Rockwell Not Transformed

Add it to the list of CHA failures

Add Rockwell Gardens to the list of CHA developments that haven't been transformed by Mayor Daley's vaunted CHA Plan for Transformation.

"Nearly a decade ago, the Chicago Housing Authority promised residents of Rockwell Gardens that they would transform the now-demolished public housing development into a vibrant mixed-income neighborhood. But the land that once hosted Rockwell remains mostly vacant," the Chicago Journal reports.

"East Lake Management, the developer chosen by the Chicago Housing Authority to remake Rockwell into 'West End at Jackson Square,' as ads label the neighborhood, now wants to build a round of rental units at the former Rockwell site, which is in the blocks just north of the Eisenhower Expressway and immediately west of Western Avenue.

"The plans have touched off fears that more rental units would mean the end of a homeownership component at a remade Rockwell. And questions remain about the quality of the first phase of the redevelopment, with a number of tenants complaining their units were shoddily built."

The chairman and CEO of East Lake Management is Elzie Higginbottom, a close Daley friend and fundraiser.

The Plan for Transformation was supposed to rebuild or rehab 25,000 public housing units in 10 years. But the Chicago Reporter reported two years ago that "Each year since 2000, the Chicago Housing Authority has altered its schedule for completing the rebuilding and rehabbing of 25,000 public housing units. And now, according to a draft version of the CHA's 2007 Annual Plan, the agency is pushing the deadline back six years to 2015."

And last year a Tribune investigation found "that almost nine years into what was billed as a 10-year program, the city has completed only 30 percent of the plan's most ambitious element - tearing down entire housing projects and replacing them with new neighborhoods where poor, working-class and wealthier families would live side by side. In fact, of those public housing units that have been built, nearly half went up before the plan officially started in 2000."

The Journal notes that Ald. Bob Fioretti (2nd) will hold a community meeting about Rockwell redevelopment on May 14 at 6 p.m. at the James Jordan Boys and Girls Club, 2102 W. Maypole.

Steve Rhodes is the editor and publisher of The Beachwood Reporter.

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