Presentation by Steve Balkin Before the City of Chicago Community Development Commission, Tuesday, December 1, 1998 in the City Council Chambers, 2nd Floor City Hall
Steve Balkin is a Professor of Economics at Roosevelt University and Secretary of Maxwell Street Historic Preservation Coalition.
INTRO
I am asking the Community Development Commission to hold up the Roosevelt-Union TIF Plan because the Plan has substantive flaws, it is absent an adequate plan of historic preservation, and UIC/Mesirow-Stein have not followed procedure, as provided by the TIF statute.
WHY PRESERVATION?
I first speak to you from the deceased German, Irish, Russian, Jewish, Greek, Gypsy, Bohemian, Italian, African-American, and Mexican immigrant souls that got their freedom on Maxwell Street and had the chance to engage in toil for survival for themselves and their families. They want their struggles remembered. They want those 36 buildings in the Daley-Decker-Vinci plan saved.
Historical records are written records. They give the perspective of literate people. Many of the users of the Maxwell Street area were illiterate people. My grandfather from the Ukraine spoke very little English and never wrote. It was public policy in the rural deep South to keep African-Americans illiterate so they would be shackled to the sharecropping semi-slave economy. Those denied a voice in traditional history because of illiteracy, race, class, or gender need the material evidence of their presence preserved in order for their narratives to be told. Those 60 old buildings which UIC intends to destroy is their voice to the immortal future. By approving this TIF, you silence their stories of ancestral sacrifice.
Working class preservation is different than upper class preservation. In upper class preservation, we save and honor the palaces built from the abuse of the many. In working class preservation, we save and honor the extraordinary coming out of the ordinary. It is in the humbleness, not the grandeur, of the structures that we get understanding of its inhabitants. We won't always be at the top of the global economy and someday we may need to know how our ancestors came to these Midwestern shores and created something from nothing.
Many great things happened on Maxwell Street but, perhaps, the greatest was the creation of the postwar electrified Blues, the immediate precursor to rock and roll. This music, for better or worse, is at the root of world popular culture. If you approve of this Roosevelt Union TIF, you will be judged, individually and collectively, complicit in a crime of the destruction of a world landmark.
DISLACEMENT OR DEVELOPMENT?
Now I speak to you from the present. There are poor people: residents, street vendors, shoppers, and business people, many of whom can't read or take the time off work to be here. They don't want to be displaced or need to be displaced. UIC/Stein's plan is more about displacement than development.
Diversity should be embraced; not feared. UIC can build everything it wants and both the old buildings and the people should be able to stay. It is UIC and, apparently, this Commission that wants to see the Roosevelt Union TIF as a win-lose deal when it can be a win-win deal. It is the 1990s; not the 1960s. Please don't let UIC make this deal become old fashioned 1960's urban renewal equals people removal.
The people of Maxwell Street don't want to lose their homes, friends, income or culture. They don't want to lose the birthplace of the Maxwell Street Polish Sausage, still serving up the onion soaked sausages in the original stand, cooked by the same family that invented them. Allowing the destruction of the original Jim's Hot Dog stand is like Paris destroying the Moulin Rouge. It is Chicago's signature eatery, known all over the world.
If New Orleans saved the French Quarter and Memphis saved Beale Street, why can't Chicago save Maxwell Street? How can UIC and Mesirow Stein claim they are preserving Maxwell Street when they are not saving one building on Maxwell Street itself.
PRESERVATION IS LESS COSTLY AND CREATES MORE JOBS
The Preservation approach to Maxwell Street development is less costly and will provide more jobs. The cost for generating the same square foot of usable space is about the same for rehab vs. new construction. However, with rehab, UIC/Stein is entitled to a 20% Historic Preservation Federal Tax Credit which offsets further the cost of rehab, making that option more cost effective.
Historic preservation means jobs, more jobs than from new construction projects alone. Preservation rehab is more labor intensive than new construction and allows for hiring workers with lesser skills. Further, after the construction is completed, preservation will provide a large number of jobs as micro-entrepreneurs, guides, interpreters, sales clerks, street vendors, craftsman, and restaurant workers.
FLAWS OF PROCESS
I will now discuss process. UIC/Stein have not adequately followed the TIF process. UIC/Stein have not adequately contacted or informed the businesses and residents in the area about these meetings. UIC/Stein has not provided information of its plan to the community. Here is an example of an important violation of the TIF process: On November 18, 1998, UIC and Mesirow Stein Real Estate Inc. held a mandated public meeting to present their TIF and South Campus Expansion plans. When asked for a handout with details of the plan, the audience was told they didn't have any to pass out. They said that handouts would be available today.
If one cannot obtain a copy of the plan until the day of the CDC public hearing, how can one critically examine it? Could a reasonable person adequately prepare to speak about a plan without having the plan in advance to examine it. Remember what Mies Van Der Rohe said, " God is in the details."
Among the other problems of process is lack of adequate documentation for the claims that the Maxwell Street area is blighted and that development would not occur but for the TIF. The Maxwell Street area is close to the Loop, the Chicago River, the Lake, and it has a Metra Train stop. It is proximate to three of the neighborhoods that the Chicago Sun Times (8/31/98) lists as the hottest in the city in terms of home sales: the Loop, Near West Side, and the Near South Side.
Finally, the Illinois State Legislature is presently considering the TIF Reform as Illinois Senate Bill 525. It is our opinion and the opinion of others that all TIF action should be delayed until the outcome of that TIF reform legislation is known.
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