Broad Shoulders Update

Thursday, July 29, 2010

John McCarron

Doing mixed-use redevelopment in a less-than-affluent city neighborhood is never easy. Most often it’s downright difficult.

And then there’s Uptown’s Wilson Yard.

“This is a win-win situation, but it took over 12 years,” said a seemingly relieved Mayor Richard M. Daley at a July 20 grand opening of a sparkling Target store that anchors the ambitious Wilson Yard project in the North Side neighborhood.

As redevelopment projects go, this one was the Battle of the Marne. The much-delayed project had to overcome entrenched opposition and changing economic conditions. It required creative new development strategies … and forged an unlikely but effective new political alliance.

Ultimately Wilson Yard got done because its key players – the mayor and the alderman, the developer and an array of committed funders and lenders – knew the project was right for the neighborhood and never gave up.

Not even when the final version of the project, a version that emerged after dozens of tweaks and several major changes, required one of the more complex financing packages in memory. 

“We have 18 different layers of financing,” declared master developer Peter Holsten, president of Holsten Real Estate Development Corp.

Crucial to keeping the project alive early-on, he said, was predevelopment funding from LISC and, down the home stretch, federal New Markets tax credits (NMTCs) arranged by LISC and Maryland-based Enterprise Community Investment Inc.

Altogether the $151 million project spans two blocks along 4400-4500 N. Broadway, including land once occupied by a huge Chicago Transit Authority rail maintenance shed destroyed by fire in 1996.

Besides the new 200,000-square-foot Target store, Wilson Yard features an Aldi grocery, smaller storefront retail spaces, and two mid-rise affordable-rent apartment buildings.

One is a 98-unit, single-bedroom setup for seniors over 55; the other an 80-unit, pro-family structure (e.g.: a second-story indoor playground next to the laundry room) where apartments have two and three bedrooms.

Fight over TIF
It was this inclusion of so many subsidized apartments that sparked much of the opposition to the project, including a lawsuit, since dismissed, that attacked the way the project was financed. That’s not surprising.

In recent years Uptown has been divided, politically and economically, between wealthy professionals attracted by the neighborhood’s lakefront condos and renovated 19th century greystones, and less-affluent minorities and Appalachians drawn by easy access to transit and the area’s many affordable, if unglamorous, walk-up apartments.

Since her election in 1987 the latter faction’s leading advocate has been 46th Ward Alderman Helen Shiller, who early on sparred with Mayor Daley over the need to slow gentrification and preserve affordability.

In recent years, however, the two have begun to work together on several development issues, thanks in large measure to their mutual support and defense of the Wilson Yard project.

“We’ve shown other communities what can take place in community development,” the mayor said at the grand opening, nodding to Shiller. “Nothing is done overnight. But now other aldermen and community groups will come here and say: 'It was a 12-year struggle but look what they’ve done. They have affordable housing, they have retail, including smaller businesses; they have everyone working together.' ”

Opponents did not attack directly the idea of subsidized housing but instead filed suit to block the city’s use of tax increment financing, or TIF, as a way to raise the bulk of the city’s $54 million contribution to the project.

Led by a group called Fix Wilson Yard, opponents argued the derelict CTA property would have been developed by private investors without city aid, and that TIF financing prevents new revenues from flowing to schools, parks and other governments that depend on the property tax.

Similar criticism of TIF has been made repeatedly in a periodic series on TIF published by the Chicago Reader, a progressive weekly that frequently takes an anti-gentrification, anti-Daley stance.

Ald. Shiller’s coalition
But Ald. Shiller was careful to build her own broad coalition of community groups in support of TIF and of the Target-Aldi-affordable housing mix. 

“We came up with what we wanted in the request for qualifications,” she said of the many meetings and hearings she helped organize dating back to 1998.

Shiller saved her highest praise for developer Peter Holsten, who “bent over backwards” to accommodate changes sought by the community, including a never-realized attempt to feature a multi-screen cinema.

She added that Target proved “remarkably flexible” in working with the community, eventually including a “green” roof shaded by decorative plantings, and a training program through which scores of local residents will join the 350-person workforce of cashiers and stock clerks with the possibility of future advancement.

Besides enabling Wilson Yard, Shiller said, $14 million in project-generated TIF funds will subsidize off-site rehab of affordable housing, along with development of a student center and parking deck at nearby Truman College.

Besides LISC and Enterprise, Holsten credited a list of lenders and funders such as Uptown’s local Bridgeview Bank, Chicago Community Loan Fund, Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase, Alliant Capital, the Illinois Housing Development Authority, the Federal Home Loan Bank, the Chicago Housing Authority, and the City of Chicago, plus Target’s $33 million investment.

Target turnaround

Mayor Daley, who has debated those who seek to keep “big box” retailers out of the city, called Target “a great corporate citizen.”

His aides cited several examples, such as a Target program to subsidize school field trips, and another that funds “school library makeovers” like one soon to be completed at Uptown’s Brennemann Elementary School.

The main benefit of the Uptown Target, the chain’s 10th store in the city, may be its squeaky-clean image and ability to draw shoppers back to what once was a preeminent neighborhood retail and entertainment district.

“We believe our businesses will prosper because of the people Target will attract,” affirmed Yolanda Holmes, who operates the “Nappy Heads” beauty salon two blocks to the south.

She also told the grand opening audience that she and her children “now have a safe and stable home” in the family apartments of Wilson Yard.“It’s been a struggle but it just shows if we all work together, everything is possible.”

All of which sounded about right to LISC/Chicago Executive Director Andrew Mooney, who, with LISC finance specialist Barbara Beck, helped advise the project through its many twists and turns.

“It’s been a long road,” said Mooney, “but in the end, well worth the trip."

Now it’s Canadian geese that are covered in oil, and Michigan fish that are dying en masse.  And it’s 80 miles from Lake Michigan, and at this point it’s headed this way.

Meanwhile, the same energy company whose pipelines have ruptured in Michigan and Wisconsin is building a pipeline through central Illinois.

Some features of the oil spill on the Kalamazzo River are familiar – the company minimizing the scope of the disaster, the CEO declaring “significant progress” in cleaning it up, the charges of inadequate response, the news that warnings of corrosion were ignored and that inspection records are “spotty at best.”

This time, though, it’s also part of the desperate drive to profit from Canadian tar sands oil, with potential costs to the Midwest that are significant.

We noted a number of problems with the tar sands project last year – ammonia and mercury-laden sludge to be dumped in Lake Michigan (by BP) in order to refine the stuff; the threat to central Illinois farmland from a pipeline transporting it to the Gulf of Mexico; and of course the strip mining of Canada’s ancient, pristine boreal forests, one of the great carbon storehouses on the planet. (Read Naomi Klein’s description of the devastation involved in extracting oil crude from tar sands.)

Now add oil spills to the list.  Tim Martin of AP lists several spills at Enbridge Energy pipelines in Wisconsin in recent years.  The company paid a $1.1 million fine last year to settle charges that it violated state permits protecting wetlands and waterways.  Phil Mattera has a detailed rundown of the company’s environmental record at Dirt Diggers Digest.

Enbridge, the same company responsible for the Kalamazoo spill, is now pressing to build a pipeline through central Illinois to move tar sand crude to shipping points.  Kari Lydersen wrote about it in 2008.

It’s part of a partnership to develop a pipeline system to get Canadian crude to the Gulf.  The partners are Enbridge and BP Pipelines, Inc.

In May 2009, the Illinois Commerce Commission approved the Enbridge proposal, over the objections of local farmers.  It postponed action on a staff recommendation that Enbridge be granted the power of eminent domain.

When a federal judge ruled in favor of the company’s easement claims earlier this year, an attorney representing landowners vowed to appeal.

One observer predicts that oil spills will become more frequent as we increasingly tap hard-to-reach oil sources and transport it much greater distances.  That doesn’t sound like tar sands oil is part of the solution.

More at Tar Sands Watch.

Shopping for a home?  Need advice to avoid foreclosure?  There will be three free seminars in August:

• Foreclosure Counseling :  Thursday, August 19th – Maywood
• 1st Time Homebuyers:  Tuesday, August  17th – Bellwood
• 1st Time Homebuyers:  Tuesday, August 24th  – Oak Park

ALL Seminars are open to ANYONE from Illinois. Each Seminar will be from 7p-9p and pre-registration is strongly encouraged.  Please call Marz Timms at 708-848-7150, ext. 116 to register and for seminar locations, or

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2010 Annual Awards Reception
Celebrating 30 Years of Serving Chicago Tenants

October 7, 2010
at Sidley Austin

Keynote Speaker: Michael H. Schill,
Dean and Harry N. Wyatt Professor of Law
University of Chicago Law School

Awards:
Barbara Grau Tenant Advocate of the Year
Volunteer of the Year
2010 Friend of LCBH
and more

Upcoming webinar: “Sidewalk Design”

The second webinar in the Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center (PBIC) series, Designing for Pedestrian Safety, will take place on Tuesday, August 3 at 1:00 p.m. CDT.  The webinar, “Sidewalk Design,” will cover pedestrian safety and design issues related to sidewalks and walkways, ADA requirements, and treatments to reduce pedestrian crashes, improve pedestrian mobility, and increase pedestrian activity.  The webinar is free.  More information and registration is available at the PBIC website.

Are you keeping your head above water, financially? If you answer "yes", good for you. A more likely answer, especially in economic times such as these, is either "no" or the even more likely "I honestly do not know".

The Social Impact Research Center has created this brilliant thing called the Illinois Family Budget Calculator, which allows you to calculate how much family with X number of members, living in X part of Illinois, would need to earn in terms of hourly, monthly, and annual wage. With this calculator a person can enter their family size, place of residence, family income including any public supports, and a few other details and the calculator will produce a single-page report explaining how your household is doing when compared to what is known as a self-sufficiency standard for your area, what public benefits you may be eligible for, and compares your families income to the official poverty line for a family of your size.

In 2009, the Social Impact Research Center published Getting By and Getting Ahead: The 2009 Illinois Self-Sufficiency Standard which analyzes and illustrates the cost of living for families of various sizes in each county of Illinois. This report is unique in that it utilizes the actual costs of food, housing, health care, transportation, taxes, and it produces a minimum budget for a family- How much do you need to earn just to make ends meet. Meaning that the families will be able to pay rent but cannot afford a birthday cake, or pay down a personal debt, or put down a security deposit on a new apartment, or save toward a child's college education.

But this report does not just display income goals, it also presents income realities. For example, the report offers self-sufficiency wages for different counties and then compares them to the $8.25 state minimum wage and the $8.26 poverty wage (meaning the wage that a person would need to earn in order to hit the poverty line). A single-parent household with one preschool age child and one school-age child in DuPage County has a self-sufficiency wage of $29.34/hour (the highest in the state)- More than 3 times the poverty wage or the state minimum wage. The same family in Edgar County has a self-sufficiency wage of $12.78/hour (the lowest in the state), which is a little more that 50% higher than the minimum wage and the poverty wage.

All of this is important for the family to know, there is also a larger issue that is being illustrated by this report: The official poverty wage is woefully inaccurate in terms of the actual cost of living.

For one, the poverty line, while sensitive to family size, blankets not just the state of Illinois, which we have illustrated has widely varying levels of minimum income to survive, but blankets the entire country. In addition to that, the poverty line is well below the amount that a family would need to earn in order to survive in any county in the state of Illinois. In Edgar county, even if a family is earning 150% of the poverty line and therefore meeting the self-sufficiency standard for the county, remember that the self-sufficiency standard is an absolutely no-frills income level. There is still no way to pay down debt or save toward the education of children, which means that there is little chance of that family to get beyond scraping by, which means that should there be an illness, or... say, an economic downturn in which people lose jobs and businesses close down, that family has no leeway, no flexibility, no safety net. They are done.

So, what is to be done?

Well, first it is important for people and families all over the state to take stock of their situation. Find out if you are eligible for income supports and find out where your income places you in terms of income stability in your county.

Second, this country needs to adopt a poverty line that is based in the reality of people's lives. The Supplemental Poverty Measure, which is currently being developed by the United States Census Bureau, will take into account the local cost of living, public aid, and other aspects of real life. This new measure will give us a real sense of impoverishment in our state, and a real sense of what we need to do to help those people living in the greatest economic instability.

Sunday, August 29th.  Just another late-summer day in the city.  How great could it possibly be?

Will there be history?  Yes.

How about the chance to see great Chicago architechture?  Of course.

And beer? Will there be beer?  And music?  Oooooh, you bet.

But most importantly, what if I want cowbell?  Hup-hup!

The Boulevard Lakefront Tour (BLT) and xXx-Racing-AthletiCo's first ever tag-team cyclocross race are both happening on the same incredible day, August 29, 2010.

Don't look at this as a conflict, but as an opportunity - two insanely great events that will go great together!  Starting at 7am, Active Trans' venerable ride offers an up-close and indepth experience of Chicago's world renowned architecture and historic boulevards.  Travel by bike down oak-lined streets, awash in the morning rays, and see first-hand why Chicago is considered the birthplace of modern urban planning.  Choose from four different routes ranging from 15 to 62 miles, but no matter which way you go, each ride ends with beer and free music.

About the time you are finishing up your history lesson on a bike, xXx Racing will be kicking off the 2010 cyclocross season  in truly unique style, with a tag-team race just a few blocks south of the BLT route in Jackson Park. 

Yes, that's right, a tag-team race.  Two partners, one course, plenty of mayhem, and as many hand-slaps as you can fit in before the final-lap bell. The action gets going at 10am and goes all day, and even includes a co-ed race! Click here to see the schedule of events.  Watch for free, bring your cooler, and  first-timers are always welcome.  But spots fill up fast, so stay tuned for the registration announcement.  If you want to race, don't be left on the outside of the course tape.

Active Trans is so excited about this great day in Chicago history, and to have racers and fans come participate in the BLT, that they named a discount code after xXx Racing, good for $5 off registration.  Just enter, "XXX5" when signing up at www.boulevardtour.org.  And once you're done with the tour, we'll see you in Jackson Park!

Sunday, August 29th.  Just another late-summer day in the city.  How great could it possibly be?

Will there be history?  Yes.

How about the chance to see great Chicago architechture?  Of course.

And Goose Island beer? Will there be beer?  And music?  Oooooh, you bet.

But most importantly, what if I want cowbell?  Hup-hup!

The Boulevard Lakefront Tour (BLT) and xXx-Racing-AthletiCo's first ever tag-team cyclocross race are both happening on the same incredible day, August 29, 2010.

Don't look at this as a conflict, but as an opportunity - two insanely great events that will go great together!  Starting at 7am, Active Trans' venerable ride offers an up-close and indepth experience of Chicago's world renowned architecture and historic boulevards.  Travel by bike down oak-lined streets, awash in the morning rays, and see first-hand why Chicago is considered the birthplace of modern urban planning.  Choose from four different routes ranging from 15 to 62 miles, but no matter which way you go, each ride ends with beer and free music.

About the time you are finishing up your history lesson on a bike, xXx Racing will be kicking off the 2010 cyclocross season  in truly unique style, with a tag-team race just a few blocks south of the BLT route in Jackson Park. 

Yes, that's right, a tag-team race.  Two partners, one course, plenty of mayhem, and as many hand-slaps as you can fit in before the final-lap bell. The action gets going at 10am and goes all day, and even includes a co-ed race! Click here to see the schedule of events.  Watch for free, bring your cooler, and  first-timers are always welcome.  But spots fill up fast, so stay tuned for the registration announcement.  If you want to race, don't be left on the outside of the course tape.

Active Trans is so excited about this great day in Chicago history, and to have racers and fans come participate in the BLT, that they named a discount code after xXx Racing, good for $5 off registration.  Just enter, "XXX5" when signing up at www.boulevardtour.org.  Once you're done with the tour, we'll see you in Jackson Park!

Youth activists from across the city are planning a 24-hour sit-in at the Thompson Center tomorrow to demand that Governor Quinn sign a bill funding summer jobs.

The LIFE Campaign (it stands for Leaders Investing For Equality), led by young people from community groups in Albany Park, Little Village, Woodlawn and other neighborhoods, announced the sit-in will start at 1 p.m. on Thursday, July 29.

LIFE is calling on Quinn to sign HB 3631, which provides funding for 5000 summer jobs for young people.

Federal and state programs are providing jobs for older youth, but support for community organizations and faith institutions to hire 14- and 15-year-olds is not available this year due to Quinn’s inaction, said Shannon Bennett of the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization.

Summer jobs provide structured activities, teach critical life skills, and prepare kids to enter the work force while providing a small stipend, Bennett said.

The youth unemployment rate is at historically unprecedented levels, as noted here earlier this year.  In the black community the official unemployment rate for youth is over 50 percent, not counting millions who have stopped looking for work.

When the United States government measures poverty, they use a standard that was created based on the percentage of earnings that a family spent on food in the 1960's which has been adjusted for inflation of the last five decades and applies that standard across the entire country. There are many problems with this, but the three big ones are:

1. Different areas of the country have vastly different costs of living;
2. The percentage of earnings that a family spends on food has changed over the years (From 1/3 of earnings in the 1960's to 1/7 of earnings now);
3. The current measure does not take into account public supports like the Earned Income Tax Credit, thereby missing the opportunity to assess the success of such programs.

The Half In Ten Campaign, a campaign advocating a national goal of reducing poverty by half in a ten year period, has recently released a series of informational pieces intended to educate the public about the problem with the federal poverty measure and the steps being taken to address that problem.

Supplemental Poverty Measure Explained is an animated video discussing the history of the poverty measure and the importance of the supplemental poverty measure that is currently being developed by the US Census Bureau.



The Center for American Progress has released "Ask The Expert: Fixing the Federal Poverty Measure", an interview with Melissa Boteach, the Half In Ten Campaign Manager, in which Melissa discusses some of the finer points of what is wrong with the federal poverty measure, what will be measured through the Supplemental Poverty Measure, and the importance of getting an accurate measure of poverty in this country.



What Gets Measured Gets Done, written by Melissa Boteach and Jitinder Kohli and published by The Center for American Progress specifically discusses the implications of an accurate poverty measure on public policies and public supports aimed at assisting impoverished families.

On March 4th, 2010, the brilliantly titled, "Five Questions for Someone Smart" podcast from miccheckradio.org presents Melissa Boteach's answers to the following five questions about poverty measures in the United States:

• Can you explain how the traditional poverty measure worked?
• Can you discuss a little why we need a supplemental poverty measure?
• Let's discuss things that the new measure will change and won't change from the traditional measure, especially when it comes to government and unemployment benefits.
• Can you explain how this supplemental measure will promote efficient governance across the country?
• Can you discuss the state of poverty in our nation today and the importance of congress tackling the issue within the next decade?

And finally, the Half In Ten Campaign has released documents from a webinar titled "The Supplemental Poverty Measure: 101 and Behind the Scenes", dealing with what the measure will and won't do, and insight into the process of developing a supplemental poverty measure.

The From Poverty To Opportunity Campaign and the Commission for the Elimination of Poverty are working toward fighting poverty using just such a comprehensive poverty measure as the Half In Ten campaign is advocating. Because it is not enough to assess how much a family earns compared to an out-of-date standard. Fighting poverty is about ensuring that families and individuals have access to sage, decent and affordable housing; access to adequate food and nutrition; access to affordable and quality healthcare; equal access to quality education and training; dependable and affordable transportation; access to quality and affordable child care; opportunities to engage in meaningful and sustainable work; and the availability of adequate income supports.

Poverty is not just about comparing incomes- it is about fulfilling the human right to a standard of living that has been promised by the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Illinois State Constitution.