WBEZ | Pilsen

Architect’s Pilsen vision is green and fashion friendly

Fri, 17 May 2013 16:23:00 -0500

Architect Patricia Saldaña Natke grew up on the 4800 block of South Marshfield Avenue, in Chicago’s Back of the Yards neighborhood. Her parents, immigrants from Mexico, worked in the Stockyards.

Some days after school, Saldaña Natke would take the bus away from her aging, blue collar neighborhood with its bungalows and smoke stacks, up to the Loop, and marvel at the sparkling skyscrapers and expansive public parks in the city’s downtown.

“I would look at the beautiful buildings and wonder why those kinds of spaces weren’t in existence where I lived,” Saldaña Natke recalled. “That’s the reason I became an architect; I felt that public places should be the greatest in the area of most need.”

Saldaña Natke channeled those beliefs into UrbanWorks, the architecture and planning firm she founded, which specializes in socially and environmentally conscious planning and design work -- the kind she dreamed about as a kid. She’s set her sights on one Chicago hood in particular: Pilsen.

“[Pilsen] needs to be a place where people can move upward in mobility,” Saldaña Natke said. “The entire core of why I work in Pilsen comes to the fact that there are neighborhoods that need a lot of attention.”

UrbanWorks’ previous Pilsen projects include a college dormitory intended to help keep students from the neighborhood on the path to academic success, a high school designed to resemble the copper canyons of Mexico and Saldaña Natke’s most ambitious project: a master plan for Pilsen.

In architecture and planning circles, a master plan is a grand vision for the future development of a neighborhood.

“It’s much more than a wish list,” Saldaña Natke said. “It may be implemented slightly different than the plan shows, but the core of it should remain intact.”

This plan isn’t funded, but Saldaña Natke is working with 25th Ward Alderman Danny Solis and the Department of Housing and Economic Development to assemble funds to inch her vision along.

Saldaña Natke consulted with Pilsen residents in a series of community meetings, including a neighborhood-wide meeting at Providence of God Catholic Church in 2004. The resulting plan aims to build on Pilsen’s assets: its strong Mexican cultural heritage, its historic architecture.

“The community says church steeples are its high rises,” Saldaña Natke said.

It calls for a main commercial drag zoned for pedestrian use and access to the Chicago River.

The plan also addresses what Saldaña Natke says are the neighborhood’s challenges: While the west side of Pilsen is served by the CTA’s Pink, Green and Orange Lines, the east side has few transportation options, leaving the neighborhood disconnected.

And, there is a surprising lack of green space in Pilsen. According to Saldaña Natke, the city requires two acres of green space for every 1,000 Chicago residents.

“But the Park District just said to us that the recommended amount is four acres of green space,” she said. “[Pilsen] is over 18 acres short.”

So, UrbanWorks’ master plan starts there. Saldaña Natke envisions more green space along the neighborhood’s largely industrial waterfront, and the transformation of an abandoned, surface-level railway that runs along Sangamon Street into a stretch of park—something like New York’s High Line or the Northwest Side’s Bloomingdale Trail, only without the elevation. Then, she hopes to transform the abandoned buildings that line the railroad into a fashion and textile incubator.

A fashion incubator?

Yes, Saldaña Natke says.

“You shouldn’t need to go to 900 North Michigan or Michigan Avenue to see all the high-end fashion shows. Why can’t it be in the neighborhoods?”

You can hear Saldaña Natke describe her dream in more detail in the audio above.

Dynamic Range showcases hidden gems unearthed from Chicago Amplified’s vast archive of public events and appears on weekends. Patricia Saldana Natke spoke at an event presented by the Chicago Architecture Foundation in April of 2013. Click here to hear the event in its entirety.

Robin Amer is a producer on WBEZ’s digital team. Follow her on Twitter @rsamer.

Make Plans! Pilsen Sprints Forward

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 11:41:00 -0500

Pilsen is a neighborhood located in the residential Lower West Side community in Chicago. In the late 19th century it was inhabited by Germans, Irish, Czech, Polish and Lithuanian immigrants. Mexican immigrants and Latinos became a majority in 1970 as the neighborhood served as a port of entry. The legacy of uneven development throughout major cities, including Chicago, has left various neighborhoods vulnerable to uneven stabilization. Yet Pilsen sprints forward as a “Think and Do” community.

Patricia Saldana Natke, Principal of Urbanworks, presents an inspiring master plan and recent lasting changes made through Transit Oriented Development, a new student dormitory at the Pink Line Stop, planning visions for a Green Trail “ Paseo”, proposed cultural anchors, and connectivity to the Chicago River.

This program is part of Lunch Talks @ CAF, a weekly lecture series that takes place every Wednesday at 12:15pm at the Chicago Architecture Foundation.

Further information and resources on this topic are available on our website at www.architecture.org/LunchTalksOnline.

Recorded live Wednesday, April 17, 2013 at the Chicago Architecture Foundation Lecture Hall.

From the ground up: building new art communities in Chicago

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 07:20:00 -0500

Chicago turns something out of nothing. It is not the city itself that does this, but the people within it, homegrown or recently transplanted. Chicago gives artists and other creatives the opportunity to build from the ground up, allowing them to not only visualize their dreams but to actualize them. Although these artists are often lacking in the traditional market forces (as in a print and money-driven economy influencing who gets the media attention and higher-valued work), the size of the city and the abundant and underutilized spaces allow creatives to build projects with their own visions, usually with little to no financing involved.

This makes Chicago a fertile ground for creative projects such as Matt Austin’s The Perch. Part underground dinner party, part printing press, and part collaborative artistic social experiment, The Perch could only be born in a city like Chicago. Austin’s funds are considerably low. The project takes place in his own home. All of the furniture used for the project (a massive and beautifully constructed dining table, thick and hard-backed chairs and benches that guests can carve on) was built using salvaged materials from places like the ReBuilding Exchange or the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center.

“This has zero revenue,” Austin makes a point of clarifying. And yet, he continues, not deterred.

I recently spent an afternoon in the home of The Perch. Austin said that the space was “way larger than necessary,” but that he “wouldn't be able to do this anywhere else.”

Based in Pilsen, the space (everything from the windowsills to the blue and yellow walls) was renovated by Austin starting over a year ago when he moved in. Living in the space further incubated his idea to create something that fueled his artistic practice as a photographer, his interest in building, and his desire to meet and interact with creative and new people in the art world.

"It just helped me realize how much opportunity there was for people to engage with," he began. "It came out of this interest of building things and repairing the place. It became this project of nurturing a space and turning it into something."

Austin teaches at the School of the Art Institute in its Early College Program and at Senn High School with an outreach program through the Museum of Contemporary Photography. Since beginning his project, Austin has hosted four dinners, about one per month, all attended by a variety of interesting thinkers. The first dinner was the most unique and included guests such as his boss at the Holocaust Museum, a former mentor from college, his brother's friend from school, and his first philosophy professor from Iowa.

Each dinner is based on a prompt. One dinner asked guests to mark their creative progress and the discussion turned into one familiar for many working in creative fields: what they want to do versus what they actually do. The dinner serves as an in-between for people, asking relevant questions to their interests and artistic practices and challenging them to explore their work and interaction with the local and broader artistic communities.

"The benefit of challenges, although they'll make you uncomfortable sometimes, it's about working through them,” Austin said. “That's how I've designed these dinners. I provide a challenge for people to work with."

In addition to hosting dinners, Austin also aims to create books for various artists, turning the Perch into something of a printing press. Austin provides labor and materials for the project. The first artist chosen was Todd Diederich. The project for Diederich’s “Luminous Flux” photography book has already surpassed its Kickstarter goal.

The book project was almost immediately successful, signaling not only the level of support surrounding Diederich’s strong and charismatic work, but also the importance of the project as a whole. Who will provide these sorts of opportunities in this city unless the people within the city do it themselves? There is a reason why spaces like Austin’s thrive in Chicago. More apparent than anything else, it is this drive to create something personal and real. These projects are tangible, even if their longevity is up in the air.

"The nature of Chicago is smallness, but it is still looked at as one of the more active and important cities,” Austin said. “It's that blend that makes this possible."

This is the beauty of Chicago. Creative freedom is important. This is not just saying that the person could not have been creative without the city. They could be creative anywhere. Rather, the city allows those with a creative bent the opportunity to explore ideas in a way that is not possible almost anywhere else. Whether it is the extra time, space, or smaller market, by founding projects like The Perch, artists can work and explore on their own terms.

Britt Julious blogs about culture in and outside of Chicago. Follow Britt's essays for WBEZ's Tumblr or on Twitter @britticisms.

Pilsen's punk scene then and now

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 13:32:00 -0600

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Pilsen's punk rock legacy was on display Saturday at a pair of reunion shows for the beloved and influential ‘90s band Los Crudos. The band's lead singer, Martin Sorrondeguy, grew up in Pilsen in the 1980s, but initially knew few other kids in his neighborhood who shared his tastes.

"When we saw another kid, no matter if you were Latino or a white kid who grew up in the neighborhood, if you were remotely alternative we would run two blocks to catch up with you," he recalls. "Like, 'Are you into punk? We’re into punk! Let’s hang out!'"

That would change, as bands like Los Crudos cemented Pilsen’s reputation as a haven for punk.

Los Crudos was highly influential and much beloved during its ‘90s heyday. Sorrondeguy wrote and sang entirely in Spanish, and when he came out as gay at the height of the band’s popularity, it solidified the group’s reputation for radically inclusive politics.

The hundreds of fans from all over the city lined up at the ChiTown Futbol sports facility to see the band play probably weren’t surprised by the unconventional venue; Los Crudos always had a preference for playing in underground and alternative spaces.

"If the Metro or somebody wanted us to play some show it was like, no," Sorrondeguy said. "We just wouldn’t do it. It had to be completely independent and DIY and not some established club."

In 2010, WBEZ’s Robin Amer and the Chicago News Cooperative’s Meribah Knight interviewed Sorrondeguy for a story about Logan Square’s Fireside Bowl, which was a much-loved if crusty music venue favored by Los Crudos and other bands in Chicago’s punk scene during the ‘90s.

In the interview, Sorrondeguy talked about coming out, the evolution of Pilsen’s punk scene, and trying to explain punk rock to his Uruguayan immigrant parents.

"My mom would always be like, 'What is punk about? What is it? Is this what it is?'" Sorrondeguy remembers. "She could never understand how we could all fall under one umbrella, how we could all be at the same shows but not believe in the same things."

You can hear a slightly edited version of the interview in the audio above.

(Note: The interview contains some unedited profanity.)

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the Sorrondeguy family's country of origin.

Venue change for final school closings meeting

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 09:48:00 -0600

Chicago Public Schools has changed the location for its final community hearing over school closures.

One phase of the annual fight over closing neighborhood public schools will come to a close tonight at the Malcom X College Sports Complex, 1900 W. Van Buren St.

The meeting starts at 7 p.m. and will cover schools in the Pilsen-Little Village Network. In that network, there are currently three schools on the list of 129 still under consideration: Jungman, Paderewski, and Pilsen Academy.

Over the course of the last four months, CPS has whittled down a list of schools it is considering for closure by eliminating high schools, schools with the highest performance rating, and schools with large enrollments, among other criteria.

Tonight's will be the final meeting in a series of public community hearings that have each drawn hundreds of parents, students and activists. District officials say they need to close and combine a large number of public schools this year in order to spend more efficiently in the future. They argue that by closing schools they will be able to give more resources to the remaining ones.

But the school closure plans have drawn fierce opposition from local activists and the Chicago Teachers Union, which fought to protect teachers who work in schools slated for shut down during the seven-day teachers strike earlier this school year.

CPS is required to announce by March 31 the schools it plans to close. Last week, the Board of Education voted to phase out two charter high schools--Shabazz-DuSable Leadership Academy and Aspira-Mirta Ramirez High School.

Check back later tonight for updates and follow @WBEZeducation for live-tweets starting at 7 p.m.

New college dorm in Pilsen is gaining attention--and accolades

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 05:00:00 -0600

Much too often, Chicago neighborhoods get stuck with a bad pieces of architecture.

So it is worth celebrating when good design occurs in the community, as is the case with La Casa Student Housing and Resource Center, a college dorm that opened last fall in the Pilsen neighborhood.

The six-story building at 18^th and Paulina cuts a tall, graceful figure along 18^th, with masonry exterior walls that pull back—and up—to reveal glassy corners and a base.The building hits the right note in the historic neighborhood by using heft and masonry of its older neighbors, then reworking the elements into a contemporary form.

Designed for Chicago college students who want to stay close to home, the $12 million building is the brainchild of The Resurrection Project. La Casa has 25 four-bedroom suites and amenities such as a fitness center, tutors and on-site counseling.

The building’s purpose and program have garnered it early acclaim, including a New York Times profile. And now its design is getting notice. La Casa’s architecture earned the Richard Driehaus Foundation Award for Architectural Excellence in Community Design at the Chicago Neighborhood Development Awards held at the Chicago Hilton & Towers last Wednesday.

La Casa was designed by UrbanWorks, a Chicago architecture firm that’s been on a pretty good tear lately, particularly with an UNO school in Galewood and Roseland’s All Saints Residence home for seniors.

Group pushes for soil tests around power plant

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 18:31:00 -0500

A company that is decommissioning Chicago’s last two coal-fired power plants insists there are no hazards on either site, but a neighborhood group is pressing for soil tests and for disclosure of the results.

Midwest Generation, a subsidiary of California-based Edison International, shut down its Fisk and Crawford stations in August. The company says it is talking with about two dozen potential buyers of the sites.

A task force set up by Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office reported last month that the sites could now be used for light manufacturing and could offer public access to the nearby Chicago River.

But a report coming out Saturday says residents of the city’s Pilsen neighborhood, where Fisk stands, want something done first.

“Their number-one concern was, 'How is that site going to get cleaned up, how do we know it’s not going to be a danger in the future, and how do we know what’s there right now in terms of pollution and contamination?' ” said Jerry Mead-Lucero, organizer of the Pilsen Environmental Rights and Reform Organization, which held neighborhood forums and surveyed residents.

Midwest Generation President Douglas McFarlan said the public has nothing to fear about coal, ash and liquid fuel that his company and its predecessors stored near the plants. “There’s nothing inherently dangerous at the sites,” he said.

McFarlan said Midwest Generation would comply with environmental regulations and said any cleanup would depend on the interests of the buyers.

Fisk was built in 1903. Crawford, which stands in the Little Village neighborhood, began operating in 1924.

The closings resulted from falling energy prices and federal clean-air enforcement that required retrofitting the plants. Activists had campaigned for more than a decade to close the generators or curb their harmful emissions, which included soot and carbon dioxide, a contributor to global warming.

Activists rejoice as coal-fired plants shut down

Fri, 31 Aug 2012 18:54:00 -0500

Neighborhood and environmental activists are celebrating as Chicago’s last two coal-fired electricity plants enter a three-month decommissioning phase. But the closings are leaving dozens of Midwest Generation workers without a job.

The company, a subsidiary of California-based Edison International, says its Crawford station in the city’s Little Village neighborhood burned its last lump of coal more than a week ago after operating since 1924. The Fisk station, constructed in 1903 in nearby Pilsen, shut down Thursday night.

Activists campaigned for more than a decade to close the plants or curb their harmful emissions, which included asthma-triggering soot and carbon dioxide, a contributor to global warming.

Standing near Crawford on Friday afternoon, Rafael Hurtado of the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization almost had to pinch himself to make sure he wasn’t dreaming.

“The smokestack and the chimney are not running,” Hurtado observed. “The parking lot is empty other than the security guards. This is a victory not only for our organization but Little Village and Pilsen and the city of Chicago.”

Local 15 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which represented about 135 workers at the plants, says some are accepting retirement packages or transferring to another Midwest Generation site, where they will bump employees with less seniority. The union represents about 700 workers at the company’s six Illinois generators.

“There just aren’t enough jobs,” said Doug Bedinger, a Local 15 business representative for the workers. “There will be hardship.”

Midwest Generation President Douglas McFarlan said roughly 100 union members are leaving voluntarily while another 50 get laid off.

McFarlan, meanwhile, said the company is trying to sell the Chicago sites. The timing of environmental remediation “depends on the interests” of the buyers, he said.

“It’s part of the sales process,” McFarlan said, adding that a school might have different cleanup needs than a warehouse.

The closings resulted partly from federal clean-air rules requiring Midwest Generation to retrofit its plants. McFarlan said a bigger factor was the rise of natural gas production, which has put downward pressure on energy prices. “We just can’t run profitably,” he said.

Durbin to undocumented youths: Watch out for unscrupulous lawyers

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 16:07:00 -0500

Two U.S. congressmen from Illinois are warning undocumented youths not to pay steep fees to get help applying for a deportation reprieve under a new immigration policy.

Sen. Dick Durbin and Rep. Luis Gutiérrez, both Democrats, say most eligible youths can take advantage of the policy, known as “deferred action,” without a lawyer or any payment beyond a $465 fee to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency accepting the applications.

“There are notarios as well as attorneys out there who are trying to take money away from these young people and their families,” Durbin said Tuesday afternoon at a meeting with immigrants in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. “They say, ‘Oh, give me $1,000, give me $2,000, and I will help you.’ ”

“Don’t let them exploit you,” Durbin said.

Under the policy, announced by President Barack Obama’s administration in June, undocumented immigrants can request permission to stay and work in the country by submitting a document starting August 15. The administration, which has not released that document yet, is expecting more than 1 million requests, according to an Associated Press report.

To qualify, immigrants must be 30 or younger, have arrived in the United States before turning 16, have lived in the country at least five years, and be in school or graduated or served in the military. They also must have no criminal record and pose no safety threat. The permission to live and work in the country lasts two years and is renewable.

The policy does not provide a path to citizenship — a key difference from stalled legislation, known as the DREAM Act, that Durbin has pushed for more than a decade.

Durbin and Gutiérrez urged immigrants who may be eligible for relief under the policy to attend an August 15 workshop at Chicago’s Navy Pier, where the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights is organizing hundreds of volunteers to provide information and help fill out the applications.

Gutiérrez added that the policy could lead to an overhaul that stretches far beyond the youths. “It’s incumbent upon us, now that we’ve got this, to move on to their moms and their dads,” the representative said. “Comprehensive immigration reform is what is necessary and that’s what we’re going to work on next.”

Conservative critics call the Obama policy a backdoor amnesty plan aimed at increasing the president’s Latino support before November’s election.

Weekender: Mother's Day Love!

Fri, 11 May 2012 05:00:00 -0500

Spring is the air and this year, that means Chicago is busy preparing for next weekend's NATO summit. The police have geared up, lots of cultural organizations and businesses are shutting down, and hopefully most Chicagoans will come through it with nothing more than new gripes about how tough it is to get around this already traffic-clogged city.

Also preparing for some May 20^th action are the folks organizing The People’s Summit this weekend. Billed as an alternative to the NATO gathering (but also a call to protest on the 20th) the two-day summit is anchored by four major panel discussions involving activists who are local (immigrant activist Jorge Mujica and long-time antiwar figure Kathy Kelly), regional (Jan Rodolfo, the Midwest Director of the National Nurses United), and international (Malalai Joya, a former member of Parliament in Afghanistan).

There’ll be workshops covering a huge variety of topics, including the media, the philosophical roots of the right to protest, how to create sustainable communities and “radical childcare collectives” (a suitable topic for this Mother’s Day weekend!).

And alongside all the talk there’s some entertainment planned, including music from FM Supreme, a woman who knows how to be heard. FM, also known as Jessica Disu, is a rising star in the world of hip-hop. But she accumulated her skills – and lots of props – through the time she spent in a number of Chicago youth organizations, from the after-school program Kumba Lynx to Chicago Young Authors - she's a two-time, back-to-back champion of CYA's annual slam poetry contest Louder than a Bomb.

Disu is also a long-time activist – she got started at the age of 15! Since the fall she's been involved with Occupy Chicago - going to marches and helping with fund-raisers. She calls Occupy something she's “never seen before" – a movement “handled by my own generation.”

She says the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Troy Davis, who was executed last September in Georgia, got many young people moving. These events certainly worked on her. At a private local gathering with Davis’ late sister, Martina Davis-Correia, Disu actually got to talk with Davis over the phone. He asked her to rap for him and then recited one of his poems. She felt “devastated” when he was put to death.

Poetry has become a powerful way for Disu to connect with people. In her songs she writes about “what’s actually going on in the streets of Chicago, the violence and the poverty of my people. If you are making minimum wage you can’t pay for retirement, you can’t have health insurance.”

She’s also conducted workshops with young people at the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center on Chicago’s West Side. After her performance at the Summit Saturday night, she’ll head there for more dialogue, which she thinks is a more effective path to change than protests. “People may not fully understand the power of what they are doing [in a protest]. But when we talk and write about it, they understand they are a part of history.”

The People's Summit takes place Saturday and Sunday. The rest of Weekender's picks are below. Whatever you do - get out there, and enjoy!

Events this weekend

Weekender with Alison Cuddy on Dipity.

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What're you up to this weekend? Let us know in the comments below or email weekender@wbez.org