As development transforms Bronzeville, business owners, housing activists adapt to survive

By Peter Holderness, Jeremy Gantz and Darryl Swint
Methods Reporter correspondents

When Valencia Hardy gazes at the vacant lots stretching from the 120-year-old house on South Calumet Avenue her family has owned for more than 20 years, she sees signs announcing new townhouses starting “in the low $600’s.” Hardy, a disabled postal service retiree, is one of many residents and business owners trying to adapt to her neighborhood’s rapid redevelopment.

Bronzeville is at a crossroads. Although the area’s affluent new residents provide opportunities for growth to businesses that can retool themselves in the changing economic environment, many residents and businesses owners are on the defensive, battling to stay in their neighborhood.

The changes in Bronzeville are most visible in new high-end developments on South State Street, city-owned land that until recently held the massive public housing towers of Robert Taylor and Stateway Gardens. This land, plus more taken in arrears, comprises the 1,896 lots owned by the City of Chicago in the Bronzeville area, according to the Department of Planning and Development. These holdings have attracted developers like Capri Capital Partners, which will build The Metropolis, a 10-acre, 102-unit condo and retail development at Pershing Road and 40th Street. Construction will begin in early 2008, pending the company’s purchase of eight city-owned acres.

Residents plan for developing future

Empty lots sandwich Hardy’s house on the 4800 block of South Calumet Avenue, and vacant glass-strewn land stretches from her stoop to the rattling Green Line across the street. This land once housed the densest concentration of people in the city: Chicago historian Timuel Black said Bronzeville’s density was once 80,000 per square mile, four times the city average. As the neighborhood declined, homes were abandoned, property taxes went unpaid, and the land was taken by the city.

Hardy tends the lot next to her home, and would like to buy it. She learned that she had to get her alderman to release the lot, and spent a year waiting for Alderman Dorothy Tillman’s help, volunteering for her office.

“I kissed butt for that lot at one time,” she said at her home Monday. “And that’s not me.”

Hardy’s family settled on Clybourn Avenue near North Avenue in 1950, but the neighborhood has changed so much, she laments, that none of the people with whom she grew up could afford to stay.

Her father paid $35,000 outright for the South Calumet Avenue house in 1984, and Hardy said the family spent weekends together for more than two years rehabbing the original building. Hardy said people used to break in and steal whatever they could find, “like we were giving away our lunch.”

After her father’s stroke in 1993, Hardy moved in with him and found that rising property taxes threaten the neighborhood’s fixed-income seniors. “In 1995 taxes were $330 per year,” she said, “and last year I paid over $1,100 on the same property!” Still, she said she will never leave her home: “They’re going to carry me out feet-first.”

Hardy said that when Tillman flatly refused her the adjacent lot, she realized she needed a role in the future of her street and her community. “I’ve always been the type of person to get involved, but I’ve never been a leader,” Hardy said.

Tillman’s office did not return several calls for comment.

Over the past year Hardy has become a leader with the affordable housing group Housing Bronzeville. “They’ve got me to the point where I’m speaking out,” she said.

“I learned to motivate people,” she said. “By far this is the biggest thing I’ve done in my life – it’s going to benefit the whole community.”

Affordable housing group keeps fighting

Hardy joined Housing Bronzeville, a group founded in July 2004 to build support and momentum for affordable housing. This year, the group faces its biggest challenge as it pushes for a local stake in development.

Bronzeville’s history as an all-black mixed-income community informs the group’s desire to see a roughly even divide between market-rate housing and middle- and low-income housing, organizers said.

“People who work hard and live right should be able to live in their own community without being threatened by the greed of others,” Hardy said, noting that middle-income families couldn’t afford Bronzeville today.

In November 2004, Housing Bronzeville sponsored a non-binding referendum to establish a housing trust fund, and received more than 85 percent support at the polls.

The fund would be financed by a .009 percent increase in the property tax bill of current Bronzeville property owners. The fund would be used to subsidize developers and buyers to create affordable housing. Enabling legislation must pass city council or the state legislature before any fund can be created.

Since its inception, however, Housing Bronzeville has struggled to find aldermen to introduce and support the initiative. This year, 2nd and 3rd Ward incumbents face serious run-off challengers, each of whom have pledged to support Housing Bronzeville’s platform.

“We're in a good position to get somebody to sponsor it, which is the main thing we need,” said Cheryl Spivey-Perry, Director of the Hope Center and a Housing Bronzeville activist.

3rd Ward challenger Pat Dowell, an “early and consistent” supporter of Housing Bronzeville’s agenda, declined to comment Monday on whether she would push for the group’s legislation if elected next month.

Hardy, the Bronzeville homeowner, put it bluntly Sunday: “If we don’t have an alderman on our side in this battle, then we’re sunk.”

With the value of Bronzeville’s vacant lots rapidly increasing, it will likely be a tough battle to win. The Metropolis, the $155 million mixed-use condo and retail project announced last month, signals the tension between big-money development and Bronzeville’s longtime residents and business owners.

Although nearly 20 percent of The Metropolis’ condo units will be affordable to low- and middle-income home buyers, it is unclear whether any of Bronzeville’s small business owners will be able to afford to rent the development’s 330,000 square feet of retail space. Capri Capital Partners did not respond to questions sent via email.

As real estate booms, businesses brace for change

As many of Bronzeville’s lots transform into high-end residential and commercial buildings, local business owners hope to attract new residents with more disposable income and a desire for upscale goods and services.

Two recently announced initiatives offered by Bronzeville-based nonprofit organizations aim to help local businesses adapt to the changing residential demographic.

The Chicago Urban League’s “projectNext” initiative will partner with business, political and academic resources to encourage black-owned business development and entrepreneurship. In a separate effort, the Bronzeville Visitor Information Center (BVIC) will begin its first-ever business development course later this month (see video story for details).

[video] http://www.youtube.com/v/jXBNTUfpsdU[/video]

Throughout Bronzeville, small business owners need the kind of help projectNext and the BVIC are offering. But some businesses are already working to retain and expand their customer base as the area develops.

Fashion store owner Khan Yasin relocated his business, while artist Andre Guichard has made a point of also attracting nontraditional patrons to his gallery.

Yasin, in his late 30s, owns two clothing stores along the 47th Street fashion corridor west of the Green Line, part of a strip of several locally-owned hip-hop fashion stores on the street.

Yasin moved Best Buy Clothing a few blocks from 47th Street and South Calumet Avenue five years ago because the store was burglarized eight times at its old location. He credits the increased police presence for safety and increased foot traffic, and the success of his stores to the teenagers and hip-hop fashion lovers who patronize his store.

“They are really good with us," Yasin said, noting that his customers are mostly black. “They don’t give us a hard time,” Yasin said. “I’m looking for a good future for them too, you know.”

Guichard, 40, opened Gallery Guichard in 2005, at 3521 S. Martin Luther King Drive, and innovated ways to attract new customers. For residents with no or limited exposure to the work of black and African artists, the gallery introduces a contemporary artistic environment through events like graduation parties, baby showers and receptions.

Despite his successes, he likens the political and economic neglect of small business owners to the neglect of students receiving inferior educations. Inequities in the business community should be addressed “in the same way that we treat inequities in education,” Guichard said.
Guichard said current business workshops lack the essential access to capital and business plan direction that show potential investors the value and viability of a business that does not yet exist.

Guichard concluded that to thrive in the future, “We really need some start-to-finish turnkey programs that have the educational element as well as the funding access.”