I was born and raised on the Southeast Side, a tight-knit corner of the city between Lake Michigan, the Indiana border and the Calumet River. After leaving for college, I made my way back to this community and the people I love. Today, I am the principal at St. Francis De Sales High School on 102nd Street and Ewing Ave.
Most of the kids I grew up with did not come back. The lack of economic opportunity was a big part it. We were a steel industry town decades ago. When industry left, nothing took its place. Today, we need economic investment. We need to compete with other communities in attracting capital, businesses and people.
We now have an opportunity to do just that with Invert Chicago. The Invert is a proposed 6 million square foot subsurface office park that will revitalize an old steel-era brownfield that has sat dormant for decades. The Invert will bring thousands of jobs and economic vitality, and cutting-edge companies to our community. It will take a 144-acre parcel of land, long ago abandoned by a 20th century dirty industry, and restore it to a productive and beautiful 21st century epicenter of innovation.
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The problem is that there are some environmentalists in our community who oppose every development proposal, no matter the facts. They scare the public with baseless claims about the environmental impact of the Ozinga family’s underground development plan.
I have, myself, been on their side for other proposed projects. When General Iron proposed to expand their recycling center in our community, I agreed that the environmental risks outweighed the economic benefit. I strongly opposed the project.
But my position on the Invert is entirely different. Besides the enormous economic potential, the Invert will be a model of modern sustainability and environmental design.
At St. Francis, we teach our students to be critical thinkers, to ask probing questions, weigh evidence and judge ideas on their merit. That’s exactly what the Southeast Side needs to do as it examines whether the Invert should proceed or not proceed. We need to look at the facts.
Otherwise, I worry that the Southeast Side will let a golden opportunity pass us.
Roni Facen, principal, St. Francis De Sales High School
Not shedding tears over Burke’s prison sentence
In the past weeks I have read thousands of words devoted to the indictment and subsequent trial of Ed Burke for using his long-held position as perhaps Chicago’s most powerful City Council member in repeated attempts to not only extort dollars from private businesses for the benefit of his personal law firm, but also to strong-arm a beloved museum into accepting an internship application from his goddaughter — or else.
But for this 70-year-old writer, there is a different Edward Burke I will always remember. That would be the Ed Burke of the mid-1980s, his baby-faced cheeks looking like they’d never felt a razor. Yet there was nothing baby-like in the harm he did Chicago between 1983 and 1986, when he and his partner-in-dirt “Fast Eddie” Vrdolyak — also a Chicago alderman — spearheaded the so-called “Council Wars” in an attempt to throw up a road block every time Chicago’s first African American mayor, Harold Washington, attempted to pass an ordinance or otherwise get something done.
Three years is a long time to have one’s breakfast orange juice soured by opening the paper to read of the latest wrench with Burke’s and Vrdolyak’s names on it, thrown into the great cogwheels of the workings of our city. Hence, I admit it is hard for me to work up much sympathy for the old man about to hear steel doors clanging behind him for the mere months he is likely to serve.
Rob Hirsh, West Ridge
