The half-dozen community organizers sat for more than an hour around an oblong table in the 28th-floor office of University of Illinois at Chicago’s Chancellor David Broski as he described the school’s grand plan for a $200 million-plus expansion.
Broski clicked his pen as he discussed the university’s plan to build new academic facilities, a large commercial area and hundreds of housing units for faculty and students as part of an effort to solidify a spot in the academic big-leagues.
But what the community leaders remember most about the meeting last July was Broski’s passing reference to a more modest piece of the vision: a Starbucks coffee shop.
As strange as it may seem, the trendy coffee chain that sprouts new outlets in yuppie Chicago neighborhoods at a dizzying pace has come to symbolize the clashing views and differing emotions surrounding UIC’s expansion program.
On one side is UIC’s desire to break free of its long-standing image as a cold, gritty urban campus and to transform itself into a thriving, cosmopolitan residential institution.
On the other side is the community’s fear that a larger, more upscale UIC campus could threaten the character of Pilsen, a primarily Mexican immigrant neighborhood, and nearby African-American communities by displacing local residents and businesses.
“I’d like to build a more vibrant, 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week, community around the campus,” Broski said.
“We are trying to make the place look a little more hospitable, warmer, a little friendlier.”
But, some community organizers ask, friendlier to whom?
While the leaders stress that UIC’s development plan potentially could be a boon to the area, they fear that without their formal involvement, it could hurt the existing neighborhood, which non-profit groups are seeking to revitalize without driving out its poor and working-class residents.
And that’s why Starbucks is such a potent symbol.
“It represents gentrification,” said Carmen Velasquez, who attended the meeting with Broski and co-owns a restaurant in Pilsen. “It represents Lincoln Park. It represents an Anglo, rich population that takes over a poorer neighborhood.”
Then there’s the symbol of UIC itself, which was built after ethnic enclaves were cleared to accommodate it.
In the 1960s then-Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley set out to turn what was then a two-year college isolated on Navy Pier into a full-fledged public university. Daley moved UIC to its current location along South Halsted Street just south of the Eisenhower Expressway.
In doing so, Daley ignored years of angry protests and virtually leveled an entire neighborhood, displacing about 5,000 mostly Italian, Mexican and Greek residents to make room for the 103-acre campus.
Three decades later, it would seem the current UIC plan might be compatible with the desires of the community. Pilsen-area non-profit development groups–which have built dozens of new, single-family homes and are plotting ways to beef up 18th Street and other neighborhood business strips–long for new development in the area.
Indeed, on the South Side, Illinois Institute of Technology’s five-year, $250 million effort to refurbish its campus and build new housing for faculty and students has received widespread support among local community groups.
IIT spent about six years working with the groups and has framed its face lift as a major element of the community’s plans to revitalize the historic Bronzeville neighborhood. IIT’s project does not involve acquiring more land, which limits fears of displacement and gentrification.
Around UIC, mutual mistrust and suspicion–built up over time–have created a far more confrontational atmosphere. Some community leaders said they didn’t know the university was pushing ahead with the development until after they read about it in a local newspaper. Broski didn’t agree to meet with leaders until after they protested, they said, and by then the process was well under way.
“We are not against development,” said state Sen. Jesus Garcia (D-Chicago), who attended UIC but didn’t graduate. “The question is what kind of development should be taking place there.”
The UIC plan, known as the South Campus Development Project, calls for a chemistry building, business school, a 200,000-square-foot performing arts and conference center, and an office building that would include space for the university’s alumni office and other functions.
The plan, which includes acquisition of property along South Halsted Street and the construction of commercial and retail space, could displace stores that currently serve lower-income residents, critics said.
UIC also wants to build parking facilities for about 1,000 automobiles, dormitories for up to 2,500 students and 250 housing units for faculty and staff, including a University Faculty Club. The proposed faculty and graduate housing, which one developer estimated could rent for $1,200 a month, along with an influx of students and university workers could drive up rents, property values and taxes in the area, forcing out low-income residents.
UIC officials expect to choose by this summer one of two major developers competing to manage and help design the project. The 30-acre site is bounded by Roosevelt Road on the north, 15th Street on the south, Morgan Street on the west, and the Dan Ryan Expressway on the east.
University officials have said the project could cost between $300 million and $400 million, and financing the project may be as great an obstacle as the community’s criticism. As Broski flatly explained: “We’re out of cash.”
So the university is planning to finance the development primarily through tax-exempt bonds, a tax-increment district and by using millions of dollars in revenue generated by leasing the new commercial space and renting or selling the new residential facilities. The retail stores and housing are likely to be built in partnership with a private developer.
While Broski said he does not recall mentioning Starbucks specifically, he said he would like to see coffee shops and bookstores.
Broski said the new housing would double the 10 percent of UIC students living on campus, while significantly increasing the number of faculty and staff living at UIC. Only about 200 of UIC’s 11,000 employees live near the campus.
“We are a commuter campus in almost every aspect,” Broski said. “For a richer intellectual life and cultural life and social life, it’d be better if we had opportunities for more kids and faculty and staff to live in the neighborhood.”
The university has already begun purchasing and condemning property along South Halsted–something that has angered the two-dozen remaining store owners in an area that only a few years ago was part of the bustling Maxwell Street Market. The stores are frequented mostly by Pilsen and other Near West Side residents.
“We have no idea what’s happening,” said Joel Stein, owner of Al Rob’s Fashion at 1244 S. Halsted St. “They (UIC) don’t keep us informed. We’d like to stay here for as long as we can. This is a good retail location.”
Many Pilsen residents, including those living in the modest brick and frame homes just south of UIC’s project area, also complained they know precious little about what the university has planned for its development.
Local political leaders, though, are divided on the plan. Ald. Danny Solis (25th), whose district includes Pilsen, sees the project as a huge potential boost for Pilsen. But state Sen. Garcia, also of Pilsen, is concerned that UIC officials do not care if local residents get “bulldozed” by their plans.
Some local leaders are demanding UIC set aside a significant percentage of the new faculty and student housing–and the proposed retail space–for local residents and businesses.
They also are demanding that the university use the project to establish a whole series of social service programs for local residents ranging from health care to job training to transportation.
UIC officials have tried to allay community fears by contacting some two dozen community groups and holding formal meetings with several critics. But they have refused to bow to the groups’ demand that they have a formal role in helping choose the developer, nor have they committed to any of the other demands.
