"Grand Crossing at a Crossroads"

From yesterday's Chicago Tribune...

Armed with clipboards and briefing manuals, a team of urban planning experts spent a week walking the streets of a Grand Crossing neighborhood on the city's South Side.

The approximately 15-block triangular area near South Chicago Avenue and West 71st Street has tidy, well-groomed homes and ramshackle properties. Cordoned off from the rest of the South Side by railroad tracks and a cemetery, it has limited nearby shopping options and business development.

Its shining star is the Gary Comer Youth Center, 7200 S. Ingleside Ave., which opened in 2006 and is usually buzzing with children.

"They saw in five days what I've seen living my whole life," said resident Pat Caldwell, president of the neighborhood group CARE (Revere Community Actively Reaching Each Other): namely, a tight-knit community with active residents but few
opportunities for youth.

Residents, aided by community improvement organizations, wanted to see if change was possible and enlisted experts from the Urban Land Institute, a Washington-based non-profit that promotes responsible use of land and helps in creating thriving communities.

It sends experts to 15 to 20 areas each year. It has recently assessed redevelopment options at a Dallas mall as well as helped a developer of a housing, retail and academics project in Biloxi, Miss., make it more sustainable.

"The panel will help fine-tune the vision that the [Grand Crossing] community has for itself," said Molly Sullivan, a spokeswoman for the Chicago Department of Community Development. The city, along with the Neighborhood Capital Institute and the Gary Comer Science and Education Foundation, paid for the experts' visit.

The team comprised architects, market planners, developers and urban experts. long with almost 50 community leaders, business owners, educators and residents, they pored over statistics, crunched numbers and brainstormed ideas. Then they presented a report covering such things as street safety, business development and recreation, at the Gary Comer Youth Center last week.

Forgo more new housing, the panel urged, because the market is flooded with recently constructed housing and foreclosed properties. But it suggested a community center at Hoard Park to provide a gathering place for youth and promote use of the park.

"It's good to have a panel of experts on the same page as the community," Caldwell said. "They echoed some of the things we knew already, but they had some good ideas."

Among the recommendations:
--Create vocational training opportunities.
--Create a distinct neighborhood "heart," such as a park.
--Improve the streetscape with trees, bus shelters and beautification of a cemetery wall that stretches along West 71st Street.
--Develop sustainability initiatives, such as community gardens where people can buy fresh vegetables, and weatherization programs for residents.
--Promote cultural elements, such as Leo's Den, which hosts notable jazz performers.

Once the community decides which improvements to pursue, it hopes to get funding from the government and private donations. "This is a reality check," said Michael Beyard, a senior resident fellow at the Urban Land Institute. "It's not just a wish list of what we want in the community, but a check list for what can happen in the community.

"There are challenges: foreclosed homes -- 80 in the 15-block neighborhood with a 40 percent home ownership rate; high dropout rates; and limited activities for youth. Elaine Morrison, who moved to the Grand Crossing neighborhood in 1962 when she was a teenager, said she remembers when there used to be a grocery store. The now-derelict South Chicago Avenue, at one point, had a hair salon, a tire shop and a shoe store.

"Back then, we really had a sense of community," Morrison said.The neighborhood does have one very strong asset: the Gary Comer Science and Education Foundation, established in 1998. Comer, founder of clothing catalog retailer Lands' End, grew up in the neighborhood and graduated from Revere Elementary School in 1942. He died in 2006 at age 78.

Comer invested about $100 million in the Greater Grand Crossing community area. In addition to the $33 million youth center, his support has paid for $7 million in renovations at Revere Elementary and a housing initiative that includes construction of 90 affordable, single-family homes. The foundation recently purchased vacant land to construct a high school.

Bill Schleicher, vice president of the foundation, said Comer initially wanted to find a permanent home for the renowned but itinerant South Shore Drill Team. That was being reactive to community issues, but now the foundation wants to be proactive in its efforts to help youth, he said.

"What we found is that the problems in the school reflect the problems and challenges in the community," he said.