Saturday, April 29, 2017

Thursday, April 27, 2017

EnglewoodRising.com is live #englewoodrising

Was announced last night via Mrs. Aysha Butler ig (@mrs_englewood) who is the President of the Resident Association of Greater Englewood. There have been hints of this with other posts on ig with photos of Englewood Rising billboards around greater Englewood - which had been regrammed on The Sixth Ward's ig.

Support the good folks of EnglewoodRising.com and with great hopes that this will prove to be a success in rebranding that community.
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Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Ashland/63rd CTA bus boarding 1975

With all the good news coming from Englewood it seems this blog has been posting a lot of news from that community. Even reposting from those Englewood folks who are on ig.

Today we share this ig post from the Chicago Transit Authority a scene from 63rd/Ashalnd. Riders boarding the 110 Marquette bus to 71st/Pulaski back in 1975. I got to see if that bus got cut in later years. It's even noted that the Ashland/63rd Green Line station is the terminal for some Red Line trains during rush hour period as work is underway to revamp the 95th/Dan Ryan Red Line terminal.
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Tuesday, April 25, 2017

Jewel-Osco is coming to 61st/Cottage Grove


Brian Berg / MK Communications / Jewel-Osco
On Monday, it's news that there are plans to upgrade the CTA green line terminal at 63rd & Cottage Grove. You saw that post Tuesday morning, and then on Tuesday afternoon a new development out of Woodlawn. A new Jewel-Osco coming to 61st & Cottage Grove.

Tribune writes:
Jewel-Osco is planning to open a grocery store in the West Woodlawn neighborhood, with expectations for job creation and an influx of outside commerce into the South Side community.

The announcement comes on the heels of the highly anticipated September opening of a Whole Foods Market in nearby Englewood. The same developer, DL3 Realty, is set to work on West Woodlawn's Jewel.

The 48,000-square-foot grocery store is planned for the northwest corner of 61st Street and Cottage Grove Avenue. It is set to fill one of the last undeveloped parcels of the old Grove Parc Plaza, once a dense string of federally subsidized apartments that the nonprofit Preservation of Affordable Housing, or POAH, has been redeveloping for the better part of a decade.

The dilapidated Grove Parc Plaza buildings were demolished in phases, said Bill Eager, POAH's Chicago-area vice president. The Boston-based nonprofit has built or is developing 260 housing units in their place and has bought or rehabbed another 250 units so far.

The redevelopment plan also included bringing other businesses, like Jewel, into the area, Eager said.
Now we move on to some social media posts. Something I wish I had the foresight to do when the aforementioned Whole Foods Market Englewood was announced back in 2013.

Curbed Chicago: CTA to upgrade Cottage Grove station on Green Line

While I'm glad that the CTA green line stop at 63rd & Cottage Grove is finally getting the attention it deserves in light of increased investment in the Woodlawn community, here's hoping that one day in the near future we can revive the green line beyond Cottage Grove. After a two year closure to rebuild one of CTA's old rail lines this part of the green line was contracted to Cottage Grove with the remaining portions of the line ultimately removed.
Mr. Greg Hinz has lots to say about this project and of course lots of questions.

 Since I brought up what happened to the segment beyond Cottage Grove [VIDEO]
EDIT 11:25 PM - Should've added this post from the Mayor's ig page. Here it is from Monday's announcement of the upgrade of the Cottage Grove green line stop

Monday, April 24, 2017

President of R.A.G.E. featured on a documentary about Whole Foods Market Englewood #teamwfm

Below I will share both screencaps shown from the R.A.G.E. instagram page. Unless someone from R.A.G.E. corrects me there didn't appear to be any advanced notice that this documentary was going to are on WCIU Too! Hopefully as indicated in the gram that was reposted to The Sixth Ward's ig we may learn about future replays.

The Whole Foods store in Englewood has been open since September 2016 to great fanfare.

Disclosure: One of the bloggers here is a Whole Foods Market team member.
A post shared by R.A.G.E. (@rage_englewood) on

A post shared by R.A.G.E. (@rage_englewood) on

Thursday, April 20, 2017

The former St. Nicholas Church in Roseland

You might see this reposted onto our ig page. In the meantime here's Eric Allix Rogers photo of this vacant church in Roseland at 113th Place and State Street.

There are some great buildings and architecture in our communities. Someone out there appreciates them, if only there was a way to keep these buildings in use so they won't meet the wrecking ball.
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Monday, April 17, 2017

Chicago Reader: South Shore is Chicago’s eviction capital

The Chicago Neighborhoods

Newsalert shared a tweet from Chicago Reader with the heading: "Why Chicago's South Shore went from middle class neighborhood to the city's eviction capital." 

The tweet which will be shared at the end of this post is a link to an article discussing the high number of evictions in South Shore. Now I just want to share the context of Newsalert's heading:
South Shore's high concentration of sprawling, multiunit apartment buildings owned by large property companies and its high poverty rates appear to explain the neighborhood's dubious distinction. The area's housing stock consists mostly of multifamily apartment buildings, and nearly 80 percent of the occupied housing units are rentals—20 percent more than the proportion of renter-occupied housing units in the city as a whole. And according to the 2014 American Community Survey, half of South Shore households live on less than $25,000 per year.

Development booms at the end of the 19th century and in the 1920s combined with early 20th century white flight to shape South Shore's built environment. As more African-Americans settled in other parts of the south side, middle-class whites flocked to the lakefront. This led to the construction of stately apartment buildings in the neighborhood, especially on South Shore Drive, which runs along the water, and in Jackson Park Highlands, the area between the southern edge of Jackson Park and 71st Street.

Until the 1960s, South Shore was a middle-class neighborhood and more than 90 percent white, but by the 1980s the racial balance had completely reversed: South Shore became 96 percent black, though it remained middle-class. In recent years, however, the median family income in the neighborhood has steadily declined.

These economic realities have presented challenges for South Shore residents as rent prices in the area have climbed. According to a recent report by the DePaul Institute for Housing Studies, South Shore has one of the largest gaps between the supply and demand of affordable housing in the city. And, according to data analyzed by Chicago magazine, though the median rent price in the neighborhood is below $1,250 per month, some 64 percent of South Shore's 22,700 households are rent burdened, or paying more than 30 percent of their monthly income for rent. Even though more than 5,000 South Shore households have Section 8 vouchers, which provide a federally funded housing subsidy, the need for rental assistance doesn't come close to being met.
I will do one better here a reply to that tweet. Perhaps one answer to who - that is the leasing companies - are filing these eviction orders. The article itself is worth reading.
 

Friday, April 14, 2017

Englewood Good Friday Peace Walk

Occurred Friday afternoon starting at St. Benedict located at 340 W 66th Street. R.A.G.E. shared some pictures on their instagram profile. This is with Chicago Archbishop Blase Cupich.
A post shared by R.A.G.E. (@rage_englewood) on
UPDATE 10:36 PM - Forgot to add this tweet from ABC 7's Stacy Baca

Thursday, April 13, 2017

AP: Cardinal Cupich to lead Walk for Peace through Englewood

via @cardinalbcupich
This is certainly good publicity for the Englewood neighborhood via AP:
CHICAGO - The Archbishop of Chicago will lead a Walk for Peace through the Englewood neighborhood on Good Friday.

Cardinal Blase Cupich has invited Chicagoans to join him in tracing the Stations of the Cross and pausing along the way to remember the victims of violence. Pope Francis pledged to accompany participants in prayer as he walks the Way of the Cross in Rome's Colosseum that day.

A statement from the archdiocese says the walk has been organized as an opportunity for people to come together and demonstrate the power of peace through prayer in the wake of continued violence in the city.

The walk will begin at 10:30 a.m. Friday in front of St. Benedict the African Church .
Such a short article and helped me break my rule regarding copying whole articles.

Either way to have a Catholic Cardinal or a Chicago Archbishop come to your community to take an interest in the issues of violence is big news. Hopefully with this publicity things change, and at least for Englewood they are in a steady fashion. I hope this results in plenty of press coverage.

St. Benedict is at 340 W 66th Street.

Charges filed in death of Cook County judge in West Chesterfield

You can read the most outspoken comments of Second City Cop:
So...not random, as in targeted.

And targeted why? Judges aren't usually notoriously rich.
So from the Tribune article 2nd City Cop linked from:
At a news conference Wednesday evening at police headquarters, Chief of Detectives Melissa Staples answered few questions, emphasizing that the investigation remained "open and ongoing" and that more details would come out in court Thursday. But she did call the attack on Associate Judge Raymond Myles and his girlfriend "a targeted robbery." However, Staples wouldn't say whether it was the judge or his girlfriend who was the target of the robbery.

According to the Cook County state's attorney's office, Joshua T. Smith, 37, was charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder, aggravated battery with a firearm and armed robbery.
...
Police would not identify Smith's role in the attempted armed robbery, but multiple law enforcement sources told the Chicago Tribune that he acted as the alleged getaway driver.
As the cop blog stated at least one down and apparently two more to go...

Monday, April 10, 2017

Judge was killed this morning in West Chesterfield

Judge Raymond Myles RIP
The worst part about find out about this story is that I first found out about it on a widely-read right wing blog: Instapundit.

If you don't want to go to that site, there's Jack Leyhane's For What it's Worth blog. The blog typically follows the Cook County judicial politics.

According to an article from the Chicago Tribune, the fatal shooting occurred on the 9400 block of South Forrest and is said to be a suspected attempted robbery.

Thursday, April 6, 2017

Governor's race 2018

JB Pritzker has thrown his hat in the ring as far as next year's Democratic primary is concerned. He won't the only wealth candidate to run, it was in the news that Chris Kennedy - who formerly ran the Merchandise Mart & a member of the famous Kennedy political family - announced that he raised over a $1 million as he himself is running for Governor.

Pritzker who comes from a family that owned Hyatt hotels is far from the first person to enter this race. This is news for us because in a video shown on twitter he's meeting the electorate around the area especially at transit stops. For example you will see he made his way to 95/Dan Ryan to meet with commuters, it's an important stop for politicians apparently with all the traffic going in and out of the CTA terminal there.
With this said, the times we're living in Illinois is certainly an unhappy situation. Whoever runs and ultimately becomes the Democratic nominee for Governor will have to face a wealth first-term Republican governor. They also will have to answer any questions regarding the budget impasse and what they would do differently. Also from whatever damage from the impasse as a result they have to have an answer as to what they'll do to fix the damage.

The Root: CPS clarifies Mayor Emanuel's "New Education Plan"

I'm glad that when I tweeted this story and then clicked link there were some updates to it. Some of the plan I like as far as allowing CPS students some leeway as far as their future plans. To be honest of only this policy was in force when it was time for me to figure out my path. Please click link in the tweet embedded below.

Tuesday, April 4, 2017

Our municipal flag at 100 years

Today the Chicago flag - that you see in the header above - celebrates 100 years. You can read more about the flag and it's history over at Curbed Chicago.