Ald. Jason Ervin has a vision for the Madison and Pulaski Corridor in Chicago’s West Garfield Park neighborhood.
“We continue to work on housing, we continue to work on public safety to bring this community back to what it was,” Ervin, who represents the 28th Ward, said. “The only way we’re going to do better is to bring positive stuff back here.”
A new community plaza, which includes an outdoor roller rink, at 4008 W. Madison St. is part of the mayor’s Neighborhood Activation initiative, a new city violence-prevention program that asks community members in areas with high crime to come up with ideas that best suit them.
“While a roller (rink) has been the big tag of this, this is really an outdoor recreational space that can be programmed in such a way that it’s for the whole family,” Ervin said, ticking off ideas that ranged from seniors playing chess to farmers markets or intimate concerts.
The plaza opened July 23 and was the site of a ceremonial ribbon cutting Aug. 6. It will close in September for construction of a more permanent space and reopen in June.
The area was once the business hub for the West Side, according to TJ Crawford, a West Garfield Park resident, clinical social worker and director of the Garfield Park Rite to Wellness Collaborative. Walgreens, Goldblatt’s and Madigan’s, as well as plenty of fast-food restaurants, used to line the streets, Ervin said.
“We didn’t have to go downtown for anything,” Ervin said.
But now, like many other neighborhoods on the South and West sides, West Garfield Park is a shell of its former self. There is trash along streets and sidewalks and a number of empty lots.
“Right now Madison is an open market for drugs. Prostitution, drug abuse, gang activity,” said Michael Rembert, owner of Madison Pulaski Mall and a lifelong Garfield Park resident. “Man, it’s out of control. Any given day, in the one block here … you’ve got anywhere between 30 to 40 people out there selling drugs in the middle of the street.”
The plaza is just a block from where a 13-year-old boy and a 19-year-old man were shot Aug. 4, and is two blocks from where a 21-year-old woman was shot in the leg Aug. 2.
Compared with other neighborhoods, West Garfield Park had the highest rate of fatal and nonfatal shootings relative to population from the beginning of the year through the end of May, according to statistics provided by Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s office. It’s in the top five when it comes to narcotics sales and opioid addiction and ranks seventh for incidence of gun violence.
Chicago police Officer Juan Perez helps Devonae Johnson, 10, and E'Mani Howard, 9, left, onto a skate rink at the Garfield Park Community Plaza and Outdoor Roller Rink in Chicago. (Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)
On multiple occasions Norman Kerr,q the director of violence reduction for the city of Chicago, has seen busloads of kids using the space. There is private security present as well as police.
The city budgeted $1.5 million for the project, according to the mayor’s office. The money comes from the Cannabis Regulatory Act, a state law that uses tax revenue from cannabis sales to fund projects in communities that have experienced economic disinvestment.
“This is one part of a much larger strategy to reclaim the entire Garfield Park (community),” Crawford said.
Within the last year the city has invested $50 million in the area around Madison Street and Pulaski Road, Ervin said. That includes $15 million for the Legler Regional Library and another $15 million for Melody Elementary School, which has a new playground.
“The mayor’s office is ... doing their part,” Ervin said. “We need the public safety component, we need the resource component to follow because the capital component is coming.”
Kerr said the city has plans to bring other resources to the neighborhood, including street outreach and support for those struggling with substance abuse and mental health issues. It also has identified a space for a wellness center on Kildare Avenue and Madison Street.
‘A beginning point’
“The plaza is not an endpoint,” Crawford said. “It’s really part of a beginning point that reflects the investment and the revitalization and the involvement and the focus on Black culture as a form of wellness.”
The Collaborative is a coalition of a number of organizations, from local nonprofits and churches to hospitals and health care providers, said member Tara Dabney, the director of development and communications for the Institute for Nonviolence Chicago. It was the driving force behind the project, while the mayor’s office was in more of an “assist mode,” Kerr said. The diversity of groups in the Collaborative meant that each had the capacity to bring a different demographic to the table.
“We had sessions for elders, we had sessions for young adults, we had sessions for professionals, we had sessions for business owners,” Crawford said. “We had open sessions where it didn’t matter what your demographic was.”
The Collaborative made a concerted effort to reach as many people as possible, especially people whose perspectives are often ignored, such as those with violence in their backgrounds, Dabney said.
The Goldin Institute, a Chicago-based nonprofit whose mission is to empower grassroots groups and leaders, helped with community outreach.
Although much of its work focuses on international communities, the Goldin Institute, drew on its experience creating “community-based oral testimonies” with former child soldiers in northern Uganda to create an outreach method that would benefit the people of West Garfield Park, Executive Director Travis Rejman said.
“If you or I walked into a community in northern Uganda that was experiencing violence, there’s such a gulf and a power differential that folks there would tell us more or less what they thought we wanted to hear rather than the true story about what’s happening,” Rejman said.
The most authentic conversations happen when they are initiated by community members instead of well-intentioned outsiders, Rejman said.
These community ambassadors, as they are known, are six people from the neighborhood between the ages of 16 and 24. Their goal was to have conversations with their peers or others whose voices they thought were not heard. They recorded 50 to 60 interviews, Rejman said.
“There were broad themes that we wanted them to talk about,” Rejman said. “Where do you feel safe today? What times in your life have you felt most safe that you want to build upon? Are there recommendations that you have for the city about how to make the neighborhood more vibrant?”
One community ambassador got in touch with an incarcerated family member, Rejman said. That, to her, was someone whose voice is important but often overlooked.
“The more we can activate people to get involved and bring their gifts and talents to the work, that’s how you address violence and build peace for the long term,” Rejman said.
Gentrification is another reason why the community plaza is important, said James Webb, an East Garfield Park resident and a member of the Collaborative.
As housing prices go up and nicer amenities come in, crime gets pushed out. The community plaza allows West Garfield Park residents to enjoy nice places and reduced crime without having to move.
Too ‘dangerous’ for kids?
Some in the community question the idea of putting a place where kids will congregate in the middle of an area that experiences a lot of crime and drug trafficking.
“It’s the most dangerous space on Madison,” Rembert said. “You’re looking at drug sales on every corner where that skating rink is. … (The kids) are going to let their guard down and end up in the middle of a shootout.”
Siri Hibbler, CEO and founder of the Garfield Park Chamber of Commerce and a Garfield Park native, expressed similar concern.
“The mayor’s people came to my chamber, to me, back in February or March asking what we thought could be put around the Legler Library. The mayor wanted to erect something quickly,” Hibbler said. “Our concern was that it’s so much drug trafficking and a lot of crime, that you don’t want to put kids in harm’s way.”
Hibbler is affiliated with 45 to 50 nonprofits in the area but has never heard of the Rite to Wellness Collaborative, she said.
Rembert said he doesn’t know of any community members or businesses who were consulted about the project.
“The mayor needs to get some people from the community on her staff,” Rembert said. “The people she has working for her now have no idea what’s going on in West Garfield.”
Community engagement is not a science, and “there’s a thousand more people that we’d like to talk to,” Rejman said.
Webb questions why Hibbler would denounce the plaza without working with the Collaborative — which he said she is aware of — if her goal is also to make the area safe.
“Whenever Siri Hibbler wants to take her seat at the Collaborative, she can,” Webb said. “What’s most important is to make sure that we get on one accord about safety and commerce in that corridor because the market is going to move on the corridor regardless.”
More needs to be done in order to clean up the area before it is safe enough for such a community space, both Hibbler and Rembert said.
“Our kids are being shot. They’re being shot in the head,” Hibbler said. “I want them to enjoy themselves, but I do feel that work should be done in that area to deter the crime before putting something like that, that possibly could put our kids in harm’s way.”
The two would like to see police officers walking a beat. Drug rehabilitation centers, a community center, and continued investment in educational programs, such as what was done at Legler Library, would be most beneficial, Rembert said. More of an emphasis needs to be put on educating kids, especially since many fell behind after not being able to go to school in-person because of the pandemic.
‘Darkness and light don’t dwell in the same place’
Community members were at the center of the ideas and planning, Kerr said.
“I can’t tell you where every mayor’s office staff lives,” Kerr said. “The plans, the ideas, these are things that are coming from the community and we’re just in an assist mode where we’re helping to get these things set up.”
Ald. Ervin believes that having such a community space will itself serve as a deterrent to crime.
“Darkness and light don’t dwell in the same place,” Ervin said. “I’m a firm believer that if we put positive activity here, work with folks and help bring all the resources here that it will help us to change this portion of West Garfield Park.”
The best bet is for community members to stand up to the violence by implementing programs that signify it is not welcome in their neighborhood, Webb said.
“While there needs to be a realistic approach to making sure that we are creating safe spaces ... we should not be focusing on what all could go wrong,” Webb said. “As communities mature, those particular elements, the undesirable elements, they’re replaced by more responsible people.”
zharris@chicagotribune.com
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