McKinley Park Neighborhood Plan

McKinley Park is a working-class neighborhood located on Chicago’s southwest side. Throughout its long history, McKinley Park has served as an important industrial job center. Its strong transportation network and proximity to the South Branch of the Chicago River speak to the neighborhood’s history as a thriving industrial center. Today, McKinley Park’s location continues to play an important role. Its proximity to multimodal transportation options, parks and open space, as well as regional economic centers bolster its potential as a desirable location for residential and commercial investment. However, like many neighborhoods in Chicago, McKinley Park wrestles with reduced housing affordability, disinvested corridors, and unattractive vacancies.

McKinley Park has never had its own plan to guide development in ways that align with community priorities. The neighborhood plan presents a unified vision of what the community aspires to be and provides a roadmap to achieve that vision. This vision of what could be is what inspired MPDC to produce a neighborhood plan that builds upon the community’s valuable assets, as well as past and current planning efforts, to complement and continue these endeavors.

While the focus of the plan is McKinley Park, the plan also acknowledges planning activities in adjacent communities, including Pilsen, Bridgeport, Back of the Yards, and Brighton Park. Key areas of emphasis for the plan include, but are not limited to, equitable transit-oriented development, revitalization of commercial corridors, modernization of the CMD, as well as climate resilience.