Chicago

Chicago

By ED McMANUS

Lawn
area
rebuilding
effort
led
by
S & L's

LIKE SO MANY neighborhoods in Chicago and in cities throughout the country, the Chicago Lawn area on the Southwest Side was in trouble.

The neighborhood immediately to the east of it had become a slum. A couple of new shopping centers nearby were drawing retail business away from the 63rd Street commercial district. Industry was being lured a'way, and homeowners were being attracted to the suburbs.

That was five years ago. Today, thanks largely to the work of a community organization created by local savings and loan associations, the neighborhood is well on its way to being revitalized.

The organization is called the Greater Southwest Development Corp. It was chartered as a not-for-profit corporation with the principal objective of fostering investment in Chicago Lawn — an area surrounding Marquette Park, roughly west of the Penn Central Railroad track and south of 51st St. The six savings and loans involved in setting it up theorized that rather than compete for development activities, it made more sense

to join together for the good of the community. They also formed a subsidiary, the Greater Southwest Community Service Corp., which is a federal and state regulated savings and loan service corporation mutually owned by the lending institutions; the service corporation is responsible for the financing of projects undertaken by the parent group.

The first project undertaken by the corporation was acquisition and rehabilitation of an extremely blighted commercial building at a prime location — the northeast corner of 63rd Street and Western Avenue — in the heart of the community's business district. The building was 75 percent vacant and an eyesore.

Greater Southwest gave the building a brand-new look outside — a combination of brown face brick and anodized aluminum sheathing — and extensively renovated the interior. Then it advertised for tenants, but nobody showed up except people who wanted to open adult bookstores, betting messenger services, and so forth. Jim Capraro, executive director of the corporation, held out for a better class of tenants and eventually filled up the building. Greater Southwest has its own headquarters there.

"Our efforts created a snowball effect at that intersection," said Capraro in an interview. "Within a four-block area, over $4.5 million in private improvements have been completed or initiated by local firms."

Greater Southwest aided in many of those improvements by arranging financing, offering free or subsidized architectural services, doing a market analysis to assist businesses with merchandising and marketing, and providing a liaison to government programs.

Largest project
The corporation's largest project has been converting a burned-out furniture store into a mini-mall shopping center. Like the building at 63 rd and Western, this one was in terrible shape and had been neglected for years. The renovation has been massive; the corporation now is in the process of lining up tenants.

A major rehabilitation project also was undertaken on a 48-unit apartment building which was run-down and largely vacant, and was to be demolished. Greater Southwest took it over and fixed it up, and it now is 100 percent occupied. Capraro says the neighbors breathed a sigh of relief; they had been keeping a nervous watch on the building and had feared its poor condition was indicative of the future fate of the community.

Single-family homes
Another Greater Southwest effort has been with single-family homes. The corporation has so far acquired from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development five homes which were abandoned when their owners defaulted on federally insured loans. The homes have been rehabilitated and resold, using conventional mortgage financing.

Among recent encouraging signs for neighborhood stability have been big expansions by Marquette Federal Savings, Chicago Savings & Loan, and Sears Roebuck & Co.

"That's the exciting part," said Capraro. "I think the work we've done has been contagious, and you can see it down the street where people are realizing that it can pay for them to fix up their stores. And the ultimate result is that the residents of the community realize that this is a great place to live.

December 1979/ Illinois Issues/ 33