Chicago trying to figure how to attract as much retail opportunity as possible

Where does Chicago go shopping?

Leaving the South Side

There’s time when it appears we don’t have much of a clue. As much of it may well depend upon which demographic we happen to have been born into – and whether retailers are all that anxious to have our business.

A PAIR OF stories in the news of late would impact the ability of us to purchase the goods that enable us to get through our lives.

For some of us, that has now become something we do on the Internet from our homes, with items shipped to our homes (or what other address they happen to find most convenient).

While others of us still prefer the concept of a physical store to shop at. Which is why interest is being paid to municipal government trying to figure out how to get Target to back of off its intensions to close two of its stores in South Side neighborhoods.

Specifically in the Morgan Park and Chatham neighborhoods, both of which are majority African-American populations. Which has some people convinced that Target is dumping those locations because they’re not interested in selling goods to black people.

AFTER ALL, IT’S not a cutback by the retailer whose fanatics like to mockingly think of it as a French-like outlet. Because Target has plans to open new stores in the Rogers Park and Logan Square neighborhoods. Along with various other locations throughout the suburbs.

But none of those are majority non-Anglo like the locations of the two stores that are to be closed.

Target supporters try to argue that the retailer will still have South Side locations. Although you have to admit, the Hyde Park neighborhood is noted most for being so unlike the rest of the South Side in so many ways – including in its racial composition.

Putting Chicago off to the side

I won’t be surprised if Target decides to merely ride it out, and figure they don’t have to do anything to change their stance on store locations.

SO IT MIGHT be in vain the city’s efforts to offer millions of dollars in tax increment finance benefits – which allow the property taxes the company pays to be put into a special fund by which they could get it back to pay for future improvements.

It might not be enough to sway Target officials, who likely will tolerate the racial rhetoric of the next few months that claims the retailer is deliberately snubbing people based on race.

Even though I’m sure they’ll claim it’s mere demographics – even though I often wonder if such talk is merely a way of covering up a desire to be more selective about how they do business with.

Not that Target is the only retail issue that has city officials concerned. There also are concerns over the second corporate headquarters that Amazon.com wants to have beyond Seattle, Wash.

THE REPORTER RUMOR mill of recent weeks says that Amazon is about to choose a site – and it ain’t Chicago.

Supposedly, Amazon is interested in the Virginia-based suburbs of Washington, D.C., and the borough of Queens in New York. Which some will try to say means they want to be in D.C. and Noo Yawk. Although it’s really more like they want to be on the fringes of those two major cities where they can escape the grittier aspects of urban life.

Which might well include people of the same types of economic demographics that Target is trying to avoid by pulling their stores out of Morgan Park and Gresham.

The key to comprehending businesses and where they choose to locate is that they usually pick locations where their self-interest is fulfilled, with the underlying idea being that the day will eventually come when their self-interests are better served elsewhere. Meaning even if Amazon.com were to pick Chicago, it’s likely the day would come when they’d decide to move elsewhere.

  -30-

Baseball ‘kids’ don’t live in Chicago? Why did complaints take so long?

For those people who are spewing accusations that the Jackie Robinson West baseball team that nearly won the Little League World Series this year is tainted because its players don’t all live strictly within the league’s boundaries, I’d have to respond by saying that no one ever tried to keep it a secret.

There were so many people who back in August were eager to let it be known that some of the kids had ties to suburbs such as Dolton, Homewood, Lansing, Lynwood and South Holland (instead of neighborhoods such as Roseland and Morgan Park where the league is based).

SO TO NOW hear complaints from officials with the Evergreen Park Athletic Association that the Jackie Robinson West team that represented the Great Lakes Region at the Little League World Series comes across as little more than whining.

It was a relief to learn that Little League International this week issued a statement saying the league’s team that advanced in the Little League World Series to be U.S. champions (before losing to a team from South Korea) was legitimate when it comes to residency issues.

I don’t doubt that the ball playing kids received so much hype that the reality can’t live up.

But this amounts to petty jealousy from a suburban Little League program that happens to border to Jackie Robinson West program on the city’s Far South Side that was created back in the early 1970s to spur interest in youth baseball in a community whose racial composition had changed radically.

UNTIL RECENTLY, I had a “day job” of sorts in writing stories for one of the daily newspapers in the suburbs that covered the communities where some of these kids lived and went to school.

Which local school and government officials were more than eager to reveal. I personally remember one suburban mayor saying he wanted some credit for the player who lived in his community, saying, “We’re not going to let Rahm Emanuel steal everything.”

Although I personally think Gov. Pat Quinn and the Cook County Board did more to latch their names onto the Jackie Robinson kids for his own self-promotion than Emanuel ever did.

But back to the residency issue. It was known that the kids didn’t strictly live within the city neighborhoods. But the fact that there were split residency facts merely reflect our modern-day reality in society.

I remember specifically one ballplayer had a father who lived in Dolton, but a mother who lived in the Morgan Park neighborhood. Does anybody think that means the kid is supposed to never stay with his father just because he plays baseball?

THAT WOULD BE stupid.

In other cases, there were players whose families used to live in Chicago proper, but in recent years had moved to the nearby south suburbs. It appears that Little League rules permit such players to continue to play in their old home communities if they wish, rather than being forced to shift to Little League programs in their new homes.

The reality is that many of those suburban Little League programs are run by people who are interested in protecting their own little fiefdoms and aren’t exactly accepting of newcomers.

So the idea that these kids would prefer to keep playing ball in the Jackie Robinson West league – which is unique in the fact that it is composed entirely of African-American people – seems to be an obvious choice.

PERHAPS THE SOUTH suburban Little League programs ought to be giving more thought to how to make themselves more welcoming, rather than being among the forces trying (but failing) to keep the population in their home communities the same as it was four decades ago.

Reading the Chicago Sun-Times, I see that the head of the Evergreen Park program is complaining about people who are calling him an “idiot” and are saying he is a bigot.

I’m willing to give his racial attitudes a break and say what really bothers him is the fact that when a team from his Little League program played a Jackie Robinson West team this year, the end result was a 42-3 loss.

That still has to smart, something fierce!

  -30-

EXTRA: Jackie Robinson baseball now far bigger than Defender sports pages

It was earlier this past week that I happened to be in the Pullman neighborhood when 9^th Ward Alderman Anthony Beale got a crowd of 400-plus people all excited by merely uttering three initials.

“J-R-W.”

AS IN THE Jackie Robinson West baseball league that consists of a couple dozen teams from predominantly-black neighborhoods such as Roseland, Pullman and Morgan Park on the far Sout’ Side (and a few surrounding suburbs that have developed sizable African-American communities).

It’s a league that usually only gets public attention from the Chicago Defender, which often uses pictures of young African-Americans in action on their sports pages.

But now, that league is something far much bigger. They’ve been partaking in the Little League World Series tournament this past week, and became the best youth team in the United States when they defeated a Las Vegas, Nev.-area team Saturday by 7-5.

Which was particularly pleasurable because the one negative for the Jackie Robinson West all-star ball club during the past week was a 13-2 loss to that same Las Vegas team.

IT WAS PAYBACK of the finest kind for those of us with a Chicago interest and enjoy seeing one of our youth teams show it can compete with the best of the rest of the nation.

And considering how in recent years baseball has become so overwhelmingly pale in complexion while lacking in much interest amongst more urban communities, the sight of an all-black ball club takes on a certain other significance.

Particularly since they’re now going to represent this country when they take on the winner of the Japan/South Korea game played Saturday night.

I can’t think of a better ball club to represent what this country is about than the kids from the South Side. Particularly since way too many people tend to think the only things of significance in Chicago come from select neighborhoods on the north lakefront.

IT’S THE ENTIRETY of Chicago that makes it amongst the most interesting places in this country (and quite possibly on Planet Earth) to be. A small piece of that South Side existence is now getting national attention.

It’s a good thing that Mayor Rahm Emanuel has already committed city officials to having some sort of city-wide celebration when the team returns to Chicago in coming days.

Memories of that 2005 post-World Series parade the White Sox made through Bridgeport and Chinatown on their way to downtown come to mind. Although is a Grant Park-type rally also possible.

Let’s only hope that these kids go on to be inspired to achieve greater success in life (and not necessarily just in the world of athletics). Because the sad thing would be if this moment at age 12 became the highlight of their lives.

IT OUGHT TO be a moment that inspires all people to want to strive for greater things and higher levels than we already have achieved. That could be the real-life lesson we all learn.

So as we relish this moment of a Chicago-area ball club (even one of 12- and 13-year-olds) actually winning something (as opposed to seeing the White Sox blow a couple of ballgames to the New York Yankees in recent days or watching the Cubs’ ground crew show its ineptitude at laying down a tarp to avoid a rainy day), keep this thought in mind.

The next time Beale rattles off “J-R-W,” it won’t be just a room full of Pullman people cheering.

It ought to be the nearly 9-million of the metropolitan area  expressing its joy.

  -30-

Metra increases a fare, after saying there’d be no fare increases this year

I can’t say I’m surprised at the outrage some people might be feeling these days toward Metra, the commuter railroad system, for the increase in ticket prices it approved just a couple of days ago.

This increase comes just a couple of weeks after Metra officials told the Cook County Board (which reviews mass transit budgets) that they were preparing a budget for 2013 that calls for no fare hikes. Prices would remain the same, except when they don’t – it seems.

NOW FOR THOSE of you who are confused, keep in mind that Metra technically didn’t  break its word. They kept themselves within the “letter of the law,” so to speak, with regards to fares for the upcoming year.

For the basic fare for those people who ride Metra trains will remain the same. As will the prices charged for those people who purchase monthly passes to allow them to come and go every day without having to make a routine out of shelling out cash!

What Metra’s board increased was the cost of what they call a 10-ride ticket, one that gives you up to 10 rides on a Metra train for a period of up to six months.

The current fare is based on the cost of nine one-way rides, with the 10^th being a freebie on account of the fact that the commuter is coughing up their money up front. Metra gets theirs, and there’s always the chance you could lose a ticket with a ride or two remaining – meaning that they get a financial perk in the process.

BUT COME FEBRUARY, people are going to have to pay for the full 10 rides, which means the only bonus is that you won’t have to wait in the ticket line every single time you want to catch a train.

I honestly believe the fact that they were getting cash up front was a financial plus for Metra that they should have respected. Particularly since it was just this past year that all Metra fares went up – including the cost of the 10-ride tickets (it used to be that you paid the price of eight one-way rides for a 10-ride).

So excuse me for being a little less than sympathetic to Metra for slipping this increase through when their board met Friday.

And yes, I should disclose the fact that I am an occasional Metra train rider who always tries to have a 10-ride ticket on me so that I can just board a train without having to worry about paying for the ride.

CURRENTLY, I’M ON a ticket with three rides remaining. So there is a self-interest I am expressing in this particular rant of a commentary.

Keep in mind that this isn’t just a suburban issue (which is probably how some city dwellers want to view Metra since they probably use the CTA trains and buses for public commutes).

Go out to a neighborhood like Hyde Park where the elevated trains convenience skip by, and it becomes those Metra Electric trains (the ones that are getting new cars that finally will have lavatory facilities) that provide the direct connection to downtown Chicago – along with neighborhoods such as South Shore and South Chicago.

Swing out to the Southwest Side, and it becomes those Rock Island line trains that can take Beverly or Morgan Park neighborhood residents deeper into the city without having to drive a car. It's not just people coming in from Kenosha, Wis. (although there are a few of them as well).

THIS MOVE – WHICH Metra officials say is meant to raise $8.3 million to be used for repairs and maintenance – is going to have an impact on many people,

Which makes me convinced I’m not the only one who feels a bit of disgust – even if an increased cost of a Metra 10-ride is still probably cheaper than the cost of parking one’s car at a downtown garage!

But that’s a rant to be written for another day.

  -30-

Oops! I’m sure police station looked good on drawing board, in blueprints

It always amuses me when I’m passing through the area where the Morgan Park and Beverly neighborhoods converge. Because invariably, I have to pass the area police station on Monterey Avenue.



Watch out for those blooming leaves. They kept a police security camera at th Morgan Park District stationhouse from obtaining images of people who might have been trying to tamper with squad cars. Photograph provided by Public Building Commission.



I’m not necessarily knocking the new structure used by the Morgan Park police district, which looks from the outside (I’ve never had cause to set foot – voluntarily, or against my will – inside) like it is much more spacious and modern than the old structure.

THAT BUILDING HAD the look of a police stereotype – a neighborhood stationhouse that was probably far too cramped for all the activity of modern-day law enforcement that was performed there.

Yet it is a structure that I doubt I ever will forget. A part of me always expects to see the old bunker-like building when I drive through the area, and feels a sense of disappointment when I see the new one.

Similar, in fact, to the feelings I get whenever I drive north on the Dan Ryan Expressway and get to around 35^th Street – half expecting to see that whitewashed brick building where the White Sox play, and instead see the pink building with the big banner reminding me of the seven-year-old World Series title.

So excuse me for letting my sense of humor run wild when I read in the Chicago Tribune this weekend about the “criminal” activity that took place right in the police station parking lot.

BASED ON CIRCUMSTANTIAL evidence, it would seem that the activists who want to be in Chicago for the upcoming NATO conference had some mischief planned for the police.

A chunk of concrete with an anarchist “A” was placed in the parking lot so as to block some police squad cars from being able to move. Police later noticed that someone had been tampering with the lug nuts on some of the squad cars.

Some lug nuts were removed outright, while others merely had theirs loosened.

I used the word “mischief” to describe this activity because it seems the level of vandalism committed here was minor. We don’t get the image of a squad car trying to start up, then losing its tires in mid-chase.

WHOEVER DID THIS is definitely in the minor leagues of vandalism. I’d call him (or her) Mickey Mouse, except that would probably be a libelous statement toward all cartoon characters.

So why am I finding anything about this amusing?

It is the fact that this building, like many others, has security cameras set up so that police can watch anyone who happens to be approaching the building.

In fact, there are those people (even, occasionally, myself) who wonder if the Chicago Police Department is getting carried away with all the cameras it wants to erect.

YET PERHAPS WE should look at the Morgan Park District as an example of the potential for glitches.

Because it seems that the police station has a camera set up on its parking lot. Yet newly-bloomed leaves on area trees literally are blocking the camera’s view.

It is why the police do NOT have any video images that could be enhanced to give them crude pictures of the people who would want to commit such a dastardly deed – which on a certain level strikes me as being nothing more than mischief.

That is why no arrests are imminent. Police do not know who did this, and there’s a good chance they’re never going to figure it out.

UNLESS, BY CHANCE, the people who are doing this are stupid enough (ie., possessing big-enough egos) to think they can go back and do it again. Because now, the Chicago Tribune reports, there are officers positioned so they can watch the parking lot.

I’d hate to be the cop whose duty assignment that day is to sit and watch people park their cars.

But even moreso, I’d hate to be the guy who designed that stationhouse and placed security cameras without taking into account the outside greenery.

I don’t care how pretty it looked on the drafting table (or in today’s technology, on the computer screen).

THIS IS JUST too dippy of a reason for someone not to get caught.

I can’t help but envision the spirits of all those officers who worked throughout the decades at the old bunker-like building (the one whose address was 1830 W. Monterey Ave.) shaking their heads in disgust at the very thought.

  -30-

Nobody ever truly happy w/ redistrict, but is Beverly more miffed then usual?

Lately, whenever I use a Metra Rock Island line commuter train to travel downtown (I live within walking distance of one of their stations and I hate the idea of paying for parking), I know when I’m passing through the Beverly neighborhood because I see an outbreak of what I think of as the measles.

Variations are spreading around Beverly



Red blotches all throughout the neighborhoods, on the front lawns of residents who see the potential for the redistricting of Chicago’s 50 wards for the upcoming decade and become ill at the very thought.

THE SO-CALLED BLOTCHES are really signs (bright red, with white lettering) and in style they are just like those signs that crop up every election cycle for people who persist in letting the whole world (or at least anyone who passes by their house) know who they support.

But these signs aren’t for any specific candidate. They literally are about the issue of redistricting – which is usually something that people don’t give much thought about.

But these Beverly residents are giving thought, and they are upset – which is why I get to read sign after sign that says, “Don’t Re-Map Me!” every time I pass through the neighborhood (both headed for the Loop and on the return trip home).

And in smaller type, they read, “I am 19^th Ward.” The Beverly Area Planning Association takes credit for spreading these signs around the ward.

WHICH HISTORICALLY HAS been the Southwest Side ward that is centered around the Beverly neighborhood. The fact that the ward and the neighborhood come so close to coinciding is a good chunk of why that neighborhood has significant political pull in the City Council.

But it also makes it a largely-white community and ward surrounded by African-American neighborhoods and wards.

The ward may not look the same soon

Which may well mean that in an attempt to bolster the political pull of racial minorities on the South Side, any redrawn ward boundaries are likely to take a few people who now are a part of the 19^th Ward and Beverly and put them politically in with the ward to the east – which represents a good-sized chunk of the neighboring Morgan Park neighborhood.

But it also crosses over those invisible barriers that often separate race in our home city.

WHAT ALL OF this comes down to is that there is a very good chance that a lot of these people who are complaining about not wanting to be removed from the 19^th Ward and Beverly (they’d still be a part of the neighborhood, regardless of where the ward boundaries are drawn) are really saying they don’t want to be a part of any non-white majority ward.

It is the ugly tension that is a daily reality for the neighborhoods of the South Side. It might not be a blunt and brutal as decades past, but there are places where races glare across the street at each other – and the wrong word can spark a brawl.

Which means that when I call these signs a form of measles outbreak, I’m only being semi-sarcastic. Because it almost strikes me as being an illness.

People wanting to cling to a ward number because they don’t want to be perceived as living somewhere else – even though nothing about their actual residence has change – can’t be that healthy for one’s mind.

BESIDES, THERE’S ALSO the reality that population shifts mean that the current boundaries can’t stand.

The Beverly Review newspaper, in reporting about the local resident concern about the issue, cited the fact that the current 19^th Ward (as it existed in the 2000s) is 1,200 people too few of the 53,912-total that all 50 wards are supposed to have.

But the 21^st and 34^th wards to the east have even bigger shortfalls, and the easiest way to resolve them is to make that ward boundary shift that is going to rile up the natives something fierce.

Beverly would be far from the only neighborhood split up politically. Chinatown officials ranted about how much their community was hacked up among so many districts during the past decade, and one version of a new ward map being considered has the Back of the Yards neighborhood split among five different aldermen.

BY COMPARISON, BEVERLY residents ought to be grateful for what little might happen to them.

I happen to realize that this pride in neighborhood is a significant part of what makes Chicago unique and special. The idea that people who live in Beverly think of it as a special place where they desire to reside is something that we ought to be encouraging in all the city’s neighborhoods.

But the sight of all those signs from Beverly residents who don’t want to associate with neighboring Morgan Park is something that manages to give me a touch of a chill up my spine every time I see it while riding the Rock Island line.

And it also makes me a little bit proud to say that nobody I know personally who lives in Beverly has one of those red rashes popping up in their front yards.

  -30-