Residents of Near North Side Rogers Park are charging that Loyola University officials are scheming to push through a Tax Increment Financial district that would benefit the university and drive out low-income residents from the heavily minority-based community.
But Loyola University spokeswoman Jennifer Clark said Wednesday that Loyola hired the consultant to study the project proposal.
She said student diversity is a huge attraction of the university, and no university official hopes anyone is driven out of the neighborhood.
The Task Force conducted four large public meetings to solidify input from the broader community about redevelopment, she said, adding, "The principal interest of people who worked on this are commercial redevelopment and vitality."
That means more jobs for residents and better retail businesses and services for the Loyola community.
She said charges by RPCAN about the all-white, no-renter composition of the Task Force, "I think they legitimately found a flaw. The principal thing the aldermen were looking for is geographic representation. I'm not saying it was the smartest thing." Leaders of the Rogers Park Community Action Network (RPCAN) are conducting "house meetings" to determine what residents believe will benefit the community, while they charge a whites-only planning group has taken charge of the TIF process.
RPCAN member Audrey Avila, a Loyola University student, said the planning group, led by Ald. Joe Moore and Pat O'Connor, personifies a fundamental example of racism.
"They should be ashamed of themselves and apologize to the community," Avila, a political science major, said.
Avila said she is seeking dialogue with the aldermen, Loyola officials and the community.
"There has been no effort to include minorities in the planning group. It's all white. It's awful.
"Apparently they don't know any good members of the minority community for membership on the planning group," she said.
The Task Force oversees redevelopment related to the proposed TIF in a community 75 percent of whose residents are renters, according to RPCAN.
RPCAN said in a statement that many residents fear they will be squeezed out by Loyola, although the task force is charged with the duty to protect the economic and racial diversity of Rogers Park, more than half of whose population is Black, Hispanic or Asian.
"TIFs are supposed to redevelop a blighted area," RPCAN Board Chairman Francis Tobin said.
"State statutes specify they can only be used that way, and this area of Rogers Park is not blighted," he said of the proposed TIF district that encompasses the Devon Avenue and Sheridan Road neighborhood.
"Whether the Loyola TIF meets the standard is not clear. Property values would go up, diverting money from taxes for schools, libraries, water service and other needs, and not developing new revenue, as TIF is intended to do in theory," he said.
He believes the university wants to build dormitories and parking lots that would alter and replace the current housing mix.
Residents are proposing through RPCAN that 30 percent of TIF revenue be dedicated to affordable housing to promote diversity and that it create more housing for low- and moderate-income households.
RPCAN also proposes that any company with 10 or more employees benefiting from the TIF pay a "living wage", that construction jobs use union workers and that TIF funds support job training and placement.
It must also minimize displacement of homeowners and renters as well as small businesses and fund community services, such as day care programs and youth and park facilities, RPCAN said.
"You're talking about race," Tobin said of plans emanating from the TIF.
"The effect on the minority community would be huge. It would increase disparities and reduce affordable housing.
"It would result in displacement of nonwhite people unless there is some kind of commitment on the TIF to save low cost housing and diversity.
"The result would be the whitening of the neighborhood. The TIF should promote diversity and economic justice," he said.
RPCAN said in its statement it is campaigning for residents to start over and bring "real democracy into the process, with an expanded task force that looks and sounds like Rogers Park."
Said RPCAN's Tobin, "A key issue is that people of color have been excluded entirely by Loyola and the two Aldermen (Moore and O'Connor) from the `Task Force', even though everyone says saving diversity is a key thing for our community."
As for the Network's charge that the aldermen have "assembled an all-white, no renter group to oversee planning" of the TIF, Michael Land, a spokesman for Alderman Joe Moore (49th), disagreed.
He said, "The TIF task force was a group of community leaders that were directors of community organizations, block club presidents or business owners. They were selected by both both aldermen.
Were they all white? Were they all owners? Yes."
Article copyright Sengstacke Enterprises, Inc.
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