Avondale residents weigh in as city officials seek development plans for the Belmont Triangle
According to organizers, Avondale residents say affordable housing is their top priority for the vacant, triangular-shaped lot.
By Natalie Moore
Avondale residents weigh in as city officials seek development plans for the Belmont Triangle
According to organizers, Avondale residents say affordable housing is their top priority for the vacant, triangular-shaped lot.
By Natalie MooreA triangular-shaped piece of vacant land may determine the future of the Avondale neighborhood on Chicago’s Northwest Side.
With Logan Square bursting at the seams just to the south, Avondale residents fear encroaching gentrification. And so the fenced-in, weeded, concrete four-acre lot — bounded by Belmont Avenue, Milwaukee Avenue and Pulaski Road — has the potential to create a new neighborhood focal point that can bring in additional investment.
“For a long time the Latinx community has been counted out. It’s been an assumption that our community will be moved out of the Northwest Side due to gentrification,” said Christian Diaz, an organizer with Palenque LSNA. “That’s really the spirit of our community education work around Belmont Triangle is that we don’t necessarily have to observe development happen to us passively. We can be active participants in this process.”
The site, privately owned and appraised at $15.5 million, is known as the Belmont Triangle. In July, the Chicago Department of Planning and Development put out a request for proposals. The guidelines for developers are that proposals should include housing, retail, green space and a community hub such as a library.
Still, Palenque LSNA organizers are knocking on doors in Avondale to find out what neighbors want so they can put pressure on the city.
“People ranked 100% affordable housing is the number one [priority.] And then the next was a youth center, then a mental health center, and then a public library. People would also like to see a park, too,” said housing organizer Eric Wise.
The Avondale neighborhood is at a crossroads. Its growth goes back to the late 1800s as an industrial hub and home to Polish immigrants. Today, the composition is Polish and Latino. But figures from the U.S. Census Bureau show that Avondale lost more than 6,000 Latino residents between 2010 and 2020. Only Logan Square — a community that has grappled with displacement for years — lost more Latino residents during that span. On one hand, there are only a few chains in the sea of mom-and-pop businesses in Avondale. On the other, luxury lofts and new housing are coming.
Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning is working with the community to produce a unified vision in Avondale that maintains affordability and diversity. It’s clear that Belmont Triangle is poised to be the splashy centerpiece that sets the tone for moving forward. Avondale bus lines also fall under the new Connected Communities ordinance, which, in part, seeks to create affordable housing near busy CTA stops.
In the process, Belmont Triangle will need to change from commercial zoning to mixed-use.
“It’s really important for the public to understand zoning to understand that land use is determined by the public sector in collaboration with the private sector, and that the more of us unite to influence decisions about land use, the more equitable the outcomes will be,” Diaz said.
Architect Melissa Toops agrees. She’s zoning director for the Avondale Neighborhood Association, a volunteer nonprofit.
“I don’t think that most people really understand how much zoning affects the places that they live and places around them,” Toops said.
Her family was priced out of Logan Square, so they bought a home in Avondale.
Questions neighbors are asking include: will Avondale become the next hot neighborhood? Will working-class immigrant families be priced out?
“What we can do is we can make sure that projects like this [Belmont Triangle] provide the most affordability along the spectrum of the average median incomes so that everyone can find a home here. That is what we can push,” Toops said.
Juanairis Castaneda, 22, hopes so. She’s also an organizer with Palenque LSNA and has lived in Avondale her whole life. Her parents immigrated from Mexico.
“A lot of my friends and neighbors … that I grew up with are gone now. They couldn’t afford the rent prices,” Castaneda said.
Castaneda walks to the laundromat across the street and to a nearby supermarket she says sells the best taco meat.
“My question is: am I still going to be able to do my laundry here?” she asked. “What is my everyday life gonna look like in my community?”
The answers may become clearer when developers send proposals to the city by the October deadline.
Natalie Moore is a reporter on WBEZ’s Race, Class and Communities desk. You can follow her on Twitter at @natalieymoore.