Indianapolis delegation visits Auburn-Gresham
Ed Finkel
Published: July 29, 2005
GADC and fellow New Communities Program agency Greater Southwest Development Corp. co-hosted a roughly 35-person delegation from Indianapolis city government, foundations, LISC, community development corporations and neighborhood associations, who toured the neighborhoods and asked questions.
Their purpose: to learn as much as possible about NCP to help replicate it in Indianapolis. "We thought this is where they could learn the best," said Caroline Gaston, facilitator with the Annie E. Casey Foundation, which funded the trip. "They're saying, 'We're ready. What do we do next?' … To see it in action really strengthens that thinking."
Joel Johnson of SOS Children's Village shows one of the homes to visitors from Indianapolis.
Photo: Steve Geary
Bill Taft, program director for LISC/Indianapolis, said his office is poised to fund pilot quality-of-life efforts similar to the New Communities Initiative, a three-neighborhood effort in Chicago that preceded the broader NCP efforts.
"We'd sort of known in the back of our heads that this [quality-of-life approach] would be the right way to do it, but we hadn't seen anybody who had done it that way," Taft said. "We came up here to gather ideas that would inform what we're doing."
Carlos Nelson, executive director of Greater Auburn-Gresham, told those assembled that they would be hearing a tale of two CDCs: the successful, 30-year-old Greater Southwest, and Nelson's much newer organization – formed in 2001 – which aspires to follow in Greater Southwest's footsteps.
Nelson said participation in NCP had enabled his organization to accomplish much more in a short time than it otherwise could have, and enhanced existing partnerships with key players like Ald. Latasha Thomas (17th), Fr. Michael Pfleger of St. Sabina's Church, and Terry Peterson, CEO of the Chicago Housing Authority and former alderman.
Bringing back businesses
The SOS Children's Village integrates foster families, biological parents and housing for other families into a single development.
Photo: Courtesy Greater Auburn Gresham Development Corp.
Pfleger boarded the bus briefly to share his vision of bringing back the businesses that left Auburn Gresham in the 1980s and '90s. He said it bothers him when fellow pastors explain their lack of contribution to their community by noting their members live elsewhere.
"I say, 'Then move your church,' " Pfleger said. "I tell my members: 'I don't care where you live. This [parish] is our assignment by God.' "
Ald. Thomas, who rode along for the 90-minute bus tour, outlined a similar vision, saying she wanted "to bring the community back to where it was when I was growing up," when it teemed with bakeries, restaurants, stores and other businesses.
Nelson said the Auburn Gresham plan focuses on creating locally owned business clusters along 79th Street, which had been bereft of much beyond liquor stores and hair salons. At the corner of 79th and Morgan Street, for example, there are now eight African-American-owned businesses.
The delegation also saw a bowling/skating/arcade complex that opened in 2001 on Chicago Park District land at 76th Street and Racine Avenue, representing an investment of $10 million. "This is one of the jewels in our community," said Thomas.
In the 500 block of West 76th – on what had been vacant, contaminated land – is the S.O.S. Children's Village, a mixed development that contains 16 two-flats for foster parents and children (on the second floor) and biological parents (in garden apartments).
"They're never separated if they don't choose to be," said Joel Johnson, the village's chief operating officer. Foster parents work to coach the biological parents on skills they will need to fully reunite their families, he said. "We want to teach her how to fish, if you will, and not just feed her."
Another 24 units are privately owned but indistinguishable from the foster-care units, selling for $155,000 for single-family homes and $210,000 for two-flats. Nelson said the partnership between his organization and Thomas' office was critical in creating the development.
Chicago Southwest
A few miles north and west, the Indianapolis group received a rapid-fire, on-the-ground history from Greater Southwest's longtime executive director Jim Capraro, who has visited and consulted with the delegation.
Jim Capraro (left) briefs visitors on his agency's work over 30 years.
Photo: Joel Bookman
Capraro showed them the Jewel grocery store at 63rd Street and Western Avenue that opened after six years of negotiations in 1985 and a nearby movie theater that opened in 1997. In total, Greater Southwest has brought $100 million in retail development along Western, Capraro said.
"People say, 'It looks normal.' We say, 'Thank you. Sometimes it's a lot of work to be normal,' " he said.
That work has included a number of hard-fought battles, to keep the Nabisco plant on Kedzie Avenue that produces most of the world supply of Oreo cookies, for example, and to gain approval to site the StyleMaster factory, an African-American/female-owned plastic molding company at 77th Street and Columbus Avenue, on a piece of land that hand been used as an illegal dump for construction waste.
Capraro also pointed out the "model bungalow block" on which Greater Southwest, the City of Chicago and other partners rehabilitated five bungalows to show how their historic and attractive designs can be updated for 21st Century needs and environmental requirements.
"What they've done in Greater Southwest has been inspirational for us," Taft said.
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