(Ejojola\flickr)

Into the inferno. In go the orange earplugs, and we step into the belly of the beast. The guide shouts to us over the roar of the furnace, but even with our ear protection in the place is clamorous—a coal plant is a noisy place. More than anything else, though, the heat is intolerable. Our guide wears heavy long pants and boots with a shirt and work jacket and appears perfectly comfortable. The furnace itself is 1000 degrees Fahrenheit; that we can stand a few feet away from it and survive is incredible and uncomfortable.

On a chilly spring day, a group from the University of Chicago went to tour the Crawford Coal Plant at 36th and Pulaski in the working-class neighborhood of Little Village. We hoped to find out what a coal plant looks like, how it works, and what it does in the world besides generate electricity.

Built in 1925, in what were then the outskirts of Chicago, the plant still looks antique, though all the functional electricity-generating equipment has been retrofitted or replaced since then. The conference rooms are shiny and new, but entering the working part of the plant is like going back in time. Everything is dark and sooty, and clanging machines do their work without much apparent supervision. Our guide takes us up 12 stories in an elevator. On the roof of the plant it is calm. The skyline glitters in the east, and below it on the plant’s property lies an enormous pile of coal. This is the emergency store, which Crawford keeps on hand in case the supply chain is broken. Usually, though, barges arrive daily on the Sanitary Canal loaded with coal from the company’s other plants in Illinois. The plant was built on the Canal in part because of this transportation advantage, and in part for cooling purposes; water is brought in from the canal and discharged a few degrees warmer. Besides changing the temperature of the Canal, the coal plants presents other troubles to their neighborhood. Crawford and its partner plant Fisk are both owned by Midwest Generation, a subsidiary of Edison International, one of the largest electricity providers in the United States. According to local environmental organizer Ian Viteri, these coal plants are “cash cows” for Midwest Generation. Meanwhile, the neighborhood they inhabit, Little Village, has the highest rate of asthma in the city.

Viteri, the Clean Power organizer for the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO) pins this squarely on the coal plants, which emit particulate matter that damages lungs, as well as carbon dioxide that contributes to global climate change. He came to LVEJO from other community organizing, including encouraging fine art and skateboarding after-school programs for kids in Little Village, and it’s easy to imagine him working with youth—he’s energetic, speaks quickly, and has a lot to say. Environmental justice for Viteri falls under the umbrella of social justice, and closing the Crawford and Fisk coal-fired power plants is just another way to help people in his community. Viteri’s current job is focused on increasing regulation of the plants’ emissions. To that end, he and LVEJO as a whole are supporting an ordinance proposed by 49th Ward alderman Joe Moore. He says that the Clean Power Ordinance, as it is being called, aims to improve air quality by regulating more strictly the levels of pollutants the plants can emit. Thirty different environmental groups in the city, including LVEJO, formed a coalition around this ordinance.

While Viteri would like to see the Clean Power Ordinance passed, his ultimate goal is to shut down the coal plants on the South Side altogether. He points out that the community does not use the electricity generated by the plants, gets no jobs from them, yet suffers all of the negative consequences of living in the vicinity of a coal-fired power plant. The electricity usage is debatable because the nature of the electrical grid makes it impossible to separate electricity from one plant or another, but Viteri claims that the electricity obtained from the coal burnt in the Crawford plant is sold east to Pennsylvania.

For Viteri and LVEJO, the environmental activism taking place in Little Village plays part of much broader climate concerns. Last month Viteri went to Bolivia for the World People’s Conference on Climate Change, a summit which hosted delegates from many developing countries that were, according to Viteri, “underrepresented at Copenhagen,” during the UN’s climate conference held last December. During the Bolivian conference, representatives drafted a list of proposals for the next UN climate meeting in Cancun. Viteri attended as a member of a twenty-person delegation from the United States whose travel costs were paid by the Bolivian government, in part so that the visitors could see that climate change has already affected Bolivia. “Bolivia’s surrounded by mountains. A few years ago they all had snow, but only one had snow when I was there,” LVEJO sees their local project of shutting down the coal plants on the South Side as part of a broader, global project.

At first, descending into the plant from the cool day is a relief, and my body revels in the warmth. But as we wind down and down on grate staircases right next to the furnace, the heat becomes too much. At one point, the guide opens a small door into the furnace and we stare at the orange-white flames. Down, down. Once in a while we stop as the engineer tells us how something works, or what it is supposed to do. Frequently, he tells us something he could change or forget, finishing up with “if you do that, everybody dies.” Down, down, dizzyingly fast in the heat and the noise, until we are below the ground, watching a conveyor belt full of coal speed by on its way to be transformed into powder. The furnace burns powdered coal, not the large lumps that look like charcoal briquettes. The powdering allows it to be burned more efficiently and hotter. The more heat, the greater the efficiency of power generation. Though the conveyor is clearly modern, a man is sweeping the floor next to it and in the darkness of the plant it feels as though he ought to be bare-chested and shoveling coal into the grinder as fast as he can, sweating in the heat. We continue on, and eventually reach a tall chamber covered in beautiful tiles, with skylights. This houses the generators themselves. Here electricity is made: enough for a million households at peak production, and the reason for the entire rest of the operation.

(Chris Diers)

At the end of the Crawford tour, I ask our guide about last October’s International Day of Climate Action protest at Fisk Power Plant, when more than 450 people rallied outside the to urge President Obama to take bold action at Copenhagen, and Alderman Moore promised to introduce the clean power ordinance that is now making its way through the city council. Our guide pauses for a moment and says, “It certainly doesn’t feel good when everybody hates you. We, the industry and individuals, really care about being environmentally conscious, but I think people forget how important our product is.” Fluorescent lights hum as we leave the power-generating area and re-enter the office space of the plant. As the tour concludes, another engineer emphasizes their parent company Midwest Generation’s involvement in the community. They offer scholarships at area high schools, and he says they try to be good neighbors. We thank them for taking time out of their day, and head back out into the cold, ready to return to electrically lit offices and classrooms. As we leave, I look down and see that my hands are entirely black with coal.

The actual result of the mapping experiment at Art in Action, however, was much more free-form than it’ s organizers had envisioned—rather than a chart of the physical or political geography of the city, the maps gave subtle hints at how different people understand the same environment. One impressive twelve-year-old submitted a detailed map of the El, while another participant mapped out good South Side coffee spots, explaining in a note, “I added Powell’s because it’s nice to browse books after you’ve had coffee at Istria.”

Mark Hopwood, a third-year UofC graduate student in philosophy from northern England, started thinking about common University perceptions of the neighborhood when he, like so many UofC students, was cautioned against walking from campus to 65th and Cottage Grove. Being the “kind of person who’s always been curious about my local neighborhood,” he did it anyway. In February of this year, Hopwood attended a presentation by the Counter Cartographies Collective (3Cs) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where they displayed the alternative maps they’d created of their campus. Hopwood cited the 3Cs as the impetus for the Chicago project and found maps particularly appealing for this kind of experiment because, as he noted, “representing something visually lets people find their own entry point.” Because they are visual tools, maps present multiple perspectives and allow viewers to interpret and form their own impressions. For this reason, maps have an incredible potential to influence social consciousness. Hopwood references both the Mercator Projection and the iconic London Tube map as examples.

The ultimate goal of the project is to visually represent different sides of the local community and challenge the assumptions behind them, with a particular emphasis on life at the UofC. Hopwood’s vision of the project is fairly nebulous, and he hopes that in time, an organizing principle will arise through the project.

An incredible number of people from both the University and the broader community around it have expressed interest in the mapping project. Commenting on the impressive response, Hopwood says, “I love maps, and it turns out I’m not the only one.” The participants bring diverse perspectives to the project, and include both campus and local residents, activists from the Southside Solidarity Network and Southsiders Organize for Unity and Liberation (SOUL), geography majors, and artists, who have come together as a group of people that Teddy Kent, a first-year at the UofC, describes as “absolutely passionate.”

During a mapping brainstorm session, the group proposes ideas for maps, such as foreclosures on the South Side, where StreetWise vendors sell and stay, and the extent of the University’s land ownership. During these discussions, the group grapples with the issues of access to information and controversy. Particularly with regard to the land ownership map, Kent has had trouble locating in public records the information necessary to create the map and anticipates pushback from the University if he pursues the subject further. Hopwood concedes that controversy might be inherent to this project because these maps could serve as an alternative to the image that the University of Chicago presents of itself and the surrounding community He elaborated, “The University produces…perfectly accurate, perfectly serviceable maps of Hyde Park. What’s also true is that they produce a narrative of the community that’s not exactly false, but it’s not exactly the whole picture, either. All of us have the sense that our community is healthier when people have a wider range of perspectives to draw.” The first major project Hopwood hopes to put together will consist of several physical maps that will assist incoming UofC first-years in interpreting the many sides of their new home.

More than controversy, Hopwood wants to encourage residents of the South Side, particularly students, to learn about the community around them and reevaluate their impressions of neighborhoods that are—and in some ways are not—their home. As Hopwood says, “Maps are never just maps—they’re stories, they’re landscapes, they’re histories. They’re a way of accessing those stories.”

(Emilie Shumway)

The truck for Shawn Michelle’s Homemade Ice Cream sits tucked away under the pavilion of Kimbark Plaza at 53rd and Kimbark Avenue. Parked oddly between Leona’s and CVS, the powder blue truck’s painted-on slogan, “Best Homemade Ice Cream in the World,” is difficult to make out from across the plaza.

From behind the truck’s tiny order window, the server calls out to some passersby, “Want to sample some homemade ice cream?” Shawn Michelle’s is out of a handful of flavors even though it is barely four in the afternoon, but that does not stop the employee from doling out liberal samples of what he has left.

The menu consists of sixteen flavors, most of which contain the word “supreme.” The flavors range from the basic Vanilla Supreme to the more adventurous Jamaican Rum Raisin Supreme to the mysteriously named Melanin Magic (which, it turns out, is Shawn Michelle’s take on chocolate, with a hint of mint and cookies ‘n’ cream). But the menu is in no way fixed; there is a host of experimental and rotating flavors beckoning the courageous.

For $3.95 and up, you can get varying quantities of ice cream pre-scooped into styrofoam cups. Perhaps a traditionalist would find the lack of cones a disappointment, but the ice cream is more than capable of standing on its own. Less creamy and heavy than, say, a tub of Breyers ice cream, the flavors have a way of melting away on your tongue. Lacking the preservatives of store-bought ice cream (but none of the sugar), the ice cream is about as fresh and rich as it gets.

Owner Yahya Muhammad came up with the name as away to commemorate his sister, Shawn Michelle. Herself a chef, Shawn Michelle was killed in a car crash in 1999. Muhammad has been making ice cream since his college days, and his concoctions were given many names before Muhammed settled on Shawn Michelle’s Homemade Ice Cream.

After several years of struggle, the business began to establish itself, and now it is really starting to take off. Shawn Michelle’s storefront is located in Blue Island, a southwest suburb. The truck used to traverse the route from Hyde Park back to its home base at 119th and Western Avenue on a daily basis. However, last fall the truck took up a more permanent residence at Kimbark Plaza, much to the benefit of Hyde Parkers. The truck has been parked there since October, with intentions of staying year round. The hours have been constantly renegotiated, but the truck is currently open from 9am to 9pm, Wednesday through Sunday. After braving out the long winter months, Shawn Michelle’s is gearing up for the summer season as the only ice cream vendor in Hyde Park, outside of the occasional roving ice cream truck blaring some worn-out variation of “The Entertainer” from its speakers.

You would have to sample a lot of pints to determine whether Shawn Michelle’s really is “The Best Homemade Ice Cream in the World,” as the truck proudly proclaims. But on a hot summer day in Hyde Park, it might as well be.

Alone on the second floor of the Hyde Park Art Center, I push aside thin felt curtains to enter a gallery featuring “The City,” the first of four video installation programs in “Spatial City: An Architecture of Idealism.” There are two pieces in this exhibition, Sarah Morris’s “Midtown” and Bertrand Lamarche’s “Autobrouillard.” The second is playing.

A white light passes over an otherwise dim scene of a city at night. The movement repeats over and over again, like a searchlight scanning desperately for the hint of life amid ruins, while the wreckage consists of glass and cement buildings. The only other movement on the screen, besides a blinking red light off in the distance, is the occasional appearance of a woman’s face, made visible by a reflection of the white light. Her hair has fallen back and her mouth is open as if producing a scream; she is frozen in that position, appearing momentarily on a glass panel in front of the city scene. It seems as if the white light is coming from inside of a building, shining through a window to probe the outside world.

The video art on view sits above the rest of “Spatial City,” an exhibit inspired by the theoretical structures of the same name by Israeli architect Yona Friedman (born 1923). After fleeing his native Hungary during World War II to settle in Paris, Friedman famously declared in his 1958 manifesto “Mobile Architecture” that the structures of an ideal city were to occupy a minimal surface area on the ground, to “be easily broken down and moved,” to be transformable by the individual inhabitant. His ideas disseminated widely in post-war France, and most recently provided the conceptual framework for the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Nicholas Frank, the originating curator of “Spatial City.” Each piece in the exhibit relates in some way to the architecture of a utopic city that is alternately optimistic and cynical. The artists selected for the exhibit, like Friedman, make reference to the brutality of war, dehumanizing conditions in totalitarian states, and the impact of urban living and industry on the environment and individuality.

Walking through the exhibit, any trace of unstained wood is startling—the viewer is overwhelmed by steel, plastic, and, especially mirrors. The layout of the art in the exhibit looks as if it could be modeled after the plan of a city. In Friedman’s drawings and collages at the entrance of the exhibit, urban spaces are geometric sets of layered circles and boxes. Likewise, the position of each piece has been carefully chosen to highlight the beauty and horror of these monuments to progress. In Didier Marcel’s massive “Sans titre (labours 4),” stained black wood contains waves of freshly turned dirt. It is a frozen garden, set on display with steel, polyester, resin, and glass fiber instead of flowers. Made with several hundred pounds of actual resin, the structure could have theoretically served as the bed for new life. Near the opposite wall of the gallery is Philippe Ramette’s “Objet Cynique,” a four-person electrical chair constructed of wood, rope, electric cable, and aluminum. The image suggests that a collective exit from the world we’ve made has the potential to mollify the pain of death. The most conscious use of urban planning is seen in the arrangement of Kristina Solomoukha’s “Shedding Identity,” a set of neon digital prints behind Plexiglass and mirrors. When stepping between certain prints, the viewer becomes an inhabitant of a city that no longer looks beautiful.

While occupying HPAC, the exhibit also features works by Chicago-based artists Sara Schnadt, Jeff Carter, Hui Min Tsen, and Detroit artist Ben Hal, in addition to those from the French Regional Contemporary Art Funds (“the Frac”). Schnadt’s “Network” hangs above a gallery attendant, who reads silently in the corner. Electric yellow twine is tied in knots overhead in a site-specific web, suggestive of a virtual network landscape. Jeff Carter’s “Untitled #1 (Chicago Tribune Tower)” is made entirely of modified IKEA products in the form of the eponymous structure.

It is the first time that these works, brought together by the Frac from each region of France, are being shown together in the United States. Dwelling in our own metropolis until August 8, “Spatial City” is a bold and terrifying reflection of humanity’s complicated relationship with the structures it enables.

A fragment of Vita’s centerfold. (Tuncay Esref)

In her last days as a University of Chicago student, fourth-year Jackie Todd hopes to revive “Vita Excolatur,” the sex publication made by and for students that contains questionably pornographic material. Taking its name from the University’s motto, the magazine attempts to show “the life enriched” by sexuality. Although “Vita” has been short of writers, photographers, models, and a leadership structure since the magazine last made it to print in 2007, Todd has a strong interest in carrying out the project she inherited after her first year at the College. Many have expressed interest in “Vita” since then, but Todd says the problem has been students’ fears of commitment. Getting people to lay bare their bodies and thoughts about sex has proven difficult, even in a periodical that anticipates selling only 200 printed copies and will not be posted online, and editors have received last-minute requests to use pseudonyms or pull nude portraits. Contributors to the magazine cite anxiety of potential discovery by future employers or law school admissions officers as reasons for their preference for anonymity. Todd, calling herself the “Vita girl,” does not share this anxiety, stating plainly, “This is the bed I made for myself.”

UofC second-year and photographer Edward Menéndez, the only other actually named Vita contributor, is proud of the work he has submitted, although it was not shot for the magazine specifically. Like many UofC students, Menéndez is interested in questioning sex and gender roles, and believes “Vita” would be the appropriate venue. In this upcoming issue, he poses one female model in such a way that “it’s hard to draw sex out of the image.” A black-and-white side profile of a girl staring into a window located outside of the frame, the light spilling onto her slightly slumped shoulders, offers to its viewers no suggestions that are explicitly sexual. And yet by virtue of the fact that she is a naked woman, he admits that her image is sexualized. Menéndez prefers to inspire reflection rather than hand viewers any definite assignment or conclusions. “It’s a provocation, be it sexual, physical, psychological.”

As a rule, Todd would not ask “Vita” contributors to do something that she herself would not feel comfortable doing, which includes shots of penetration or masturbation. For her, a spread that involved any live sex act would be “crossing a line I’m not comfortable with,” adding, “There are some things you don’t get to see.” Though Todd’s boundaries may have influenced the direction of this last issue, her bold direction sets the bar high for issues to come, as she will be posing for “Vita”’s staple photo of “hot chicks reading books.” Said one of the magazine’s photographers, Tuncay Esref, “People are scared of other people’s judgments, which I think is why ‘Vita’ is necessary.” Esref hopes to find a future venue for “a shoot that involved sweat and bulges of skin and pubic hair.” With Todd graduating in just a few short days, her hope to “bring sex to a more public arena,” beginning with her own full exposure, is the first step to reclaiming the world of academic erotica. And with students like Esref and Menéndez sticking around, “Vita Excolatur” will live on as the counterpart to this crescat scientia institution.
“Vita” will be printed and ready for sale by the start of the second week in June in the UofC Reynolds Club.

(courtesy of Cecil McDonald)

Moments. Slices of reality. The daily progression of the world. This is the subject matter for Cecil McDonald, Jr., a photographer based on the far South Side. Dramatic lighting and glowing jewel tones predominate his images, carefully staged reproductions of the everyday. His photographs are largely of intimate domestic scenes, his wife, his daughters, and himself the subjects. McDonald speaks slowly when describing his work, taking thoughtful pauses and emphasizing certain words, as if relishing their weight in his mouth. “I don’t know if I am making pictures that are going to change people’s opinion about anything,” he says, “but I am hoping that I am making pictures that people come to, look at, are excited, feel inspired in some way.” He is quick to qualify: “Not inspired in some way that they’re going to change the world, but even if it’s just for a minute while they’re in front of the picture. I think that those kind of small steps along the way in life, they really move life along. And they’re just as important as big bold sweeping statements.”

McDonald came to photography in his last year as an undergraduate at Columbia College, where he was studying fashion design. He recalls realizing that, all along, he had been drawn to photographs of clothes as much as the clothing itself. This newfound interest prompted him to return to Columbia for a master’s degree in photography. Today, his background in fashion permeates his photographs, and McDonald describes himself as being extremely interested in infusing his work with “style.” “I come from a culture where style is substance, right?” he says. “And it’s not a wrapping or a dressing, you know… Style is the thing. And that’s what I try to infuse in all of my photographs.” Style, then, is what makes McDonald return to a moment and recreate it. What’s more, a photograph transcends its origins when a surprise or shift infuses the image with a new style.

Coming of age in Chicago also influenced the photographer. In the early- and mid-1980s house music exploded on the South Side, and McDonald describes his teenage self as highly involved in that world. He laughingly reports that he almost flunked out of school because of his commitment to music, yet also claims that it was through the house scene that he first became an artist, although he didn’t identify himself as such at the time. Today music, like fashion, plays an important role in McDonald’s artistic process. “I think that those kind of influences have stayed with me,” he says. “It may not be an outward thing that you can represent in a picture, but it’s definitely there when you’re working. It becomes part of your fabric, becomes part of your make-up.”

Now that he has claimed the title of “artist,” the adult McDonald feels that he has license to engage with the world differently. “So now I am expected to be creative, not only in the making of things, but in the way I live. Which is really what it means to me to be an artist. You know. You live creatively.” He also seeks to pass that creative agency onto the next generation as an arts educator at several Chicago public schools. McDonald pushes his students to think of themselves as artists in every arena of their lives. “Creativity is not [exclusively] the domain of the artist. You know?” he muses, “The creative instinct, the creative impulse is something that everyone needs to nurture.”

In terms of his own work, McDonald has no concrete expectations about what the future will bring. He anticipates becoming more well-known, but isn’t looking for an explosion in popularity. “I’m very interested in sloooow ascension,” he says, drawing the word out. “I don’t have to have a rocket to the top…if there is a top. But I’m very much interested in just kind of moving things along.” In that way, the subject of his work has also become the mantra for its development. Moments. Slices of reality. The daily progression of the world.

The savory aroma draws a crowd to his stand, just as it drew Arctander to the business of crêpe cooking two years back: “My friend Leroy Stevens was making crêpes at the market,” he explains. “He and [Experimental Station president] Dan Peterman had started the crêpe stand as a way for people to try foods available from other vendors. Leroy was leaving town, and asked if I wanted to take over. I have been making crêpes ever since.” Every Saturday morning a long line of crêpe devotees wait to sample savory combinations of crêpe fillings. Favorites include “Call of the Wild,” a cheese and mushroom variety, and “the Crowd Pleaser,” which is filled with Nutella and bananas.

To the dismay of South Side residents (your correspondent included), Arctander is moving on. As he put it, “In the back of my mind I hear Dade Murphy’s Mom from the movie Hackers saying, ‘You are going to like New York, it’s the city that never sleeps!’ I just graduated from UIC and our lease in Pilsen is up as of June 1st. Some friends in Brooklyn have a room opening up for June and July. I’m thinking of this summer as a non-committed test run of a potential new home.”

Arctander is currently searching for an apprentice to take over his crêpe stand. The prerequisites are simple: “The ideal candidate is reliable, sociable and resistant to heat and wasps,” Arctander said. Interested candidates should send him an email at z.arctander@gmail.com. In the wake of Arctander’s popularity, the new crêpe maker will certainly have a large griddle to fill.

The “Communion” piece came towards the beginning of “Ritual,” a dance performance organized by nine students from the UofC that made a short run of three shows last weekend. The dancers choreographed their own pieces, combining elements from dance traditions as diverse as Indian classical dance, flamenco, and ballet, setting them over mostly modern music, familiar to their college-aged audience. The performance focused on the universal importance of ritual; directors Amulya Mandova and Virginia Rangos wrote in the program that they were inspired by French sociologist Emile Durkheim’s ideas of collective effervescence.

The early “Coming of Age” number followed the social initiation of new members in light blue by the priests in purple. In “Seduction,” a flamenco-inspired rhythm and guitar line played around three dancers whose twisting motions and flowing sashes evoked sexual initiation. In the later pieces, conflict arose within the society of dancers, and a piece of cloth became a blindfold across the eyes of a condemned girl.

The performance itself had the effect of ritual. The dancers were in total physical commitment. They hit the ground hard, and in one striking moment, a young initiate fainted backwards towards the floor, and one of the veterans swooped to catch her head a few inches from the floor. What might have been a few missed steps and stumbles in timing were part of the nervous energy at the center of the scene, and even the clanking of the doors of the rehearsal space didn’t seem to distract from it.

The dancers ended with a namaskar, a South Indian tradition where dancers pay their respects to the universe by stomping on the ground beneath them. With the last stomp, the performance was over, and after a brief moment the dancers relaxed their bodies. For an instant, though, nobody seemed to realize that the ritual itself was over, and that the women in front of them were embracing as people and not performers.

For the first time in forty minutes, the crowd broke out into noise. They moved towards the center and congratulated the dancers, bread still in their teeth.

(courtesy of Vermilion Development)

In May 2008, when the University of Chicago completed the $6.5 million purchase of Harper Court, President Robert Zimmer heralded the moment as an opportunity. “Ideally,” he said in a public statement on the purchase, “this project will be reflective of the distinctive nature of Hyde Park and represent the best of Chicago’s mid-South Side.” This January, after Vermilion Development was selected by the University to redevelop Harper Court, its CEO, David J. Cocagne, was quoted by the Chicago Maroon echoing the same sentiment. “We’re very excited to be undertaking this project,” Cocagne said. “We think it will be very transformative for the commercial core of Hyde Park and will really celebrate all that Hyde Park is.”

The idea that Harper Court, once it is redeveloped, will represent the essence of its neighborhood has garnered considerable backing from both the University and its developers, who also market the redevelopment as bringing a much-needed retail and entertainment district to the area. But what is the “distinctive nature” of Hyde Park, and how do the redevelopment plans celebrate it? What is going into the Harper Court redevelopment? What will come out of it? Currently, the University is working with Vermilion Development (which could not be reached for comment) to prepare financial proposals for the project that are due in mid-June, according to Susan Campbell, Associate Vice President for Civic Engagement at the University. Once the funding is approved, Vermilion will begin work on a final redevelopment design, which will incorporate retail and office space, a hotel, a parking garage, and possibly a movie theater, and deal with structural changes such as the rerouting of streets as thoroughfares. While there have been no changes to the planned groundbreaking in early 2011, the financial climate is making it difficult to find funding for some aspects of the development, especially the housing project that is proposed for the second phase of construction, scheduled to be completed in 2015.

The funding issue highlights an important issue surrounding the redevelopment of Harper Court: gentrification. If the housing units of the redevelopment were priced at market rate, it is likely that many current residents of Hyde Park would not be able to afford to live there, while those with bigger pocketbooks would. Although the intent is to eventually offer affordable mixed-income options for sale and for rent, right now money is tight. “It’s hard to find funding to build housing, let alone mixed-income housing, “ Campbell says.

There are also questions about the displacement of local businesses from the revitalized Harper Court, a concern embodied by the departure of Dixie Kitchen in June 2009. Though Dixie Kitchen was not actually forced out by the university—Campbell quickly points out that they were offered relocation assistance by the University and that “it was a business decision” to close the Hyde Park location—it was an unsettling indicator of the potential negative effects that redevelopment could have on locally owned businesses. Campbell, however, points to measures to be taken by the University to engage with the community and local businesses to make sure that the final redevelopment plan is equitable. Her office is partnering with the Southeast Chicago Commission and the Hyde Park Chamber of Commerce to plan events like a July 4th neighborhood fair at Nichols Park, which is intended to “highlight businesses that have stayed in Hyde Park.” The project’s declared goal is revitalization that works for Hyde Park residents. “We have a vision of making a more vibrant commercial corridor, including retail that appeals to everyone” while at the same time “always trying to help [local] businesses,” Campbell says. “Hyde Park has a uniqueness, a diversity that people enjoy. Our key claim to fame is our people.”

Community response to the proposed redevelopment has been markedly more positive than it was when the University first announced its obtainment of the Harper Court property, and certain elements of the designs, like open spaces for farmers markets, suggest there is a real possibility of keeping a local sensibility in the new developments.

The Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference (HPKCC), a local association, has grown to support the redevelopment plans. According to HPKCC’s president, Jay Ammerman, what was once a controversy about whether to do anything with an underperforming Harper Court became a compromise, and what was once a community-run commercial center was turned over to the University with the promise of future revitalization. “Over the course of several years, we came to the conclusion that a change was necessary,” he says. “I don’t think we have an argument about where this is headed.” He adds, though, that HPKCC, in its capacity as an organization working on behalf of the community, would continue to critique University involvement so that community concerns would be heard.

Underlying the whole project is the question of whether or not the University would transform Harper Court the same way that it had redeveloped neighborhood spaces in the past. “When urban renewal was initiated in 1958, it meant drastic change, and a lot of displaced people with low incomes, small businesses, and people involved in the arts,” says Bart Schultz, a senior lecturer in philosophy at the UofC and director of its Civic Knowledge Project. The development of Harper Court in 1965 was a response to the displacement of artists from the prominent artist colony at 57th Street and Stony Island Avenue, where artists, writers (including Sherwood Anderson), and used bookstores set up shop. Harper Court was envisioned as a retail space for artisans to replace their previous haven. While it didn’t successfully replicate the atmosphere of the artist colony, Schultz argues that open space and elements of local authenticity like public chess tables made Harper Court “innovative” in its own way.

For Schultz, a successful development will keep those aspects of Hyde Park that set it apart from other neighborhoods in the city. According to walkscore.com, for example, Hyde Park is one of the top 10 most walkable neighborhoods in the city, rivaling the Loop and Lincoln Park. Institutions like the Seminary Co-op—which Schultz calls “the best bookstore in the country”—should be treated like “treasures to be preserved.” How, he asks, will plans for a hotel, which brings in road traffic, be reconciled with Hyde Park’s walkability? How will it be guaranteed that local business not suffer if chain retailers move in? “In all honesty, it’s hard, when you have what’s essentially a 12,000-person corporation, to engage the community,” says Campbell. “We try hard to help and to not overstep our bounds.” To that end, the University is working through its Civic Engagement office to be far more open with the community on the Harper Court redevelopment than with other projects currently underway. Just last week, for example, the University announced their selection for the architect of the new Milton Friedman Institute without any faculty or community input. Schultz says that measures like soliciting art installations from the Hyde Park Art Center are a move in the right direction, but he cautions against rejoicing too soon. “It’s very easy to announce a project with great fanfare, when really it’s a constant process,” he says. “I worry about that.”

The chess tables that once lined the open space at the center of Harper Court are more significant than they might appear. In the original plan for Harper Court, a chessboard prominently backdrops its logo, and its outdoor tables were a meeting point for neighborhood chess enthusiasts. Upon the removal of the chess tables in 2002, community groups like the Friends of Harper Court Chess staged protests and encouraged boycotts of the shopping center. Chess, they said, was something that made Harper Court unique, something that was a part of “all that Hyde Park is.” Maybe the powers-that-be are listening. At the February 8th meeting of the 53rd Street TIF (tax increment financing) district, Vermilion presented plans to include a small pavilion in the redevelopment, complete with chess tables. It’s a start, but Schultz encourages restraint and patience. “When a community gets into something like this,” he says, “the discussion is just barely starting to get along.”

(Temple Shipley)

Benjamin Murphy wedges his cigarette butt into the gray planks of a picnic table and squints, surveying his sanctuary. In the fading light of a late-May Thursday afternoon, the 65th and Woodlawn Community Garden resembles a living patchwork quilt—some plots in this roughly 1000 square-foot space are lined with misshapen bricks, others are freestanding mounds of soil punctuated by the occasional wire trellis, tree branch, or toiling gardener. Murphy laughs, “You can’t gang-bang on this corner.”

Murphy, this location’s new manager, is explaining the positive social effects of community gardens. The goal of such gardens is not limited to the acquisition of fresh produce for the gardeners themselves; the people weeding and watering on 65th Street and Woodlawn Avenue call it a “community garden” for a reason. Along the perimeter of the plot, for instance, the gardeners are growing produce that is free for the taking. That way, the garden serves people who haven’t rented a tract of land for the season. Mike Slatton, a newcomer to the 65th Street site and veteran gardener, says of his past community gardening experiences, “I met people who I wouldn’t have spoken to otherwise.” He is not alone; the garden has inspired genuine interest in the well-being of Woodlawn and the South Side as a whole. For now, the garden is an isolated pocket of dedicated organic farmers fending for themselves in one of the United States’ most infamous food deserts, but Murphy hopes to see it grow to be “something about the fabric of the neighborhood.”

In order to make a lasting impact on the Woodlawn community, however, this garden will need to stay put—no small feat, considering the history of community gardens in the area. “In ten years, this could be a building,” Murphy says. Many of the gardeners in this location tended plots at the 61st Street garden, which was paved over last November by the University of Chicago for the expansion of its campus. The displaced gardeners were forced to grow elsewhere, some finding available spots in gardens at 65th and Woodlawn, 62nd and Dorchester, and 63rd and Ellis. This forced migration has contributed to the already uneasy relations between the University and the surrounding neighborhoods. As Slatton puts it, “Yes, there’s tension. They took our garden.”

The University has taken measures to soften the blow of the 61st Street garden’s demolition. It donated 1200 cubic yards—34 semi trucks’ worth—of dirt to the 65th Street Garden and contributed other resources to the 62nd and 63rd Street locations. Despite this apparent generosity, some community members remain wary of the University’s intentions. One woman who shares a plot with Slatton sees the donations as a means of discouraging protest rather than giving back. She says of the University’s administration, “They’re a bunch of liars.”

On the following Sunday, frustration with the University’s actions is far from obvious. Benjamin Murphy is shirtless today, a grinning Adam in his makeshift Eden. The air is thick with insects and smoke from the brick grill, and the garden is vibrating with activity. Toddlers struggle with the weight of full watering cans and urban farmers plant marigolds, nature’s insect repellent, along the border of their plots. Community members stay into the late afternoon, working and laughing: the gardeners at 65th and Woodlawn are in no hurry to leave.