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Pete Bigelow · Attempt to Revitalize Chicago’s Industrial Core Comes With Thorny Debate
September 14th, 2011
Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood once sat at the core of the city’s industrial economy.
But many of the manufacturers who populated this area on the city’s southwest side left town long ago. The light industry that remains now shares the neighborhood with fashion stores and art galleries. Community leaders are now facing the task of answering how to best integrate old and new.
It’s not always easy. Our partner station WBEZ reports that in June, Alderman Danny Solis introduced an ordinance that allowed for “work-live” housing units in vacant buildings, where “artists and small-scale producers would be able to collapse their home and professional lives” into a single space.
It’s not an idea unique to Chicago. Attempts to lure young professionals and artists back into urban cores are ongoing in cities throughout the Midwest.
But Solis’ proposal has received pushback in Pilsen. Peter Strazzabosco, a spokesman for the Department of Housing and Economic Development, says that residences in manufacturing districts are a bad mix. His department recommended against Solis’ ordinance.
“The uses don’t necessarily get along very well,” Strazzabosco tells WBEZ. “When residences encroach on manufacturing areas, the residents sometimes complain about sounds, smells, traffic.”
The outcome of the proposal may set an important precedent in the city. It would mark the first time residential uses would be allowed in any of the city’s “planned manufacturing districts,” initially set up in 1988 to cushion the city’s jobs base against commercial and residential development.
Local reaction is mixed. Some businessmen fear that new residents would rally against industry working through all hours of the day and night. Some welcome economic activity – residential or manufacturing – in once vacant buildings.
One tenant, who runs a wood shop from a 740-square foot space welcomes newcomers. But offers them some caution, too: “The boundary between work and residential is gone,” she tells WBEZ, “so it’s kind of messy all over.”
