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.

  -30-

EXTRA: No more for 'mystery' woman packing flamethrower and an M-16

I still recall a moment from a bus tour of Chicago I once took – not one of those floofy types of tours with a double-decker bus where we see the Hancock Building and other downtown structures.

This one was of the Calumet area of Chicago on the Southeast Side, and I still remember at one point our bus was passing through The Bush when the guide pointed out a dumpy little storefront at 85^th Street and Burley Avenue – telling us that it was used as a set for that 1980 film “The Blues Brothers.”
\
SURE ENOUGH IT was the building that once had the sign on it identifying it as the “Curl Up and Dye” hair salon – which appeared in one scene where Carrie Fisher (who was the mystery woman out to kill John Belushi’s “Jake Blues” character) was reading the field manual for the proper way to use a flamethrower.

Just one of several weapons she burnished during that film (ultimately relying on an M-16 military-style assault rifle for the scene where she finally caught up with Jake, her one-time fiancé who had spurned her).

As a native of the nearby South Chicago neighborhood, it always amused me to think that Fisher (who by that point had already given us her hair-bun adorned performance in Star Wars that most people are remembering Tuesday as the high point of her career) was actually once in The Bush.

Which was, at its peak, a neighborhood for the people who actually lived in the nearby steel mills that used to exist, and now is a place for their extended families who for whatever reason haven’t been able to move on with their lives.

NOT EXACTLY THE kind of place that would be expected to have a Hollywood-style tinge to it. Although the nearby 95^th Street bridge over the Calumet River is the one that will forevermore live for the scene where the Blues Brothers drove their car over its open expanse.

That is what popped into my mind when I learned Tuesday that Fisher, who was 60 (which is barely older than I am), died from complications due to that heart attack she suffered during the Christmas holiday weekend while riding on an airplane.

Fisher, who appeared in, and directed, a string of films during an interesting career that also included authoring some books, is no longer with us physically. Although her memory will live on through the output of her work -- which really does consist of more than just an absurd hairdo or a "gold" bikini -- that we’ll be able to check out for decades to come.

Then, there's the great unanswered question -- is Fisher's mystery woman character now traversing the heavens in search of Belushi's "Jake Blues" still seeking revenge? Or does Jake finally "do right" by his woman, and they spend eternity happily ever after?

  -30-

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!

  -30-