have commercial/retail space on the ground floor with two-, three- and four-bedroom apartments on the upper levels. The development will include green space, rear parking, a community room and Internet access. Lawndale Christian plans to break ground on the project this September.
Dispatches from Chicago's south side.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
City, residents dream of King memorial district
What do you think of this story courtesy of Austin Weekly News:
1 comment:
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The Lawndale Community Development Corporation (the Austin News is off a bit) is connected with Lawndale Community Church as well as the Christian Community Development Association, where they incorporate faith as a fundemental part of economic development.
ReplyDeleteI passed on info about the CCDA to Pastor of new Covenant Missionary Baptist Church. It sounded like some doors were opening...but i had to leave it in God's hands (and not try to take control and "help guide").
it's certainly something we could use.
If our churches were connected & organized, we could see a lot happen in our own neighborhood.