East Garfield Park: Is it Worth the Risk? (Chicago, Woodlawn: buying, landlords)

[Bardot]

The original post on this thread is really old, however, I just wanted to pitch in one of the most helpful apartment hunting tips I've learned (from a friend who lived in both Humboldt Park and Garfield Park):

View the apartment in both daytime and AT NIGHT. My friend viewed her apt in Humboldt Park during daylight and it looked perfectly fine, but after she moved in she realized it was actual gang turf and had her windows blown out more than once.

[chet everett]

Originally Posted by MassVt

I'm getting the impression that Chet taught biology back in the day, before he became the director of Suburban Chicago's Tourism division..

...but I do have a botany minor too.

Honestly it is less that "Chicago sucks" (putting aside the fact that nature abhors a vacuum and "balance of forces" analysis will show that science proves "blows" is always a description of gases and even liguids are really better described as "pushed" from an air of higher pressure to one of lower pressure, never "sucked") and that folks that excuse the horrible level of violence can lead to worse problems...

Saner people would have long ago seen the rhetoric politicians that benefit from supporting the thugs and elected people that have their priorities in order...

The sorts of things coming out about Quinn buying the votes with "anti violence" funds goes a long to understanding why the talk of "crack downs" are just lies to placate the gullible.

[CCrest182]

EGP isn't gentrifying in the way places up north are. It's more just redevelopment of old and run down buildings, into newer, but low income housing. They built a strip mall west of the United Center on Madison. Not many restaurants many hip people would go to, lots of fast food. Not something you'd see in a generally nice neighborhood.

[emathias]

Originally Posted by Drover

I really hate to even give an appearance to be siding with one of chet's tedious "Chicago sucks unconditionally" threads, but more people were shot in EGP last year than WGP. For what it's worth, WGP seems to be making up the difference this year. EGP may be "a good mid-to-long-term real estate play," but any way you slice it it's still a nasty place on balance for now with way too many serious violent crime incidents relative to its population. North Korea may be more stable than Sudan but still wouldn't want to live there.

Over the past decade or so, WGP has had about 70% more homicides that EGP.

Neither is exactly safe, but WGP is worse numbers-wise, and that's even given the fact that EGP has almost 15% more population that WGP, so the homicide rate difference is even worse than the raw numerical difference.

[emathias]

Originally Posted by CCrest182

EGP isn't gentrifying in the way places up north are. It's more just redevelopment of old and run down buildings, into newer, but low income housing. They built a strip mall west of the United Center on Madison. Not many restaurants many hip people would go to, lots of fast food. Not something you'd see in a generally nice neighborhood.

I think you may misunderstand what gentrification starts out as - "redevelopment of old and run down buildings" is what gentrification starts out as, as it brings in people or investors who are willing to invest in a neighborhood. It rarely starts out as rich people moving into poor areas, it starts as adventurous people rehabbing places to take advantage of inherent positives of a neighborhood (which Garfield Park has plenty of). These adventurous people also start other businesses, and things start to improve slowly at first, but faster as the area has more and more things more people want (rehabbed vintage buildings, new construction, basic businesses and services), and fewer and fewer things most people don't want (crime, condemned buildings, etc).

I would guess that East Garfield Park will gentrify in much the same way that East Humboldt Park is, with the added advantage that East Garfield Park has two CTA rail lines to take people downtown and/or to Oak Park, Cicero, Berwyn, etc, plus proximity to an expressway that links the jobs centers of the Loop and the jobs centers in the western suburbs, which is an advantage East Humboldt Park doesn't have. One advantage Humboldt Park has is more intact housing stock.

[BRU67]

Originally Posted by CCrest182

EGP isn't gentrifying in the way places up north are. It's more just redevelopment of old and run down buildings, into newer, but low income housing. They built a strip mall west of the United Center on Madison. Not many restaurants many hip people would go to, lots of fast food. Not something you'd see in a generally nice neighborhood.

I agree. What's happening on the western end of the Near West Side (but not EGP yet I don't think) is more speculator-based than "traditional" gentrification, which will generally start with artists and students moving in for cheap rent followed by wealthier and wealthier individuals. It's a bit too scary over there for that. There are plenty of pioneers who bought up property west of Western thinking it would pop. You see many of these properties on MLS now that the market is recovering, with a lot of price changes associated with the listing, leading me to believe that their little experiment wasn't always a pleasant one.

That being as it may be, I think the speculification of the Near West Side will continue, albeit slowly since even east of Western is still a little spicy until you get to maybe Damen. They did build a brand new flagship Pete's Fresh Market right at Western and Madison, and that was no PR-based feel good measure. They actually have hope for the area. But beyond that, there isn't a whole lot to do unless you head pretty far east though.

[rzzz]

Across the country, a lot of gentrification now does seem to be trending towards rich people moving into previously poor residential areas, rather than the "80s/90s style" of gentrification where gays and artists move into old industrial areas and rehab warehouses.

You could call this the Park Slope model of gentrification vs. the Williamsburg model.

As an example, this is very prevalent in neighborhoods like Decatur and Kirkwood in Atlanta, where fresh yuppies are sort of ghoulishly buying out the homes of african american grandmas and knocking them down for their mcmansion build out.

[BleedCubbieBlue]

Originally Posted by rzzz

Across the country, a lot of gentrification now does seem to be trending towards rich people moving into previously poor residential areas, rather than the "80s/90s style" of gentrification where gays and artists move into old industrial areas and rehab warehouses.

You could call this the Park Slope model of gentrification vs. the Williamsburg model.

As an example, this is very prevalent in neighborhoods like Decatur and Kirkwood in Atlanta, where fresh yuppies are sort of ghoulishly buying out the homes of african american grandmas and knocking them down for their mcmansion build out.

People with higher incomes are simply choosing to stay closer to their jobs. In the past, people with higher incomes would move to the newly built suburbs and take their buying power with them. The inner city was for the poor who worked the manufacturing zones. Now the younger professionals are choosing inner city instead of burbs. It's a reversal of the historic trends. Gays and artists would stay in the inner city to create pockets of artists/gay communities. Same result different reason/purpose.

[BRU67]

I've heard rumors of investors sending Spanish-speaking agents door to door in Pilsen to ask long term residents if they want to sell. Judging from what I witnessed trying to rent/buy there, I fully believe it.

I think now that gentrification is pretty well-known as a concept, a lot of people are trying to find the "next big thing" before it pops. In other words, they are speculating on gentrification before the gentrification happens. I guess we could call them "pre-gentrifiers," LOL!

[CCrest182]

Originally Posted by emathias

I think you may misunderstand what gentrification starts out as - "redevelopment of old and run down buildings" is what gentrification starts out as, as it brings in people or investors who are willing to invest in a neighborhood. It rarely starts out as rich people moving into poor areas, it starts as adventurous people rehabbing places to take advantage of inherent positives of a neighborhood (which Garfield Park has plenty of). These adventurous people also start other businesses, and things start to improve slowly at first, but faster as the area has more and more things more people want (rehabbed vintage buildings, new construction, basic businesses and services), and fewer and fewer things most people don't want (crime, condemned buildings, etc).

I would guess that East Garfield Park will gentrify in much the same way that East Humboldt Park is, with the added advantage that East Garfield Park has two CTA rail lines to take people downtown and/or to Oak Park, Cicero, Berwyn, etc, plus proximity to an expressway that links the jobs centers of the Loop and the jobs centers in the western suburbs, which is an advantage East Humboldt Park doesn't have. One advantage Humboldt Park has is more intact housing stock.

That is, by definition of the very word "gentrification", false. The definition, is:

"Gentrification is a shift in an urban community toward wealthier residents and/or businesses and increasing property values."

New housing =/= Wealthier residents.

That's a large thing being forgotten. Many buildings in EGP are government funded, and many people living there are doing so on the taxpayer's dollar, or the cost of living in that building is very low, to accommodate specifically low income individuals. A sign of a gentrifying neighborhood, would be property values not decreasing, but increasing (Wicker Park is a great example of this).

My point was that it's being redeveloped, for the purpose of housing the residents that have always been there, not to house trendies in Lincoln Park. There's also hardly any "hipster" shops and stores opening up, again, mainly fast food restaurants opening rather than what you see up north.

I'm not saying EGP won't ever gentrify. But it hardly can be considered gentrifying now, and I think it's years away from becoming a desirable, truly "gentrified" area.

I don't believe so that it will gentrify in the same fashion for a few reasons:

1) East Humboldt Park has always been connected to the east and north to pretty trendy neighborhoods (of course, speaking in terms of now). EGP is south of much industrial areas, and isn't extremely close or connected to those areas up there that are gentrifying. In other words, East HP is situated directly in the path of "gentrification". EGP, pretty south and too west.



2) The lack of quality businesses as well as poor schools in EGP isn't going to be attractive to people with lots of money.

3) It's pretty bad crime wise. There's been 50 reports of violent crime, 82 reports of property crime, and 128 quality of life crimes here in the past month alone, compared to much lower up north. According to Trib, EGP rates 8th out of 77 of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the city (1 being the worst). West Town (which is east of HP) is 34th...

The only thing it's really got going for it is it's accessibility to transportation and it's closeness to the Loop, but that's not good enough, especially given there are much safe neighborhoods like Bridgeport that are just as close to the loop, if not closer.