Viewpoints
WJ missed this
I am a 40-year resident and homeowner of a southeast (within eyesight of Columbus Park) Oak Park single-family home. Within the last few months, there was a shooting incident in the alley behind the 700 block of South Humphrey and a crowd of teenagers and young adults taking over the street of the 800 block of South Humphrey. The latter incident required police from seven different departments. While I don’t wish to highlight crime in our neighborhood, our neighbors need to be aware of serious crime if and when it happens.
Starter vs. upscale properties
My husband and I are in our mid-70s. We were lucky enough to buy our first house in 1976 when we were 25 and 26. Before that, we started out in a windowless “illegal” basement apartment on the Southwest Side of Chicago, and later upgraded to an apartment on Archer Avenue facing the alley. Thanks to a housing boom, we made a nice profit and bought a larger home two years later in 1978 and eventually in 2013 purchased a 2-flat in Oak Park with our daughter and her family, where we live today.
Don’t take a flyer on the ‘Flyer’
Over the past several weeks, our neighbors in River Forest have raised numerous concerns about the project, and I share many of the issues highlighted by President Cathy Adduci, the River Forest Board of Trustees, and their engaged residents. Melrose Park Mayor Ron Serpico and Cook County Commissioner Maggie Trevor, representing the Cook County Forest Preserve and the West Central Municipal League have also joined in voicing their opposition.
And what do you think? We want to know!
One Views
Civic Center shows value of governmental cooperation
The River Forest Civic Center has played an important role in village life for more than three decades, providing a home for our beloved River Forest Community Center and other valued services. At its Monday, Sept. 28 meeting, the village board joined the Civic Center Authority Board to ensure this public resource remains in the community for decades to come. Capping off months of discussion, the village board voted to approve the consolidation and transfer of the building’s ownership from the Civic Center Authority to the village.
River Forest’s Civic Center takeover
On Sept. 28 the River Forest Board of Trustees considered a takeover of the Civic Center Authority (RFCCA) and its building. The RFCCA, a non-taxing body, voted Aug. 4 to transfer itself to the village, a taxing body, to use village funds or Madison TIF tax dollars for capital improvements, or consider demolition. Notice of the RFCCA vote was buried in a link in its agenda under “New Business,” a rare move which skipped an initial notice to the public.
Affordable housing’s golden era
This is episode 12 in our series on the history of Oak Park housing as it relates to diversity and equity: Between 1968 and 1974 Oak Park continued to build its historic narrative, a professed exceptionalism in coming to grips with its decades old racially, socio-economically, and religiously exclusionary housing policies. Almost 30 years after its popular effort to provide affordable housing to 148 World War II veterans and their families, the village did the same for the parents, aunts and uncles of the “Greatest Generation.”
Shrubtown: Better, Stronger, Faster
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Columns
A postcard from Pikes Peak
By Ken Trainor
Out my hotel window looms the purple mountain majesty of Pikes Peak in Colorado Springs, dominating the horizon. I imagine Katharine Lee Bates standing atop, alone, gazing down on the fruitful plains below, the culmination of her train trip in the summer of 1893, which included a stop at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago (“thine alabaster cities gleam”). She marveled at waves of amber grain passing through Kansas and spacious skies over the Great Plains.
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