Olympic-size push
Washington Park | Many residents fearful development brought on by Games will drive them right out of their neighborhood
Hosting the Olympics is the ultimate status symbol for a city. It's about the only thing bumpkins in Atlanta and St. Louis really have to rub in our face.
So Chicago's position as America's choice for the 2016 Olympic Games is a pretty big deal.
That's why Mayor Daley got airborne when the U.S. Olympic Committee broke the news and probably why Barack Obama was in town Monday rather than charming pig farmers in some old lady's basement.
(John J. Kim/Sun-Times)
(John J. Kim/Sun-Times)
If Chicago is ultimately selected, it's not a stretch to figure vacant land and affordable apartments west of King Drive near the proposed Olympic stadium site in Washington Park will bloom into pricey condos.
Hip restaurants and shops, the kind that thrive in Hyde Park, might replace boarded-up storefronts or the cozy lunch counter at Barbara's Soul Foods where you can get a plate of neck bones with black-eyed peas, okra and a corn muffin for less than seven bucks.
But the prospect of things getting too good petrifies Lisa Coleman, a single mom and receptionist at Cain's Barber College, 365 E. 51st.
She lives with her mother, a senior citizen widow on a fixed income, and her three kids in her plain, two-story childhood home with a small backyard. Washington Park is the only neighborhood she's ever called home.
Coleman attended Hope School on 55th and Lowe. She sent her children there, too.
Some of her fondest memories are of neighborhood picnics, splashing in the pool, watching the Bud Billiken Parade, and mingling with friends at free concerts and festivals at Washington Park.
''There's just a lot for the neighborhood people at the park. It's our gathering place,'' Coleman says.
And what Coleman, 39, fears most is that the Olympics -- despite the promise of jobs and economic revival to an area that needs it -- might speed up gentrification and steal the neighborhood from folks like her. Black folks.
''This is my neighborhood, or at least I feel like it's mine. If [city officials] put it in our minds that the Olympics will help us, the people who have been here for years and years, I wonder if we're just being fooled again,'' she says. ''Just tell us, are you pushing us out? Are we going to be gone before 2016?"
Maybe it sounds irrational to worry about seeing your neighborhood improve, but Coleman insists that the kind of development she predicts -- cheap apartments being turned into high priced condos -- won't help long-time residents who suffered through the neighborhoods toughest times.
"It scares a lot of people, just like when they started tearing down the projects and putting up condos. They build those places for people who might come in and buy one, and the black people get pushed out," she says.
"Or let's not even put it in color. Poor people who are working hard just like me. Raising three kids. Doing the right thing. Paying taxes. Really struggling. I'm worried I'll get pushed somewhere else."
When Barcelona played host to the Summer Olympics, residential property values soared 250 percent to 300 percent between 1986 and 1993, according to a Jones Lang LaSalle Olympics impact study of host cities.
If a similar residential boom hits Washington Park -- where there's plenty of vacant land and dilapidated buildings blocks from the future stadium site, Coleman worries people like her mother might not be able to keep up with property tax increases. They might be forced to sell.
"It upsets me," she says. "Something good is coming here, and I might not get to be here. It won't help me. It's not fair."
And even though that's not what Mayor Daley or Olympics organizers might want to hear a few days after getting such phenomenal news, it's what a lot of people without much of a say in these things are talking about near the park.