Dispatches from Chicago's south side.
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| 7711 S. Lowe St. - John Ruberry |
The notoriously-violent Englewood neighborhood sits on Auburn Gresham's northern border.In taking pictures of the many abandoned houses, two-flats, and vacant lots he also has nice things to say about Father Michael Pfleger's St. Sabina parish:
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According to the Chicago Tribune Auburn Gresham is tied for eighth in violence of Chicago's 77 official neighborhoods over the last 30 days.
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During the 1960s Auburn Gresham went from being predominately white to being majority black. The Encyclopedia of Chicago says blockbusting and panic peddling were less of a problem than in other Chicago neighborhoods at the time. At the start of the decade my grandparents moved to the more prosperous Beverly neighborhood on the Southwest Side. Ironically, the South Side Irish Parade, which originated in A-G, followed my grandparents to Beverly.
Blacks were barred from most white neighborhoods by covenants that prohibited home owners from selling to them. Click here to read a 1929 letter from the ominously named Auburn Park Property Restriction Association, Inc. which explains an Anti-colored Restriction Agreement to John Wagner of Englewood. Covenants were ruled unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court in 1948.
When Auburn Gresham is in the news, particularly nationally, it's usually has something to do with St. Sabina Church, where committed leftist Father Michael Pfleger has served as pastor for an unheard of, at least in the Archdiocese of Chicago, 35 years. Pfleger. who is white, has worked on projects with radicals such as the Nation of Islam's Louis Farrakhan and Barack Obama's former minister, Jeremiah Wright.And here's a shot of it!
However Pfleger, despite allowing a personality cult to envelope him, has his merits. The church compound also includes a large senior residential complex and a grade school, as well as social service, job training, and technology centers. That brings a whole bunch of people to the St. Sabina complex, which is near the intersection of 79th and Racine, and that corner has noticeably more retail activity than the rest of Auburn Gresham. The church, in a way, boosts 79th and Racine in a way that monasteries did to nearby towns in the Middle Ages.
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| St. Sabina - John Ruberry |
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| Concept of the Ashland BRT |
The city can stick to its plans and push for federal funds to build what would be the nation’s most advanced “bus rapid transit” line. The project would transform Ashland Avenue, beginning with a 5.4-mile leg that would connect several passenger rail lines before they reach the Loop and, planners say, spur economic development that benefits the entire Chicago region.I can only wonder what the benefits would be when the CTA finally builds the full 16 mile BRT route? Would there be any benefits on the South Side especially through Englewood and further south than that?
But there could be significant collateral damage, especially to the trucking operations of companies in an historic industrial corridor along the route.
The Chicago Transit Authority says the BRT line, which could eventually lengthen to 16 miles, would cut the average Ashland bus ride time roughly in half. But some companies in the Kinzie Industrial Corridor and a few large retailers nearby say they would struggle too much to make and receive deliveries and keep customers flowing in. The companies are pushing hard for the Emanuel administration to eliminate some of the project’s key features for speeding up bus service.
Along the route’s initial leg, which would stretch from Cortland Avenue to 31st Street, the competing interests are obvious.
Just outside Rush University Medical Center, one of four major hospitals in the Illinois Medical District, a half-dozen patients and staffers huddled in the cold one evening this week at a bus stop. They included Larry Coldiron, a Rush computer consultant who lives near Midway International Airport and gets to ride the CTA’s Orange Line train for most of his commute. But his trip home starts with the Number 9 bus down Ashland — the city’s most heavily used bus route. He said the 2.5-mile journey between the hospital and train usually takes 45 minutes.
“I’ve been doing this for 16 and a half years and it just keeps getting worse,” Coldiron said.
The BRT project would bring big changes. The buses would have a lane to themselves on both sides of a landscaped median. To keep the buses moving through intersections, most opportunities to turn left from Ashland would be eliminated and many traffic signals would favor the buses. Passengers would board from platforms averaging a half mile apart. The CTA is also aiming for pre-paid boarding to eliminate lines in bus doorways. The project’s environmental assessment says the BRT buses would move up to 83 percent faster than today’s buses.
“I’d like to see it,” Coldiron said. Service that fast could attract some of his coworkers who now drive and pay for parking around the hospital, he said.
The CTA is trying something new at one of its ‘L’ stations — a produce market.Via Curbed!
CTA riders already can buy plenty of newspapers, coffee, doughnuts and candy at many CTA stops, but now one train station will be selling apples, bananas, citrus and salads. It’s not in a trendy neighborhood, either, but at the hardscrabble Ashland/63rd terminal on the Green Line.
It’s a one-year experiment by Lunderman Produce, but if it works, CTA President Forrest Claypool said you might see more. What he hopes he does not see is more apple cores and garbage aboard Green Line trains as a result.
“We don’t want people littering our trains and eating their fried egg sandwiches on the train,” he said. “That’s just common sense.”
