Dispatches from Chicago's south side.
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| "Once a bustling retail side street, 112th Street sits forlorn." |
Local officials [June 29th] are kicking off a multi-year, $1.5-million-plus campaign to restore some of the glitz to Chatham, a once-prestigious African-American neighborhood that lately has been going through a difficult period.And two major Chicago politicians are backing this effort publicly:
The Greater Chatham Initiative—which will include Chatham, as well as the nearby Auburn Gresham, Greater Grand Crossing and Avalon neighborhoods—is designed to "set them on an upward path in the 21st century economy . . . enhance these communities as places of opportunity and choice," according to a statement released to me in advance.
The money will go into programs to rehab and sell now-troubled apartment buildings, attract middle-income homeowners and operate a new local workforce center that will train and place residents in existing jobs.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel joined U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Chicago) Wednesday to announce an initiative to improve a handful of communities on the South Side, including Chatham, Auburn Gresham, Greater Grand Crossing and Avalon Park.I've been somewhat interested in seeing what can be done to further invest in Chatham and here's hoping that in the next 5 years we will see some progress. I especially would look forward to seeing 79th Street spruced up in the future. It needs it and can be a wonderful commercial thoroughfare for the community.
The two — joined by community leaders, aldermen and other partners — announced the launching of the Greater Chatham Initiative, a collaborative effort to strengthen those South Side communities.
They met at the Chatham Studio Movie Grill, 210 W. 87th St. The main focus of the initiative is to drive investment in those areas and generate neighborhood redevelopment and economic growth.
A proposal to convert the Metra Electric District Line into a rapid-transit line with more frequent stops to serve the South Side and suburbs has drawn the interest of Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who has asked the head of the Regional Transportation Authority to facilitate discussion on the issue, RTA officials said.We've been hearing about grassroots proposals to turn the Metric Electric (aka IC line) into a rapid transit service as opposed to a commuter rail service. It even has two different color designations such as the Gray or Gold Line.
During the transit agency's monthly board meeting Thursday, Chairman Kirk Dillard told a representative of a coalition of South Side and south suburban groups that Emanuel had reached out to him about the rapid-transit idea last month, and that talks had begun.
Dillard said he spoke with Metra Chairman Martin Oberman about the proposal Wednesday.
"The RTA is working with the CTA and Metra," Dillard said after the meeting. "We need to get a handle obviously on the finances, as well as ridership numbers historically in that area. We're in the preliminary fact-finding stages."
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| Via Crain's |
Seaway Bank & Trust is in the early stages of a capital-raising campaign that, if successful, could well threaten its status as the largest black-owned bank in the Midwest.Seaway's closest competitor apparently is Urban Partnership Bank:
The South Side lender has suffered $16 million in total losses over the past five quarters ended March 31. Its capital is below the minimum needed for the bank to be deemed “adequately capitalized” by regulators. To prop it up and enable it to lend actively, Seaway is preparing to select an investment banker to raise what one source says would be more than $15 million in fresh capital.
In an email, a spokeswoman acknowledges the need for cash but won't comment on the amount sought. “Seaway is currently engaging investment bankers for a capital raise,” she says. “We remain committed to our mission and our markets.”
The bank also remains without a CEO since the departure in September of Darrell Jackson, who led Seaway for only a year before his exit. Executive Chairman Veranda Dickens, who has been in charge since the 2013 death of her husband, longtime Seaway owner and Chairman Jacoby Dickens, “is managing day-to-day operations of the bank,” the spokeswoman says. The CEO search “is ongoing and progressing well,” she adds.
Those optimistic words notwithstanding, Seaway has suffered quite a reversal of fortune in the 18 months since Dickens declared that the bank wouldn't need financial help. That came after high-priced consultants determined that the previous management team had made material accounting errors not in the bank's favor. After financials were restated for all of 2013 and half of 2014, a substantial loss was changed to a profit for 2014. Since then, however, losses have piled up, leaving Seaway with just $25 million in equity. At the end of 2014, when Dickens made her declaration, the bank's equity stood at $43 million
It's not assured that Seaway will be able to raise the money, especially when another South Side bank catering to African-Americans, Urban Partnership Bank, also is seeking more than $20 million in new equity.I've attached a graphic regarding Seaway courtesy of Crain's.
UPB—already backed by banking giants JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs—is expected to seek the funds from a group of local and national banks. It's ahead of Seaway in terms of holding meetings with prospective investors and other preparations.
If other banks end up bailing out UPB, that could eliminate an important potential source of capital for Seaway.
And if Dickens does find help, the likelihood of keeping the bank in African-American hands may be remote. The amount of money Seaway needs likely will compel her to seek investors interested in preserving an important city lender regardless of their race.
Chicago has been losing black-owned banks, with two failing in recent years. Another on the verge of failure—South Side thrift Illinois Service Federal, formed during the Great Migration of blacks to Chicago from the South—recently was rescued with $9 million from a Ghanaian-American family.
Members of the 9th Ward Greater Roseland Community Coalition said they fear the potential environmental and health threats the cell tower could bring to the empty lot at 107th Street between Vernon and Eberhart avenues.Of course there's this:
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The neighborhood coalition has been circulating petitions opposing the cellphone tower. Members said they want the land cleaned up and turned into a park and botanical garden.
The city did an environmental screen of the site in 2014 to identify any potential environmental concerns and said the site’s history of pollution doesn’t make it the best location for a garden.This is a nice lot that could see some use in the future. How successful will this group be in getting it cleaned up and hopefully a garden could be placed there instead of a cell tower?
"The site is listed as an abandoned service station, and available records identified several underground storage tank (UST) installations and removals dating back to 1953," a letter from Fleet Management to [9th ward Ald. Anthony] Beale reads. "In addition, at least three USTs were abandoned in place in 1984, and a demolition notice was issued in 1996. Although no releases have been reported for the Site, the majority of the USTs were removed or abandoned in the 1970s and early 1980s, prior to requirements to have spill protection, conduct confirmation sampling, or report releases."
The letter says that since there is no data available to confirm a release hasn't taken place, the tanks "present an environmental concern to the Site."
It was recommended that the site not be used as a community garden because there is “high potential for both current and historic USTs at the site.”
Bryant Payne, a spokesman for Beale, confirmed Friday that the land is contaminated and that before anything is built there, it would have to be cleaned up.
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| Gale School - 1631 W Jonquil Terrace |
The school has been gutted by a funding formula CPS put in place. The school has no technology teachers, no librarians, after-school programs have been gutted and our social worker is hanging on by the grace of his nonprofit.You see what happened there. What do CPS students get at this particular school versus what people who are incarcerated in prison gets? Then it goes further:
You know what they do get in Illinois Prisons? Library Services! Mental Health Services! Educational Services.
So yeah the Governor’s solution of REDUCING funds for CPS is madness, but what he said today wasn’t wrong. If Claypool doesn’t want his schools to be called worse than prisons… FIX THEM!The next question is how many other schools have issues such as these. Not only a building in disrepair but not enough services educational or otherwise for students. I can believe that funding is an issue but that's certainly one one portion of many other issues in such a vast school district as CPS.
“Frankly, the Governor’s comments comparing Chicago schools to ‘crumbling prisons’ are disrespectful and beneath his office.” via Claypool.
You know what is really disrespectful and beneath (their) office? Allowing schools like this to happen, our Mayor owns this.
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| Hotel Florence by John Ruberry |
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| 103rd & Rhodes |
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| 103rd Street between Rhodes and St. Lawrence |
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| 103rd Street between Rhodes & St. Lawrence |
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| Something you may have seen on our ig |
Simeon Career Academy senior Hakeem Day would rather be working with his hands than in the streets.The reporter for this story Andrea Watson has a poll up asking "Should our teens learn the trades?" My answer would be yes, we need carpenters, mechanics, pipe fitters, plumbers, etc. Trades in addition to helping our young people get into college. Different programs and different options.
“I’ve been interested in construction since I was a little kid and this gives me the opportunity to practice for the future because I plan on doing this in the future,” said the 18-year-old Roseland resident.
He is getting that opportunity through a new youth and trades After School Matters program.
Aaron Mallory, 28, of Roseland started the program through his nonprofit God Restoring Order, or G.R.O. He’s working with a group of high school teens from schools including Simeon, Morgan Park and the Noble charter schools
The goal is to improve the community one block at a time by rehabbing the abandoned homes, and Mallory is doing just that with the help of local teens. They’re finishing up work on their first home near 109th Street and Wentworth Avenue.
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11331 S. Michigan Avenue
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• The 95th Street bus, which will combine separate east and west segments to create a continuous route.Also:
• The No. 4 Cottage Grove bus, which will extend service south from 95th Street to 115th Street.
• The No. 71 71st Street bus, which will extend all trips from 73rd to 112th and Torrence, and see increased frequency.
• The No. 26 South Shore Express, which will add earlier and later service.
• The No. 34 Michigan and No. 119 Michigan/119th bus routes, which will add increased frequency during midday and evening hours.
• The Cottage Grove and Ashland/63rd branches of the Green Line will have increased frequency during the a.m. and p.m. rush hours.
The improvements will cost an extra $5.7 million a year and are planned to be implemented in September, but some could be seen as soon as the beginning of the summer, said CTA spokesman Jeff Tolman.Words from the Mayor himself:
“These improvements are related to CTA President Dorval R. Carter's goal of looking at service from a holistic perspective and providing the most effective service possible,” Tolman said. “These improvements will further improve the quality and reliability of service for riders."
“With this expansion, the CTA is continuing the important work of connecting more residents to jobs and economic opportunities,” said Mayor Rahm Emanuel. “This announcement builds on the strides we have made to improve connections to and from downtown. These types of investments help our economy to grow, our neighborhoods to prosper, and our city to thrive – and we will continue to make them to ensure that every resident has an opportunity to succeed.”
Declaring that kids are more important than developers, Cook County Commissioner Richard Boykin today moved to at least temporarily block plans to rebuild the old Cook County Hospital until the county finds more money to prevent gang violence.So is Boykin an example of a grandstanding politician? Or is he doing the right thing here?
But County President Toni Preckwinkle immediately vowed to press ahead with the massive, $500-million-plus proposal to bring a hotel, apartments, shops and more to the Near West Side, a top priority for her administration. And Boykin hinted that he's not interested in obstructing the project as much as using it as leverage to fund things like summer jobs for unemployed youth in his West Side District.
In a news conference attended by several dozen chanting protestors, Boykin said if Preckwinkle can find the time and energy to get the hospital plan under way, she also can get the money needed to help keep young people out of trouble.
"I don't have any problems with redevelopment. But we had 50 people shot and eight killed this last weekend" Boykin said. "Our house is on fire. . . .It's a question of priorities."
When the new subdivisions were rising everywhere here in the 1990s and early 2000s, with hundreds and hundreds of fine homes on one-acre lots carved out of the Georgia forest, the price divide between this part of DeKalb County and the northern part wasn’t so vast.Furthermore:
Now, a house that looks otherwise identical in South DeKalb, on the edge of Atlanta, might sell for half what it would in North DeKalb. The difference has widened over the years of the housing boom, bust and recovery, and Wayne Early can’t explain it.
The people here make good money, he says. They have good jobs. Their homes are built of the same sturdy brick. Early, an economic development consultant and real estate agent, can identify only one obvious difference that makes property here worth so much less.
“This can’t happen by accident,” he says. “It’s too tightly correlated with race for it to be based on something else.”
The communities in South DeKalb are almost entirely African American, and they reflect a housing disparity that emerges across the Atlanta metropolitan area and the nation. According to a new Washington Post analysis, the higher a Zip code’s share of black residents in the Atlanta region, the worse its housing values have fared over the past turbulent housing cycle.
Nationwide, home values in predominantly African American neighborhoods have been the least likely to recover. Across the 300 largest U.S. metropolitan areas, homes in 4 out of 10 Zip codes where blacks are the largest population group are worth less than they were in 2004. That’s twice the rate for mostly white Zip codes across the country. Across metropolitan Atlanta, nearly 9 in 10 largely black Zip codes still have home values below that point 12 years ago.I think this is definitely worth a read. Is this happening in the city?
And in South DeKalb, the collapse has been even worse. In some Zip codes, home values are still 25 percent below what they were then. Families here, who’ve lost their wealth and had their life plans scrambled, see neighborhoods in the very same county — mostly white neighborhoods — thriving.
“I don’t think it’s anything local residents did that caused that to happen,” Early says. “I think it’s all outside forces that did this.”
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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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| http://bennettes.org/ |
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| Alderman Anthony Beale |
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| 200 E. 99th Street |
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| 200 E. 99th Street |
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| Looking from 98th & Indiana |
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| 82nd/King Drive by Worlee Glover |
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| Go Falcons! |
Neighborhood schools weren’t working in many neighborhoods at the bottom of the economic ladder. So, Chicago embraced public school choice. But that isn’t working either for kids on the lowest economic rungs. Charters can kick kids out for low performance, behavioral problems, etc. and they do that a lot.I wonder if some of these issues involved with the neighborhood schools include Harlan. I'm very sure that they might and it also have some undeserved reputation for violence. I say it's undeserved because over the years they attempt to emphasize the students who got something going for themselves with college and the scholarships for example.
I happen to think charters can be a great thing. But, man, the costs sure are high to run all those new schools. And innovators like Kansas City are also having some very real problems.
Hope Dealers, a non-profit organization that aims to help areas through community service. The group was created by Corey Hardiman, a Morehouse graduate and native of Southside Chicago. Although looking to eventually expand, the group for the past three years has primarily performed service in Southside Chicago, Ill.
Millionaires are leaving Chicago more than any other city in the United States on a net basis, according to a new report.And then it got more interesting:
About 3,000 individuals with net assets of $1 million or more, not including their primary residence, moved from the city last year, with many citing rising racial tensions and worries about crime as factors in the decision, according to research firm New World Wealth. That represented about 2 percent of the city's high net worth individuals....
Chicago was among four cities worldwide with the biggest flight of millionaires.
Most of the millionaires who left Paris and Rome fled their countries, while Chicagoans moved elsewhere in the United States, said New World Wealth, whose data is used by luxury-goods companies, private banks and real estate professionals, among others.The question is now what's going on in our fair city. Why are there fears of racial tension? Why are the more wealthier Blacks leaving the area entirely and taking their resources with them?
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Findings of the New World Wealth report are consistent with a Nielsen study released late last year that showed Chicago is losing large numbers of affluent African-Americans.
The Nielsen report found that the Chicago area has fallen out of the top echelon of U.S. cities when it comes to the percentage of black households earning more than $100,000. In 2000, Chicago ranked seventh among the cities with the largest percentage of black households with income at that level or higher, but in 2015, Chicago had dropped out of the top 10.
Students from Pre-K to PhD by not providing a fair funding formula for all students in Illinois to the withholding of MAP grant monies to state run university students.
Fair wages for the workers at McDonalds,
Moving of jobs from the United States to Mexico (Nabisco)
The building and expansion of prisons instead of schools in Illinois as well selling off public education to the private sector.
The lack of pension funding because City and State governments did not pay their portion and used the taxes to fund those pensions with the promise to pay it back......over more than 20 years.........and never did.
