Last Wednesday, as I Divvied southwest along a disused Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad corridor in Little Village, I caught the delicious aroma of fresh corn tortillas from the nearby El Milagro plant. I rolled past the razor-wire-topped walls of the Cook County Jail, then stopped to check out La Villita Park, a green space on a former brownfield site. The corridor continued southwest past the Semillas de Justicia (“Seeds of Justice”) Community Garden, various industrial businesses, and a few colorful murals, ending near the Paul Simon Job Corps Center.
While the 606-the 2.7-mile, $95 million trail that debuted on the northwest side last June-is an elevated, car-free greenway, the south-side facility will be a cheaper, simpler at-grade trail with street crossings. But renderings suggest its aesthetics and amenities will be several notches above a garden-variety bike path.
The Little Village Environmental Justice Organization has also been involved with discussions about the trail. They spearheaded successful campaigns to shut down the nearby Fisk and Crawford coal-fired power plants and transform a pair of brownfields into the park and community garden.
That hasn’t stopped the perception of a real estate feeding frenzy since the greenway opened last June. In January, dozens of residents held an antidisplacement rally after a developer announced plans for luxury town houses a block south of the trail, priced at $929,000 each. (The median home sale price in Logan Square is $258,400, according to Zillow, and $197,400 in Humboldt Park.)
He added that the Paseo is an opportunity to use lessons from the 606 by taking a broader approach to trail planning that also addresses housing issues.
Reifman was skeptical about the tax-freeze idea. “Those tend to be somewhat difficult to do,” he said. “I think our goal is to continue to try to find opportunities for affordability, for programs that we do that are part of our normal investment in neighborhoods.”
