How long until proposed Red Line extension turns local tempers all “red?”

It is one of those projects that has been discussed for years – extending the Chicago Transit Authority elevated commuter train lines deeper into the city’s South Side than they already go.
 

Proposed route for Red Line extension

On a certain level, the project makes too much sense. The commuter trains that help city residents get from place to place and are a common fact of everyday life in most of the city only go as far south as 95^th Street.

WHILE CHICAGO ITSELF usually considers 119^th Street to be its southern boundary and there are parts of the city at the southeastern corner where 138^th Street is the end of life as we know it and where suburbia begins.

Now as somebody who actually originates from that part of the city (born in South Chicago and with relatives scattered across the neighborhoods that comprise the 10^th Ward), this is a project that I have long followed.

Because for people in the southeast part of the city, there are a few bus lines that pass through that eventually can take you to a place along the Dan Ryan Expressway where you can catch a Red Line train.

But it can be a slow, plodding trip (what with all those bus stops) and it can result in an hour-and-a-half journey to get downtown. There are parts of Will County or Gary, Ind., that have quicker connections to downtown Chicago via suburban commuter trains.

IT’S NO WONDER that those people who live near a Metra Electric line station in the South Chicago or South Shore neighborhoods, or in the Hegewisch neighborhood where the Indiana-based South Shore commuter line keeps its lone Illinois-based station, prefer to use those suburban-influenced services even though they're very much urban residents.

Which is why the idea of extending that Red Line train that now runs down the middle of the Dan Ryan to 95^th Street would be a life-altering experience for the Far South Side.

 

Metra lines more a daily life reality in Far South Chi

A direct CTA el train extension going to 130^th Street? Actual stations in the Roseland and Pullman neighborhoods – instead of having to take a bus to the west to catch a Metra Rock Island line commuter train in the Beverly or Morgan Park neighborhoods.

It sounds like nirvana (and I don’t mean the 90’s era rock band).

EXCEPT TO THOSE people who, while complaining about how isolated their part of Chicago often feels, will also be the first to complain about anything that brings about change.

They’ll be the ones who think of el trains as being something associated with “the ghetto” or artsy-fartsy North Side neighborhoods – and something they’ve managed to do without all these years.

I have heard from some of these people already. Although they have been muted largely because of skepticism that the city will ever get its act together and actually build the extension!

But will they get louder, now that talk is progressing to the point of figuring out where exactly new track would have to be built. City officials this week said they would allocate some $75 million for engineering studies. Which means figuring out what structures would need to be torn down.

CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS reported Thursday about the project – pointing out that 82 single-family homes and 19 multi-family properties are on a list of things that would need to be torn down to make room for 5.3 miles more of train track for the el extension.

The weekly business newspaper already has some comment from people who admit train service would be nice, but not necessary if it means they have to move.

Personally, I became an el proponent back during the stints I lived in North and Northwest Side neighborhoods, and I often wonder how it is that my home base neighborhood, so to speak, has never been willing to demand such equal service.

May someday no longer be distant southern CTA outpost?

Except that too many people living out in the land where Indiana isn’t an esoteric concept but is the place at the other end of the Chicago Skyway have become too used to their sense of isolation from the rest of Chicago – a concept whose time truly ought to come to an end.

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Labor Day is what we make of it

What should we make of Labor Day? The event that will provoke various celebrations of assorted types that probably say more about our own views than anything about the holiday itself.

RAUNER: Picking a lower-key scene for Labor Day

For the record, Monday is the day in which we will pay tribute to the workers of our society – those people whose labor helps make us the finest place on Planet Earth in which one can live.

OF COURSE, THERE also are those who find the very idea of honoring organized labor to be something subversive. That attitude comes out in the types of celebrations that will be held in various communities.

Take west suburban Naperville, where the parade to be held Monday morning is officially billed as the “Last Fling,” as though the day’s purpose is to have one last celebration before summer comes to an end.

The day is officially being sponsored in that community by a Kia auto dealership and is honoring the local park district as its grand marshal, although among its participants will be Gov. Bruce Rauner – not exactly the kind of politico with any interest in building up a favorable impression among organized labor interests.

The atmosphere in Naperville is likely to be different than what will take place in Calumet City – which usually has an end-of-summer parade that gives a bit of tribute to organized labor.

IT’S NOT THE kind of place that Rauner would choose to be in – likely because he knows the locals would boo and heckle him mercilessly if he were to show his face.

Can Sanguinetti come out on top ...

Which is probably why Lt. Gov. Evelyn Sanguinetti will be the official state participant in that parade – I suspect her presence will be undetected because most of the locals won’t have a clue who she is or what she looks like!

The fact that Southpaw, the fuzzy green mascot of the Chicago White Sox, is also to appear in the Calumet City parade will probably be seen as a bigger deal.

Of course, some people couldn’t wait until Monday to celebrate Labor Day.

... or will Southpaw top her in Calumet City?

TAKE THE PARADE held Saturday along Ewing Avenue in the 10^th Ward – where Alderman Susan Sadlowski Garza managed to coordinate the first Labor Day parade held in the far southeast corner of Chicago in the past two decades.

The East Side neighborhood and surrounding communities still have organized labor leanings, even though the number of local residents employed in steel mills or factories isn’t anywhere near as many as it used to be.

It’s more a neighborhood of people who used to be able to live off their brawn, and in many cases complain that they can’t still do so.

Then again, let’s not forget that the last municipal elections saw Garza, a Chicago Teachers Union member, win her election against former Alderman John Pope because of her union ties – which also saw local residents vote strongly in favor of dumping Rahm Emanuel as mayor.

IT’S DEFINITELY THE kind of place that would want to celebrate the concept of organized labor. Which is why they felt compelled to get the jump on celebrating the holiday.

Pullman, the home of Labor Day?

That, and the fact that there is an event scheduled in the nearby 9^th Ward, the Pullman neighborhood to be exact, that will take place on Monday. I’m sure that having competing Labor Day celebrations in neighboring wards (literally on opposite sides of Lake Calumet) would have seemed like a bit much.

Where in Pullman, the people like to remember that the remains of the one-time railcar factory was also the scene of a strike that some like to think of as the origins of celebrating Labor Day as an official holiday to begin with.

Unless you think it’s just another excuse to pull out the barbecue grill one more time before the weather goes bad and cook up some burgers; or steaks if you feel like splurging. Or turkey dogs if you’re some sort of health freak!

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Rival states take their pot-shots at Illinois, Land of Lincoln fights back!!!

It’s not at all odd to see the states of the Great Lakes region compete amongst each other to gain some sort of edge in the public eye – I’m old enough to remember those “Gov. Thompson (as in Tommy, not Jim) Welcomes You to Wisconsin” signs that used to greet people driving north on Interstate 94 out of Illinois.

We don't always play nice w/ each other

Or all those “Illinoyed” billboards that Indiana used as part of a state campaign to try to encourage businesses to relocate to the Hoosier state.

IT WORKED IN terms of drawing some small companies across the border – to parts where they’d still be close to Illinois and the Chicago metro area, which was the source of their real business.

But it never managed to draw anything huge away from Illinois – after all, no matter what the lower tax rates would be, you’d still be in Indiana. “You get what you pay for” is the rule that ought to apply here.

The point of this recollection is that it’s not new for the Midwestern states bound together by their proximity to Lake Michigan and the other Great Lakes to see each other as rivals.

So perhaps it shouldn’t be odd to learn that the Whole Foods chain of high-scale supermarkets is making a move of its distribution center that provides goods to their Chicago-area stores.

THAT DISTRIBUTION CENTER had been located in Munster, Ind. – a municipality located right on the Illinois/Indiana border across from suburban Lansing.

EMANUEL: A late Valentine's Day gift?

It’s now moving to the Pullman neighborhood in Chicago proper – a site that offers one major asset that Munster could never have competed with. The Pullman neighborhood is right on the Bishop Ford Freeway, which leads into the Dan Ryan Expressway.

In fact, the site of the new center to open in 2018 will be right on the freeway. It will be easy for Whole Foods trucks to hop right onto the highway, then go anywhere in the Chicago metro area to make deliveries of goods to be sold in their supermarkets. As opposed to now, where those trucks have to fight their way through the traffic mess that often is the Borman Expressway (we really do need the Illiana to be built) before they can get into Chicago.

There may have been some sort of tax break that Munster could have offered through the fact that Indiana does hit its businesses with lesser rates. But they also can’t offer the amenities that a Chicago or Illinois can. You pay more, but you also get more.

Strengthening Midwest presence with Chicago

I’LL ADMIT IT probably was a bit cold for Mayor Rahm Emanuel to be seen snickering and to refer to the move as a “late Valentine’s Day (gift) to Indiana,” but it certainly wasn’t any more colder than the trash talk that the surrounding states usually spew – often by trying to portray Chicago as some sort of hellhole that draws everything down.

Which, to me, often sounds like the petty whining of places that realize they can never match Chicago’s many amenities.

Now I don’t mean this as an Indiana-bashing session. Heck, I do work for one of the daily newspapers in Northwest Indiana and often spend time in Gary itself. Which for the record is a place that has so much potential, but can’t seem to get itself together for so many reasons – many of which are beyond its control.

There are times when I think Lake County and the surrounding areas of Northwest Indiana ought to just de-annex from the land of Hoosiers and become a part of Illinois. Maybe our people could make Gary succeed – rather than the Indiana officials who, at times, seem obsessed with the idea of holding that city down.

Could we do better with it?

BUT IT’S NOT likely there will be any shift any time soon of the Illinois/Indiana border from its current location between Chicago and Hammond to some place east of Valparaiso.

But our state may have accomplished something greater for the public image. For it seems the advertising professional who created that “Illinoyed” campaign for Indiana state government now works for Illinois.

Crain’s Chicago Business reported the newly-created Illinois Business and Development Corp. hired Kelly Nicholl – who as it turns out never gave up her condominium in downtown Chicago, even while working out of Indianapolis.

Illinoyed no more?

Perhaps even she couldn’t bear the thought of being too close to the rest of Indiana, which will now be the target of Illinois’ attacks!

 

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EDITORS NOTE: For those of you who'd like to read the Hoosier perspective, WBEZ-FM's Northwest Indiana correspondent provides a comprehensive report.

EXTRA: Pullman natl park is nice, but is it Obama library consolation prize?

President Barack Obama will be in Chicago next week to make the announcement that he’s using his presidential powers to designate the remains of the old Pullman Palace Railcar Factory and its surrounding company town a national park.

Which is a nice boost for Chicago’s South Side – it will mean recognition for historic events that took place in the area around 111^th Street and Cottage Grove Avenue and will give tourists a reason to trek south and all the way to the Pullman neighborhood.

BUT SIMILAR LOGIC can be used to justify the presidential museum and library being proposed for either Washington or Jackson parks near the University of Chicago. A site for that museum is supposed to be chosen some time in March.

It would be nice for the South Side and far South Side if both of these major attractions were to come to Chicago this year. Heck, it would be nice for the city as a whole.

But being able to claim both of these attractions on the oft-neglected segment of Chicago south of Cermak Road would truly be an economic boost – along with a jolt to the pride of the great South Side!

Then again, it seems like way too much for the South Side to be getting both of these attractions within what could be one month’s time span.

WHEN I LEARNED of the likelihood of the national park designation for Pullman, my reaction was to wonder if this is the consolation prize for the eventual announcement that the Obama museum and library really is headed for Columbia – and I don’t mean the college on Michigan Avenue.

Now I don’t have any hard fact that says the Columbia University proposal is going to be the one picked by Barack and Michelle Obama to house their political and social legacy. This could literally be my paranoia running amok!

But would giving Chicago this Pullman attraction be the way of trying to assuage the ego of Chicago when it comes out next month that the Second City got skunked by either New York City or Honolulu?

I’m wondering how many people will try to pin down the president during his Pullman visit on Feb. 19 as to where in the process the presidential museum/library is.

WILL OBAMA FEEL more love for his undergraduate alma mater than the law school where he was once an instructor and in the neighborhood where he once lived (and still owns a home)?

I hope this isn’t really the way this scenario is playing out. Yet when political people are involved with something, there’s always the possibility of someone’s self-interest needing to be served before anything can get done.

Personally, all of the debate about dueling proposals seems like officials want to extort from Chicago and the University of Chicago every possible concession. In short, if we pay, it will come to us.

It we don’t pay up, it will go elsewhere.

WHICH MAY SATISFY those people who for whatever reason would just as soon not have the Obama museum/library in Chicago – either because their vision of what the city should be is cheap or because their ideology is just that snotty and disrespectful.

But for the rest of us (which various polls show is the majority of Chicagoans), this is a worthy attraction that could help us better comprehend and display the past several years when our political people really did reach the highest seats of power!

Who knows? Maybe it will work out!

In which case, the winter months of 2015 could go into the local history books not so much for all the darned snowfall we experienced, but for the two lasting sites we attracted.

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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.

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Does your neighborhood “matter enough” to get mention by Old Navy?

I still remember a dispute I had once with one of my editors at the City News Bureau of Chicago of old with regards to identifying neighborhood names within stories.

 

The t-shirt take, ...

I believed then (and still do) that telling where something happened in Chicago is significant, and that since Chicago is such a neighborhood-oriented city it helps to know the 77 official (and 120-plus unofficial) neighborhoods that comprise the city.

MY EDITOR DISAGREED, saying she believed that some neighborhoods just weren’t well-known or significant enough to be worth mentioning.

Lincoln Park and Bridgeport? Yes.

Clearing? Probably not, as opposed to just thinking of it as the place where Midway Airport jets.

And as for the East Side? Hell no, because it’s too confusing for those marketing-oriented geeks who want to think of Streeterville as the New East Side, compared to the neighborhood so named because it is the community located east of the Calumet River.

I COULDN’T HELP but remember this decades-old newsroom discussion on Monday when I read a Chicago Tribune report about the “controversy” arising over a new t-shirt being sold at Old Navy stores.

Personally, I don’t shop there. So I wouldn’t have known firsthand. But it seems the store that likes to think it is hip and happening (or whatever cutesy terms are used to mean the same thing these days) has a new Chicago-oriented t-shirt.

It is an outline of the city limits, with neighborhood names printed on it in a crude approximation of where those neighborhoods are located.

You can wear a trendy map of Chicago on your chest, if you so wish!

EXCEPT THAT THE map is so crude that there’s no way one could use the illustration to tell where anything is in the city.

Also, the map only designates 21 neighborhoods or communities – far fewer than the aforementioned number of neighborhoods that actually exist within Chicago.

 

... as opposed to the real thing!

Which means most people don’t even get to see their neighborhoods included.

Live in Rogers Park, Logan Square, Sauganash, Humboldt Park, Pilsen, Canaryville, South Shore, Pullman or Hegewisch – just to name a few? Forget it, you’re not on the list.

I WOULDN’T HAVE realized how significant some think Lincoln Park was, except it comes across as SO BIG on the map. While Hyde Park is so dinky – it barely fits into the South Side mix.

Personally, as someone who is a native of the 10^th Ward (South Chicago, with relatives in the East Side, South Deering and Hegewisch), I find it comical that the entire southeast corner of Chicago gets designated as “Lake Calumet.”

Although considering that the key element that unites the 10^th Ward neighborhoods is their proximity to Lake Calumet and the Calumet River, that’s not the most inaccurate description of the area.

I’m more intrigued by the description of “Polish Village,” which according to the t-shirt is northwest somewhere between Belmont Heights and Lake View.

NOW I’M AWARE that there are still traces along Milwaukee Avenue of the Polish ethnic neighborhoods of old that used to dominate the Northwest Side. Although I’ve never heard of a specific community bearing that name.

If anyone can tell me of a neighborhood by that name, I’d like to know. Otherwise, I’m going to presume it a generic name for the area. (It is one of the unique aspects of Chicago that even at age 49, there are still new things I learn about the city).

 

Is the whole of North Side "Wrigleyville?"

Then, there is the area on the t-shirt designated as “Stockyards.” Which refers to the area just south of the Bridgeport neighborhood where stockyards used to exist, but is now the Chicago Stockyards Industrial Park.

It’s kind of a shame that the actual neighborhoods around there didn’t get included.

AS IN THE Back of the Yards and Canaryville neighborhoods.

Personally, I think those are two of the most off-beat neighborhood names in all of Chicago. Definitely more interesting than those North Side-oriented people who want to say they live in Wrigleyville – no matter how far away from Wrigley Field they actually live.

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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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