By Ben Joravsky
The project, targeted for undeveloped city-owned land along Halsted just south of North Avenue, is part of a larger effort Mayor Daley calls his Near North Redevelopment Initiative. Twenty-five years ago it would have been hard to imagine a project of this magnitude that was mixed-income and claimed a mainstream politician like Daley as its champion. As recently as the late 1970s, most of the land around Cabrini was written off as an unsalvable slum. But three decades of development–sparked by the 1960s movement of hippies into Old Town–have shattered the myth that whites won’t move into black neighborhoods. Now the area’s booming, and low-income tenants feel under siege, likening themselves to Indians whose land was stolen by European colonists.
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Last year Daley made residents a promise: in place of Cabrini’s high-rises, he would build an economically and racially integrated community of single-family homes, town houses, condos, apartments, shopping centers, parks, and schools in which displaced CHA tenants would be as welcome as anyone else.
“Why would anyone do this? Well, first of all there is a financial incentive–this is a big real estate transaction,” says housing commissioner Julia Stasch. “There’s also a psychic reward. To have bid on the project means you really want to participate in the renaissance of Chicago.”
Though the opposing plans described at Steppenwolf resembled each other in design and financing (a combination of federal tax credits and other government subsidies), the two teams’ differences in presentation were dramatic. Southwest opened with a dazzling high-tech slide show of town houses, mid-rises, play lots, and single-family homes clustered around open space. The five presenters, including Abrams but not McLean, pledged that at least 40 percent of all contracts would be awarded to minorities. “This is a unique challenge not just locally but nationally–a true mixed-income development,” Abrams said.
“Put it on the table,” someone called out.
“What you see is what you get,” Gates said after Howell sat down. “I lived in Cabrini for over 20 years. I got my mother, a sister, aunties, and uncles there…”
