Which Mayor Candidate Has Marshall Plan For South Side Revival?

CHICAGO, IL — On Sunday, Gery Chico made a campaign stop on “The Nine” — the struggling stretch of 79th Street between Cottage Grove and the Dan Ryan.

At Captain’s Hard Times Dining, a neighborhood soul-food staple for 30 years, the mayoral candidate pitched locals on his vision to rebuild neighborhoods like Chatham by bringing back business to vacant storefronts.

“What we want to do is rebuild entire parts of the city that have been neglected for 50 years. We’re going to bring back our commercial streets,” Chico told me. “I wasn’t on 79th Street by accident. There are so many vacant storefronts. I want to revitalize those storefronts. I want to bring business back to them.”

Chico isn’t the first politician to promise to bring economic revival to The Nine. Four years ago, mayor Rahm Emanuel’s re-election bid included a closed-door meeting with Chatham ministers at the same soul-food joint. That “good meeting” with Emanuel quelled concerned about the neighborhood’s spike in shootings and economic decline. Whatever it is Emanuel said, one pastor told a reporter that he was anticipating “some good things happening soon.”

Four years later, despite the Greater Chatham Initiative’s economic development plan funded by Emanuel’s billionaire political benefactor Michael Sacks, hard times persist. Target’s recent decision to close its Chatham store at 87th and Cottage Grove made things worse. As for The Nine, pervasive emptiness and blight remain a testament to the ugly truth about our town: Chicago is really two cities — one for the rich and one for the poor — separate and unequal.

Emanuel has failed to revive business corridors in Chicago’s poorest minority communities while offering outrageous incentives to corporations and developers that have fueled an economic boon in the richest and whitest parts of town.

Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives President David Doig, the developer for bringing retail and manufacturing to Pullman, says the city’s incentives for investing in the South Side get “spread like peanut butter — too thin to make a difference.”

For all that, Chicago’s great economic divide is a defining issue in the race to replace Emanuel as mayor.

“Politicians say they have vision, but it’s spin words. Don’t tell me what I want to hear. Words are cheap. Show me what I want to see. ... Tell ‘em to show us a plan.
Ask ‘em if they have a blueprint for the South Side.”

Jimmy Vilma, owner of Pride Cleaners

Greater Chatham Initiative Executive Director Nedra Sims Fears says she hopes candidates offer up “less lip service and more actual ideas” for rebuilding struggling neighborhoods.

Chico insists he’s not blowing smoke to win votes. He touts his experience leading efforts to build new schools and park district facilities and revamp city colleges under former Mayor Richard M. Daley as proof he’s the guy to get the job done.

“I am a rainmaker and I intend to make it rain on the South Side,” he said. “I have my own cynicism, you’ve got your own cynicism but seeing is believing. I’ll tell you one thing, you open 65 new schools the way we did, people believe. When you build new park facilities at the Chicago Park District, people believe. When you build entirely new developments like I did in different parts of the city … people believe. I think my record is deepest and broadest of doing what I say I’m going to do.”

Chico has a neighborhood development pitch that could resonate with folks living in neighborhoods forsaken by City Hall. He pledged to use “city resources” to help get small businesses off the ground, raise “lots of capital from federal opportunity zone benefits” and the city’s neighborhood opportunity fund to bring back commercial districts “one block at a time.”

Down on The Nine, straight-talking Jimmy Vilma says he’s learned the hard way that you can’t take a politician’s promise to the bank.

A Haitian immigrant and U.S. Army veteran, Vilma bought the iconic Pride Cleaners on 79th almost a year ago on a hunch that Chatham was well positioned for an economic boon.

Vilma hoped City Hall promises that the Neighborhood Opportunity Fund — cash siphoned off from downtown developments to fund business grants in struggling neighborhoods — would help small businesses like his make investments that would revive blighted shopping districts. He has already found out otherwise.

For one, Emanuel’s “opportunity fund” requires business owners to front money for facade and sign repairs, leaving cash-strapped merchants out of luck. For instance, Vilma would have had to come up $60,000 to refurbish the cleaner’s iconic sign while waiting for the city to kick in with opportunity cash.

“It’s one of those opportunities that’s not an opportunity,” Vilma said.

Vilma, like a lot of folks in Chatham, has trust issues.

“Politicians say they have vision, but it’s spin words,” he said. “Don’t tell me what I want to hear. Words are cheap. Show me what I want to see.”

There’s the rub. You don’t get to find out if the candidate you voted for was, well, full-of-it unless they get elected — and then it's too late.

Vilma offered this solution: Call their bluff.

“Tell ‘em to show us a plan. Ask ‘em if they have a blueprint for the South Side,” he said. “They’re gonna dance around it, or dodge it. That’s because the answer is they don’t have one. There’s not a single (candidate) that can say, ‘This is what I can do for this area between 79th and 87th, or from 87th to 101st.’ There is no vision for this area, and it’s sad because people around here, all they’re looking for is opportunity.”

Chico’s promise to bring back business districts doesn’t have the specifics that Vilma wants and folks living in forgotten parts of town deserve. Not yet, anyway.

But Chico isn't alone. Not a single mayoral candidate has unveiled a Marshall Plan for rebuilding poor, forgotten parts of town. The Emanuel Administration certainly doesn’t have one. Fears knows a thing or two about that.

“Back in the day when I was an assistant commissioner for the then-Department of Housing people would say to me, ‘There’s a neighborhood plan for us.’ And I would say, “No, there’s no neighborhood plan. That’s still a problem for the city. There are no neighborhood plans that have real meat,” she said. “If you don’t plan for (economic revival), it won’t happen.”

Until Vilma hears some solid plans he’s got his mind made up on who he’s backing for mayor.

“I ain’t supporting anybody for mayor this year,” he said. “If I see one of those jokers put a sign on my property, I’m going to yank it down and throw it away.”

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