One-time ‘South Works’ steel mill could remain a ridiculously-large lot

The one-time site of the U.S. Steel plant on the South Side, known as South Works, has sat vacant for decades, and there have been so many bits of speculation that have been made about what could be done with the site.

The old 'South Works' plant

Because as a spot right on Lake Michigan stretching from 79^th to 91^st streets, some make note of the fact it is larger than downtown Chicago.

THERE’S DEFINITELY ENOUGH room to build something of significance. Which may well be why Mayor Lori Lightfoot included the site amongst the five spots in various parts of Chicago that are under consideration for the casino officials want to build so as to help jolt the city’s economy further.

Which might make sense, except for the fact that throughout the years since U.S. Steel gave up on the idea of making steel at the plant there have been so many suggestions for what ought to be done.

A factory for Solo Cup. Development of an entirely new upscale neighborhood in between South Chicago and South Shore. Building a housing development that would incorporate unique building techniques so as to create more affordable housing.

And now, slot machines and roulette wheels galore. People could literally come to the shores of Lake Michigan and lose their shirts big time on the site where the steel that was used to build this country was actually produced.

THEN AGAIN, MAYBE this is just another idea destined to become a mere fantasy. It could be that a decade from now, the land along the lakefront in the 8000s could still sit vacant – with only that giant concrete barricade standing.

Tearing down that wall would be tough

A remnant of the old steel mill that remains only because trying to tear it down would be ridiculously costly. Not at all practical.

Better to build whatever you want to do around it and leave the barricade in place as some sort of historic remnant to the kind of people who think certain things ought never to change.

Now personally, I have always taken an interest in the site largely out of a sense of family interest. My own parents were born and raised around the South Chicago neighborhood and both my grandfathers were workers in the steel mills.

WITH ONE GRANDFATHER literally working at South Works because his neighborhood home was within walking distance of the old steel mill. My father can tell tales of the past when the steel mill was thriving, and all the grime and pollution it caused were tolerated because the filth was perceived as evidence that people were working.

What will someday fill this space?

Jobs were available. Times were good!

Now as I understand it, much of the difficulty in actually turning this site into something of future use is because of all the environmental contamination the site endured from the steel mill presence.

Anybody who tries to build something of use there is going to get stuck with the cost of environmental cleanup. And it ain’t a gonna’ be cheap to do – to put it mildly.

WHICH COULD BE why that site winds up not being taken too seriously by those people who want to see the big bucks generated by gambling – which they’ll insist on calling “gaming” because they think it has a less-sordid ring to it.

And they’ll go about lambasting anyone who insists on including the “b” even though I’d argue it’s merely being honest about what exactly casinos bring to a community.

So I don’t doubt Chicago city officials eventually will get around to locating a casino somewhere. They’re not going to let other communities have their gambling without getting their share – even though I’m inclined to think that we’re reaching the point of having too many casinos and that they’ll all manage to cannibalize each other.

But it could well be that the filth and grime that my grandfather would have viewed as evidence of ‘progress’ is really the factor that keeps the site from ever becoming a significant boost to the neighborhood, and to Chicago as a whole.

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Latest dream to revive one-time South Works site, will this become reality?

The one-time site of a U.S. Steel plant at 79^th Street and the lakefront is one that causes people to dream.

Barcelona Housing Systems has these dreams for the one-time South Works site. Many other developers have prepared similar sketches for what could be done with the former steel mill.

It is larger than the downtown area of Chicago, and it sits largely empty (although the giant concrete breakwall remains – too large for it to be practical to tear down). It is a real estate developer’s fantasy site in terms of wanting to build something there.

HECK, IF WE had Donald Trump interested in building more things in Chicago, he probably would have turned the site into Trump, the Park – a lakefront facility devoted to promoting his glorious public image.

But we don’t, which is why the site has been one of continuous speculation – including the most recent plans detailed this week by which Emerald Living of Dublin and Barcelona Housing Systems want to acquire the 440 acres of land where steel was once manufactured – and turn it into some 20,000 units of housing.

The latter company has a process of modular, environmentally-friendly technology that is supposed to make it financially practical to build large numbers of housing structures in a short period of time.

As for whether this plan will ever become reality, who’s to say? What I know is that the one-time U.S. Steel South Works site has had so much speculation about what can be done there during the decades since the steel mill there was shuttered.

YET NOTHING MUCH has become of it.

I remember when a deal was reached for Solo Cup Co. was going to build a plant on part of the land (there’s even one of those Jeffery Baer programs on WTTW-TV about Chicago neighborhoods that declares this the future intent of the site).

Most recently, a portion of the land was going to be acquired by the Mariano’s chain of upscale supermarkets so that they could build a grocery store that could service the nearby South Shore and South Chicago neighborhoods – along with my personal favorite Chicago sub-neighborhood; the Bush!

Then, there was the 12-year period in which McCaffery Interests developed a plan to turn the site into practically a new Chicago neighborhood – with its own housing, schools, retail shopping and a marina for the boats that naturally would be owned by the people who lived there.

WHICH MEANT IT was intended to be an upscale community that took full advantage of the proximity of Lake Michigan just to the east. A concept that bothered many of the local residents of the aforementioned existing neighborhoods.

Because those are blue collar areas that, in fact, include one of the oldest Spanish-speaking enclaves in Chicago. They were the kind of neighborhoods meant to house the people who actually worked in the steel mills.

Which, in fact, is why my own grandparents lived in that area. People could walk to work every day.

My grandparents are long gone from South Chicago. But the people who remain were the types to spew out the word “gentrification” as an obscenity – seeing any development as an effort to chase them out of the neighborhood where, in many cases, their families had lived for decades.

SO WHETHER THIS latest project can advance forward is going to depend on how it is presented to the public.

There actually would be one benefit to new housing being built in the area – much of the existing housing stock in South Chicago is old. The house where my maternal grandparents lived is now a vacant lot, but the structures up and down the block date back to that era.

My point being they are old, and some of them haven’t been maintained to an ideal standard. There could be a use for new structures – and something has to become of the site. Having it just sit there idly by is not realistic.

Even if there are people like one anonymous Internet commenter who said he wants the site left alone so that lots of new people don’t move in and screw up his isolated neighborhood. An attitude that is the perfect public policy recipe for a whole lot of nothing to occur for decades to come.

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Business interests still come to Chicago despite Trump trash talk. Maybe he doesn't know of what he speaks?

I remember during the times of my life I lived in downstate Illinois (Bloomington, while in college, and Springfield for a stint working at the Statehouse), the locals would always refute my Chicagoness by pointing out the major corporate entities that considered central Illinois to be home.

Could this road symbolically lead to Chicago for Caterpillar?

There was Archer Daniels-Midland in Decatur. Then, the big gun, Caterpillar, in Peoria, the manufacturer of farm machinery and vehicles used by agriculture interests the world over.

ANYBODY INTERESTED IN farming or food or eating ought to know of Caterpillar. Or ADM, which processes grains and soybeans into products that can be turned into food.

I don’t deny those are significant corporate entities in their own right. But I can’t help but note that ADM left Decatur a couple of years ago; following the lead of the central Illinois city’s one-time National Football League team, which came to Chicago and became the Bears many decades ago.

Now, Caterpillar seems to be following their lead.

Corporate officials said this week that their top executives are moving from their offices at the main plant in Peoria to a yet-to-be-determined site in Chicago. They want access to life in a large city like Chicago, rather than small-city life of Peoria. They also like the idea of being a short drive away from O’Hare International Airport, from which they can go anywhere in the world!

IT MAY ALSO be that corporate types want to be able to follow the Chicago Cubs themselves, rather than rooting for their local Midwest League ball club and spending their time reminiscing of the days when it was a Cubs’ minor league affiliate (it’s now with the St. Louis Cardinals).

 

No longer dreaming of Cubs' one-time affiliate

One bit of consolation for the Peoria people – corporate officials say it’s just the corporate offices. The actual plant in Peoria where equipment is made will remain there. Few of the 12,000 people employed in Peoria will be out of work because of the move.

Who knows? They may come to like having the top brass located elsewhere. While we in Chicago will love being able to say we’re the corporate offices of yet another business entity. Not bad at a time when President Donald J. Trump, for purely partisan political reasons, seems determined to come up with weekly attacks on Chicago.

As though he wants the world to think that our fair city is as ugly as that 1,389-foot tall building he erected along the Chicago River.

If Chicago Bears could once play a season at Memorial Stadium, why not Fighting Illini games in Chicago?

ALTHOUGH THE MOVE makes me wonder now what business entities rural Illinois types will be able to cite when they tout their region? Perhaps they’ll start boasting of the many state universities located in the rest of Illinois – particularly the University of Illinois.

Though one could argue that all you’d have to do is move the Big Ten athletic programs of the Fighting Illini to the Chicago campus, and the UI-C would take over that school’s niche in the state.

Although I’m sure that to the people of Urbana-Champaign (or should it be Champaign-Urbana), that very notion constitutes “fightin’ words” worse than the notion of Caterpillar sending a piece of itself to Chicago.

Could one-time U.S. Steel plant along the lakefront ...

Yet this isn’t the only outside interest we’re seeing these days. I couldn’t help but notice the talk this week of a company ultimately based in Barcelona, Spain, wanting to take the one-time site of U.S. Steel’s Southworks plant and convert it into homes.

SPECIFICALLY, SOME 12,000 homes, to be built in four phases of 3,000 each – with certain communal amenities meant to try to create a spirit of community.

Not that the area, which is adjacent to the South Chicago and South Shore neighborhoods, couldn’t use some freshening up. South Chicago in particular (the neighborhood I was born in, for what it’s worth) has old housing stock.

... truly become the 8080 Lakeshore housing development.? Image provided by Barcelona Housing

But any chance this project by Barcelona Housing Systems (with offices in San Francisco) and WELink has of succeeding depends on whether they can make the existing surrounding working-class residents feel like they’re not being rejected for potentially upscale newcomers. That is a large part of why a past developer’s talk of turning the 430-acre site along Lake Michigan from 79^th Street to the Calumet River never got off the ground.

Yet still interesting to see that at a time when Trump wants to undermine our city by making it appear too much of a hell hole to want to have anything to do with, interests as diverse as Caterpillar and Barcelona see money to be made in Chicago; which makes me think we ought to be questioning Trump’s own business instincts – instead of taking anything he says all that seriously.

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Is South Works the equivalent of galaxy far, far away from rest of Chicago?

Perhaps it is all too appropriate that the one-time site of the U.S. Steel South Works plant is being offered up as a location for that museum filmmaker George Lucas wants to create.

What will ever become of the one-time U.S. Steel South Works site?

For there are times that the southeastern corner of Chicago itself gets treated as being a place, “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.”

FOR THAT SITE on the lakefront (from about 79^th Street to about 95^th Street) is one that has sat vacant for decades, with the residue of the days when steel was made there still manages to pollute the surrounding neighborhoods.

Who knows what will ever become of the more than 600 acres of land (larger than the Loop)? Will anything ever become of the site? Will it remain a vacant hole in Chicago that most people aren’t aware of because they rarely ever set foot anywhere near the city’s 10^th Ward (of which the site is the northernmost edge)?

In my case, I have always taken an interest in the area because it is my birthplace. I have some relatives who still live there. South Chicago and the surrounding communities are the “old neighborhood” to me – the one where I used to travel to when visiting my grandmother.

Who was never comfortable living anywhere else.

FOR YEARS, THERE has been talk of turning the site into a housing development – one that would take advantage of being on the shore of Lake Michigan. Creating the possibility of some homes with boat slips. You could literally go sailing into the Great Lakes – an option many people in much wealthier communities on the north lakefront would love to have.

One fantasy South Works proposal.

But there was always hostile reception from people who lived in The Bush – the nearby neighborhood that was about as un-elite as the Lakeside development would have been upscale.

And with the economy being what it is and new development everywhere being on hold, the South Works site remained a place where real estate developers would look and dream while nothing was accomplished.

All this delay eventually caused U.S. Steel (which still owns the land) to give up. The developers with dreams were forced to admit that the Lakeside community (which looks nice in architectural drawings) will never become reality.

Will this become another fantasy project?

THAT IS WHAT led to this week’s political speculation that the lakefront site could now somehow be turned over to the Lucas project – the one in which he wants to develop a museum paying tribute to assorted artistic mediums, but which I suspect many people mistakenly think will be some sort of Star Wars-themed amusement park.

Personally, I’d be amazed if the Lucas people would be interested in the site – in fact, I fully expect they’ll find some other city in which to develop their project.

Chicago probably lost its chance to have the Lucas museum when a judge thwarted plans to build the structure in the parking lots just south of Soldier Field.

Tenth Ward Alderman Susan Sadlowski Garza may have told the Chicago Sun-Times how the site is closer to downtown Chicago than Versailles is to Paris, but I suspect Lucas wants something with an up-close view of the downtown skyline (and not the one you need binoculars to look at like the one at the South Works site).

THIS MAY BECOME a site too isolated for Chicago to develop – largely because a lot of our political people have such a small vision of what is truly the city.

This is long-gone from 10th Ward site

Which is a shame, because the site is so open and spacious the potential to do something there is great – for people who can think on a large-enough scale.

That is the problem. Take the fact that developers wanted to use part of the land for the proposed Barack Obama presidential library and museum – an idea that was rejected because the presidential aides were skeptical anything else would be built there.

A judgment that seems to be more correct with each passing day – one that hurts us all by depriving us of what could be prime lakeshore for public use and winds up being the equivalent of a gaping hole (a cavity, of sorts) in the Chicago smile!

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Will Obama ever again actually reside in Kenwood-based house on So. Side?

I must confess – I always get amused whenever interests in Chicago try to stake a claim to their particular site as the “Future Home of the Barack Obama Presidential Library and Museum.”

Will the first family's decision really be in the hands of Sasha? Photographs provided by the White House

 

It’s not even a done deal that Obama himself will ever live in this city again. If that is the case, who’s to say that the future Obama Library will wind up here.

PERHAPS WE SHOULD be giving some serious consideration to the fact that the University of Hawaii is eager to have the library on its grounds – considering that the president himself was born, and largely raised, in Honolulu.

Maybe we shouldn’t take such a parochial attitude and assume that such a facility has to be built somewhere in Chicago. Heck, we can’t even agree where in the city ought to be thought of as the primary site.

The post-presidential future of Obama came in recent days when the president let it be known we shouldn’t assume he will be back in his home near the Hyde Park neighborhood right after the 2017 inauguration.

Obama and first lady Michelle may not be using Air Force One for their final flight home to Midway Airport. We don’t know where he’ll wind up.

IT SEEMS THE complicating factor is the younger daughter, Sasha, who was 7 when her family moved to Washington and started living the sheltered existence that the White House affords its residents.

The Obamas might not need final flight home

When her father ceases to be “Mr. President” and once again becomes “Dad,” she will be in her second year of high school. The first parents are concerned that having to suddenly transfer to a new school outside of Washington would be an uprooting that could cause harm.

The hints from the president are that he and Michelle may remain in the District of Columbia (Democrats generally live in D.C., while Republicans seem to prefer the D.C. suburbs in Virginia) until she’s finished with high school and ready to venture off on her own to college somewhere.

That leads to some jokes about how Sasha Obama runs the family, while others wonder if Obama just can’t let go of the Washington trappings.

SURPRISINGLY, I HAVEN’T heard many (only a few) wisecracks about how Obama doesn’t want to be put in a position where he’d have to defend himself for not returning Sasha to a spot in the Chicago Public Schools, or some sort of criticism if she wound up in the Laboratory Schools (private entities) of the University of Chicago.

Now, this could be a whole lot of talk about nothing. It may wind up that this is merely a three-year delay in Barack and Michelle returning to Chicago.

Although after more than a decade away, it may turn out that they’re not going to want to return to the streets of Hyde Park. There are times when life has to move forward, and going back (no matter how pleasant the memories) is just a mistake.

A part of me has always wondered if Obama might be thinking of a Hawaii retirement for himself and Michelle in their golden years. He gets to return home, and Michelle – the ultimate in a modern-day South Side girl – gets an exotic retirement.

DEFINITELY A LONG ways away from her early years in the South Shore neighborhood.

Could this be the future presidential library's site?

So for those people who want to bicker about whether a future presidential library is going to be built at the one-time Michael Reese Hospital site, or near the possible future Pullman National Park; on Lake Michigan at 79^th Street as part of the fantasized-about Chicago Lakeside development on the old U.S. Steel/South Works plant or as part of the campuses either at the University of Illinois at Chicago or at the University of Chicago – keep this is mind.

He may already have put his Chicago time in the rear view mirror of life.

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