Howard Street, Ashland Avenue & Rogers Avenue

In response to A Walk Down Howard Street - Rogers Park in 1,000 Words and And So 'It' Goes - North Howard Neighbors Association,

Don Gordon replied via email with everyone in local government and the media CC'd.

Michael,

Thanks for putting this out there and thanks to Bill Morton for the pics. The sad thing about this is that this lot has sat vacant for well over a dozen years - long before the current economic crash and for a long time while development in the city was in a boom cycle. Yet this corner and the sites just east of it remained either empty or in gutted out condition. It's hard for me to fathom that with a little effort from our alderman this couldn't have been addressed, but then again he was a bit "busy" making sure that the geese were safe, keeping Wal-Mart out of other blighted areas on the far south side and catering to union interests while plying his image nationally.

As a commercial realtor I'm sure you realize that now it's too late and any market driven solutions won't happen until we're well out of our economic mess, which will be years down the road. This is the collateral damage that a community suffers when their elected representative is "MIA". In the interim, I guess it wouldn't hurt to have a community garden or even a wildflower garden and not just a fence around an area that looks like it belongs in the middle of Kandahar. Whatever the interim solution the alderman should be on the owner of the property (bank or otherwise) to clean up their act and make the area look decent until something is done to develop it.

So once again we're faced with the same recurring question - Where's Joe?

Don

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