Real Estate & Development News
The McKinley Park Neighborhood Plan is now online! Click here to read the plan.The McKinley Park Development Council offered the latest peek at the rapidly developing plan for the McKinley Park neighborhood at its meeting on Wednesday, October 16, in the gymnasium of the McKinley Park field house. As one of the final steps of community assessment and feedback for the plan, the session featured audience members reviewing key plan goals and related ideas for specific initiatives.
"We want to know what you guys want to see," said development council president John Belcik. He walked the group of close to 50 attendees through the process of plan review: placing green or red stickers to indicate support or disapproval for specific initiatives, writing new ideas and feedback for plan goals and discussing neighborhood issues with fellow attendees and meeting facilitators.
Read more: Neighborhood Plan Solicits Penultimate Feedback at Development Council Meeting
MAT Asphalt opened its doors to the public on Saturday, September 21, for tours of the facility and questions and answers about plant operations with business executives, including plant co-owner Michael Tadin Jr. and General Manager Joe Haughey. The event attracted local residents and members of McKinley Park-based Neighbors for Environmental Justice, which has been one of the most vocal opponents of the asphalt plant.
Tadin said the tour is part of MAT Asphalt's outreach to "set the record straight" on how they operate. “Based on the questions that I fielded and other remarks on Saturday, it was clear that some people are still operating under inaccuracies and other misinformation,” he said.
Read more: Neighbors, Environmental Group Tour Asphalt Plant
Big changes to building density and population could be in the sights of the McKinley Park neighborhood, thanks to the expanded transit-oriented development zones now covering most of the community area. This was one of the takeaways from the September 18 meeting of the McKinley Park Development Council, which featured a panel discussion on Equitable Transit-Oriented Development, or ETOD.
"TOD is not created equally by all neighborhoods," said Kendra Freeman of the Metropolitan Planning Council. To mitigate negative effects like gentrification, the City of Chicago has adopted ETOD measures to "encourage holistic planning and equitable planning," Freeman said.
Read more: Development Council Talks TOD, Preps Preview of Neighborhood Plan
The South Side Weekly has highlighted McKinley Park neighborhood businesses Butterdough and Pochos as two picks for their "Best of the South Side" issue, lauding the two eateries for their innovative cuisine.
Butterdough gets the nod as the "Best Window Into Baking" based on its flawless, evocative pastries in a piece by Jocelyn Vega, while Pochos lands "Best New Brunch" in a review from Joshua Falk.
Read more: Pochos, Butterdough Pegged as "Best of the South Side"
The Central Manufacturing District's clock tower is one of its most distinctive structures.The Central Manufacturing District, the hulking collection of historic buildings running along the south edge of Pershing Road in the McKinley Park neighborhood, recently received a look from the Morning Shift show on the WBEZ public radio station (91.5 FM in Chicago).
In the "What's That Building?" segment, radio hosts examined the storied history of this area as the first planned industrial park in the United States.
The What's That Building? Chicago's Central Manufacturing District article on WBEZ's website details the history of the Central Manufacturing District and its many residents, from Westinghouse Corporation through Ronco Inventions, producer of the Veg-o-matic and many other "only available on TV" products.
Read more: Radio Show Dives Into Central Manufacturing District Business History
