Will 'The Ave' In Roseland Really Rise Again With City Hall Plan?

ROSELAND — South Michigan Avenue sits on a natural ridge that Native Americans used as trail. Dutch farmers who settled on the vast prairie once known as Hope, Illinois called it “High Road.”

When steel mills pumped soot into the sky and money into pockets, working class families packed street cars and sidewalks on a stretch of that same path.

Everything you needed, you could get on the stretch of Michigan Avenue — between 111th and 115th streets — that locals called “The Ave.”

In 1950s, Gately’s People Store at Michigan and 112th Street was the hottest street car stop. Gately’s was the place where you could buy a lawnmower and a Sunday dress, shop for groceries and get yourself a cheeseburger for lunch all under one roof.

Shoppers could pick up a few things at Woolworth’s and S.S. Krege Corporation, the five-and-dime chain that later became Kmart. You could stock up on fresh Italian sausage from Dal Santo’s, pick up the latest Rolling Stones single at the RCA record shop and even try your luck at finishing the “Tummy Buster” sundae at Snack Time Coffee Shop.

And then, it was gone. Nearby steel mills shut down, good-paying manufacturing jobs dried up and tens of thousands of white people fled at the dawn of the Civil Rights movement.

Roseland stores followed “White Flight” to the suburbs, including Gately’s relocation to Tinley Park in 1975.

By the 1990s, the neighborhood’s severe economic downturn, urban decay and violent gang wars earned Roseland the notorious nickname “The Wild Hundreds.”

There was talk, in the early 2000s, that incentives from a tax increment finance district might bring something like revival. But nothing came of it.

Neglect resistant mom-and-pop joints — The Ranch Steak House, Bass Furniture, Edwards Fashions and the foodie-Mecca Old Fashioned Donuts, among them — continue to survive surrounded by ruins, alongside an abundance of T-shirt shops and against long odds.

Now, Mayor Lori Lightfoot has targeted “The Ave,” for a comeback.

Last month, city planning director Maurice Cox met with neighbors to engage in what seemed to be a hope-building exercise.

Locals were asked to chime in on how City Hall should invest public money to improve blighted blocks with amenities you only see on the North Side — street furniture, public art and fancy landscaping, among other things.

They scribbled ideas on Post-it notes and tossed golden coins in cups to signify which city-funded improvements and initiatives should take priority in a neighborhood that needs, well, everything.

I got the results, which seemed to send a pretty clear message: Locals want “The Ave.” back.

Folks said they want City Hall to invest in an infrastructure overhaul that restores historic buildings, removed blight and more public art.

Locals would like to the see the return of live theater, maybe at the empty Roseland Theater Building. They want planners to recruit new places to buy fresh groceries and sit down for a meal. They're wish lists asked for more retail shops, and better public transportation from Metra and CTA, as well as pedestrian and bike paths that connect the neighborhood to parks and employment centers.

Neighbors want the street to feel safer and a home for city-promoted concerts, cultural events and neighborhood gatherings. They want better lighting, beautiful streetscapes and vacant lots, reminders of all that’s been lost, revived as something new.

I want all those things and more for my part of town. Heck, I wrote some of those notes. I voted with City Hall’s golden coins. I like murals, coffee shops, cool street lamps and historic storefronts. But I can’t wrap my head around how those things are the building blocks of a Michigan Avenue revival in a poverty-stricken part of town where a lot of people are fleeing and too many are stuck.

South Michigan Avenue was important because its location gave it purpose.

Dutch farmers settled there for the fertile land. It was the main drag when railroads established a giant switching yard there, and George Pullman built his train car empire and his namesake “perfect town.” Workers from South Side the steel mills, chemical companies and Pullman’s factories fueled an economic boon on The Ave.

And now what purpose brings people there? Desperation?

As much as I’m cheering for a revival, it's hard to imagine that "The Ave." can make a comeback because my neighbors and me so desperately want it to happen and City Hall says it could.

But for us folks living along ol' High Road in a place once called "Hope," there's no harm in wishing.

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting and Emmy-nominated producer, was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docu-series on CNN. He was a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary, "16 Shots."

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