Near South Side

[chet everett]

Originally Posted by jonnynonos

People on this forum are delusional. You can buy a lot of houses in McKinley Park for $100,000 or less. It is an area that is still in steep decline and there is quite a bit of ugliness about it.

What I find interesting is the fact of seeing a place in transition. Unfortunately it seems to be transitioning the wrong way.

The exodus of employers has left much of the "non-hip" city a shell of what it once was but even at the peak employment in areas like McKinley Park it was not some workers paradise -- places along the canals and river were all low skill / hard labor kinds of plants. Lots of stuff that was big on hauling material and semi-dangerous chemicals. The best funded stuff is still going on further west in places like Summitt / Argo or out near the old Joliet Arsenal but it is on a scale that would not make sense inside the city. The stink used to be choking. Even near Midway is was gross -- the smog was so bad that even at night the funky streetlights that illuminated the Stevenson would not really cut through the gloom.

The "work force" that is left mostly goes to bigger more modern plants / warehouses and uses forklifts / automated tools to do what took five times the workforce to do with back breaking manual effort.

[marothisu]

Originally Posted by chet everett

The exodus of employers has left much of the "non-hip" city a shell of what it once was but even at the peak employment in areas like McKinley Park it was not some workers paradise -- places along the canals and river were all low skill / hard labor kinds of plants. Lots of stuff that was big on hauling material and semi-dangerous chemicals. The best funded stuff is still going on further west in places like Summitt / Argo or out near the old Joliet Arsenal but it is on a scale that would not make sense inside the city. The stink used to be choking. Even near Midway is was gross -- the smog was so bad that even at night the funky streetlights that illuminated the Stevenson would not really cut through the gloom.

The "work force" that is left mostly goes to bigger more modern plants / warehouses and uses forklifts / automated tools to do what took five times the workforce to do with back breaking manual effort.

My coworker who lived there painted a different picture of what happened to the neighborhood, especially the storefronts. For example, one of the stores near his apartment was bought by an immigrant, who then thought it would make more money to convert that store into apartments. The building my coworker's father was in was torn down..not because it was bad, but because the woman who owned the building died and nobody wanted to buy it. He said this sort of thing happened a bit...people converting a store into apartments and such.

[ChiNaan]

Originally Posted by 5Lakes

I actually think that McKinley Park should be a good area to undergo revitalization in the distant future. It's close to downtown, has a centralized EL stop, a nice park, and has good building stock. Not sure how someone would say it's suburban. Yeah, it has more single family homes but it still has a good amount of density. 35th Street between Archer and Ashland would be a great pedestrian street if revitalized.

I agree with your first statement, though I would definitely emphasize the "distant future" part. Like a lot of places near downtown, some of its warehouses (of which there are many) were starting to be turned into luxury condos before the 2008 market crash, and some old houses and 2-flats were being torn down and replaced with new ones, so it could eventually get back on that path. I agree about 35th Street, too.

I completely disagree about density, though. It's actually pretty low density for how close it is to downtown. Besides the high % of single family homes and the huge park, there are a ton of empty warehouses. Street parking is insanely easy for its location. The population of the entire community area is only 15,000. The density feels similar to parts of Oak Park, Berwyn, or Beverly to me. Much of Bridgeport is similar, but it has at least a little more in the way of apartments/condos and denser/walkable retail than McKP does.

[ChiNaan]

Originally Posted by marothisu

For example, one of the stores near his apartment was bought by an immigrant, who then thought it would make more money to convert that store into apartments.

Yep, that's exactly what appears to have happened. The retail shifted to strip malls and big box stores, and it became more profitable for landlords to make everything else residential. That's what I mean about it having a suburban feel to me.

[ChiNaan]

Originally Posted by jonnynonos

People on this forum are delusional. You can buy a lot of houses in McKinley Park for $100,000 or less. It is an area that is still in steep decline and there is quite a bit of ugliness about it.

What I find interesting is the fact of seeing a place in transition. Unfortunately it seems to be transitioning the wrong way.

I admit that it's been about a year since I spent time there, so maybe a lot has changed, but I was there pretty regularly for the two years before that. I didn't see "ugliness" unless your standard is Lincoln Park or Gold Coast, or you're uncomfortable with working class white, Asian and Latino families. The crime statistics when I researched them were much more consistent with my view than yours. My friend who moved there was actually getting away from the relatively higher density and crime of Pilsen, which isn't super high density or super crime-ridden. I'm not sure what kind of house you could get for under $100K, but the fact that housing is cheap there fits with what I'm saying about it being an unusual place for its location. If housing were expensive there it would be far more dense and built-up.

[jonnynonos]

Originally Posted by chet everett

The exodus of employers has left much of the "non-hip" city a shell of what it once was but even at the peak employment in areas like McKinley Park it was not some workers paradise -- places along the canals and river were all low skill / hard labor kinds of plants. Lots of stuff that was big on hauling material and semi-dangerous chemicals. The best funded stuff is still going on further west in places like Summitt / Argo or out near the old Joliet Arsenal but it is on a scale that would not make sense inside the city. The stink used to be choking. Even near Midway is was gross -- the smog was so bad that even at night the funky streetlights that illuminated the Stevenson would not really cut through the gloom.

The "work force" that is left mostly goes to bigger more modern plants / warehouses and uses forklifts / automated tools to do what took five times the workforce to do with back breaking manual effort.

Chett,

I believe you have hit the nail on the head. What I suppose I was trying to articulate is that yesterday's "working class" is today's "working poor," and I believe that is reflected in this and other neighborhoods.

I grew up around neighborhoods like this one. Not in one, but near them. Relatively solid blue collar communities.

In my opinion there was a pride that came from working in the manufacturing sector that just isn't there with a service economy, and even if there was, the fact is that real wages haven't gone up in decades for 2/3 of Americans, let alone the people on the margins of "working class."