Chicago Tribune, 3/17/97, Sec. 1, p. 15
John McCarron, columnist and member of the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune< Fax: 312-222-2598; Ph: 312-222-3540> Date: Mon, 17 Mar 1997
There is still time, though, to save a little piece of the magic that was. There is still time for a mayor who wants to make his city great, and for a university that wants to be great but doesn't know what greatness requires.
Maxwell Street …for 120 years, the Ellis Island of American capitalism.
It was a place where Jewish immigrants from Poland and Russia shared the universal language of commerce with Catholic immigrants from Italy and Mexico.
Two teams of real estate developers have been selected and they are preparing alternative proposals on how to redevelop the area. Both teams are loaded with political clout, including players like William Cellini (close to the Governor)and Jack Higgins (close to the mayor).
And what it did, for more than a century, was bring people together of radically different backgrounds. There aren't many such places left here in the most segregated urban region in the country. Not when a bleacher seat at Comiskey Park now goes for $14; not when the only blacks on my commuter train most nights are headed for Navy boot camp.
Rather than detract from the new academic/residential community that Daley and Broski have in mind, (Maxwell Street Historic District) implementation would go a long way toward establishing UIC - long a concrete island in an urban sea - as a true community-building institution.
The coalition, in turn, may ask you to write a few letters of your own. And you should, because those are your tax dollars at work, tearing down that which makes a city great.
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