Don’t let development at The 78 squash public access to the Chicago River

Like many great cities of the world, Chicago owes its rise and prosperity to the waterways that literally carried the building blocks of its early economy. While re-engineering a river system made the city an industrial powerhouse, it also sacrificed the landscapes that made it a biodiversity powerhouse.

Multibillion-dollar riverfront developments like The 78 celebrate the river as a post-industrial asset, but they also provide high-profile opportunities to turn large parcels at the river’s edge into accessible landscapes reminiscent of pre-industrialization.

For over 60 years, Openlands has worked on important landscapes across our jurisdictionally complex region, methodically reconnecting a once-cohesive web of blue and green. In Chicago, we envision a river system that threads together landscapes as diverse as our neighborhoods. With over 155 miles of riverfront land in the city, the system could connect communities of people, habitats and wildlife.

And we’re not alone. The city’s updated Chicago River Design Guidelines set the framework and vision for how properties along the Chicago River should be developed while balancing ecological and economic opportunities.

Organizations as varied as the McKinley Park Development Council, Friends of the Chicago River, Urban Rivers, Chicago Adventure Therapy, Metropolitan Planning Council and many others are part of a system of actors who contribute to good planning.

Our expertise ranges from community activation to scientific research, from advocacy to accessibility. The 78 can and should build on this progress — creating and connecting parks and trails that will become a destination for all Chicagoans and set a standard for contemporary riverfront development globally.

We must create a future where the power of our landscape, long wielded by a few, can be shared and redistributed.

Chicago can put its best foot forward in planning and development through projects like The 78 by engaging the community in its creation. As a future riverfront neighborhood proximate to the Loop, development pressures will be immense. We cannot let those pressures quash the opportunity to make the river accessible and inviting.

Michael Davidson, president and CEO, Openlands

Bring Chicago Home will make up for past inequities

There are many reasons to support the Bring Chicago Home ordinance. One reason I support it is because of Chicago’s history. So many of our gentrified neighborhoods benefited from red-lining, urban renewal and other destructive forces. Bring Chicago Home is a chance to correct an old wrong with a new good idea.

An example: By 1969, things had changed in Lincoln Park. Middle-class white people thought of themselves as urban pioneers and started to buy up houses and push up prices and rents.

Much of the eastern side of Lincoln Park had already shifted from low-income families to well above the citywide average income and education. More and more homes were being fixed by professional investors with the power and money to make any change they wanted. Urban renewal demolished whole sections of the neighborhood, mostly where low-income Latino and Black families lived.

Just in the last 10 years, single-room occupancy buildings and men’s hotels on Wilson Avenue were bought up by companies and turned into gentrified “micro-apartments.”

Clearly, Chicago has not learned the lessons of creating solutions for displaced families. It is time for Chicago’s wealthiest families and businesses to give a few percent back to the city when they decide to move. These corporations and wealthy folks made a bundle and can afford to pay some back upon sale.

John Gaudette, Uptown