Blair Kamin writes: 'Despite the dazzle of Millennium Park, Chicago infamously has become a tale of two cities — actually, three, if we account for its shrinking middle class, as well as its growing cohorts of rich and poor.'
Children play in the water June 5, 2017, at Crown Fountain in Millennium Park in Chicago.
The equity issue assumed fresh relevance recently when Lightfoot lobbied recalcitrant aldermen to back the creation of a new transit tax increment financing district to bankroll the $959 million local share of the $3.6 billion, mostly federally funded extension of the CTA’s Red Line from 95th Street to 130th Street. Some aldermen object to directing so much TIF funding to the project, saying gas taxes or more federal funds should be used instead.
The proposed expansion of the term “equity” derives from an unlikely source: a financial meaning of the term — specifically, its plural form “equities,” as in shares of stock. But in contrast to the stock market, the goal is to maximize benefits to the public, not profits. We all have a stake in design equity, as revealed by a close look at the proposed Red Line extension, which also would build four transit stations.
Granted, crime on the CTA is a major concern, as is station maintenance. But it would be a travesty for the City Council to use such problems as a pretext to hold hostage a potentially transformative project like the Red Line extension. In contrast to the spirit-killing high-rise monotony of Chicago’s demolished housing projects, the funds will pay for new modernist buildings and the renovation of old ones, like the spectacular art deco old Laramie State Bank Building in the Austin community.
As a result, it’s hard for voters to see and touch what Invest South/West has accomplished — or promises to pull off. Still, there are notable exceptions, like a once-decrepit, handsomely renovated four-story building in Auburn Gresham that now houses an attractive health clinic. Invest South/West partly funded the project, which was chiefly backed by the Greater Auburn-Gresham Development Corp. and boosted by a $10 million award from the Pritzker Traubert Foundation.
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