The total price tag to taxpayers has now more than doubled to $2 billion on a plan - more than a decade behind schedule - that has transformed a Black neighborhood to a predominantly white one. Credit: Davon Clark for the Better Government Association/CatchLight Local More than $44 million in taxpayer money was spent on the riverwalk adjacent to the Montgomery Ward and Company Complex building, Domain Lofts and the River Village complex on the North Branch of the Chicago River. The promises reverberated over the public address system into an arena filled with doubters: Everyone who wanted to return to the rejuvenated area could do so they would get their fair share of the billion-dollar economic pie hundreds of coveted construction jobs would be theirs.įast-forward nearly a quarter century and the dilapidated high-rises are gone, replaced with a well groomed, freshly landscaped new neighborhood that includes an Apple store, a swanky river walk lined with boats and more than 3,500 mixed-income apartments - most of which the original Cabrini-Green tenants could never afford. Now, Daley and his lieutenants promised an altogether new direction for the prime real estate on the city’s Near North Side: Tear it down and start over. Once a sparkling beacon of hope for poor families, it had been allowed to deteriorate into a complex riddled with boarded up units, broken elevators and a litany of unmet maintenance needs. At the time, Cabrini-Green had been neglected for years by their landlord - the Chicago Housing Authority. They gathered on a winter morning in 1997 inside a high school auditorium. Daley - under increasing pressure to stop the national headlines portraying their community as the model for the failures of public housing - sent prominent Black politicians and city officials to their community to front his billion-dollar transformation plan, residents turned out by the hundreds. The conditions in their publicly subsidized high-rise apartments had only grown worse over time, and they had the political misfortune to be Black and living in one of the most segregated cities in the nation. ![]() The residents of Cabrini-Green had reason to be skeptical.įor years, their calls for help had gone largely unheeded.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |