West Side Story: for release
Standing in the shadow of the United Center is a community many Chicagoans might never have heard of -- Westhaven.
No longer home to the Henry Horner Homes, a major public housing site, the Near West Side neighborhood is quickly becoming a mixed-income community with condos and town houses sprouting next to board-ups and a refurbished Touhy-Herbert Park hosting its first Little League in 40 years.
Now it needs retail, everything from dry cleaners to coffee shops to restaurants, community advocates said at a news conference Monday.
Already, there are hopeful signs.
The area has no grocery store, but Aldi has proposed opening a store at the southeast corner of Madison Street and Western Avenue, when the developer obtains the property, an Aldi spokesman said. Madison is the proposed retail corridor, though some believe it needs to be changed to provide parking.
The neighborhood has a Walgreen drugstore, a dental office, a bank branch and fast-food restaurants.
"Once a food store opens, retailers will start looking harder," said Fran Spencer, assistant commissioner of Retail Chicago.
Westhaven is bounded roughly by the Eisenhower on the South, railroad tracks just south of Kinzie on the north, Rockwell on the west and Damen on the east.
Statistics compiled by MetroEdge, a market research firm created by Chicago's ShoreBank Corp. to attract investment in overlooked urban markets show wealth is growing in the neighborhood:
••The number of households earning $35,000 shot up 158 percent from 1990 to 2000.
••That number grew 4.8 percent from 2000 to 2006, when it reached 668.
••At least 2,000 new units of housing have been built in the neighborhood in the past seven years, valued at $425 million in residential development.
Westhaven Park, a mixed-income development that replaced Henry Horner Homes, sells units ranging from a $118,000 one-bedroom to $595,000 for a three-story row house. The development will include 10,000 to 12,000 square feet of retail space in its next phase, to be completed in two years.
The area's residents have a combined $90 million in retail buying power per square mile, according to the MetroEdge report.
Westhaven advocates, ranging from Earnest Gates, executive director of the Near West Side Community Development Corp., to the Partnership for New Communities, to United Center Executive Vice President Howard Pizer, talked about community leaders' work to rebuild the area after fires and riots destroyed retail there in the wake of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination April 4, 1968.
Gates compared the progress to that of the 1987 Chicago Bulls when a young Michael Jordan hadn't yet been surrounded by a team strong enough to win the NBA championship. The community has built up its housing, infrastructure, community programs and support for people who need jobs, and it's time for a new retail lineup to take Westhaven to the next level, Gates said.
A new initiative involves CleanSlate, a non-profit organization that puts ex-convicts and others with job needs to work beautifying neighborhoods. CleanSlate will clean sidewalks and vacant lots, shovel snow in the winter and maintain parkway gardens.
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