Austin Weekly News: Makeover for Madison Street in the works

From AWN,

When Rev. Michael Eaddy, pastor of Peoples Church of the Harvest, 3570 West Fifth Ave., was growing up in East Garfield Park in the 1960s, the neighborhood's Madison Street strip was a destination that drew in shoppers for miles around. At a press conference Tuesday at Edna's, 3175 W. Madison, neighborhood groups unveiled a new action plan for Madison Street between Damen and Central Park Avenue that Eaddy and other West Side residents hope will bring the street back to its former glory. While residential development in East Garfield Park has boomed in recent years, commercial development has lagged behind, a dynamic that has not gone unnoticed by Eaddy and other neighborhood leaders.

"When you didn't go downtown, you could always go out west," Eaddy recalled of his youthful days in the neighborhood. "We want to recapture that."

I remember watching tanks roll east down Madison St towards the fires when it all burned down. It takes forty years to start talking about rebuilding it all.

Abe Lentner, Coordinator for Technical Assistance Programs at UIC's City Design Center, said the neighborhood still has more than 100 vacant lots and a 30 percent vacancy rate in commercial structures.

"That sends a message that East Garfield Park is closed for business," Lentner said.

To combat that image, Lentner called for the recruitment of "quality retail" development, and said the new group should also push to find opportunities for neighborhood entrepreneurs to start new businesses or expand existing ones.

Big Box retailers can do nothing but help in these circumstances and the conditions for letting them in should be help for those technical assistance programs to spin off more retail. Chicago's done nothing for way too many neigborhoods for way too long.