■ Revisioning Central Avenue PAGE 5
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January 24, 2024 ■ Also serving Garfield Park ■ austinweeklynews.com
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Visual artist Antonia Ruppert showcase comes to Austin library
Free cooking k classes l come to Austin, page 3
Dan Doody (at right facing camera) of Neighborhood Bridge addresses representatives of area service providers at Build Chicago on Tuesday Jan. 9, 2024.
‘Voices of North Austin: Changes Over Time’ celebrates residents in the community By DEBORAH BAYLISS Contributing Reporter
A North Austin Branch Library exhibition with artwork inspired by a series of roundtable discussions on how the community changed over time will open this month. Titled “Voices of North Austin: Changes Over Time,” the exhibition, featuring the work of visual artist Antonia Ruppert, was two years in the making. “I have to thank Arystine Danner, the director at the North Austin Branch Library, who thought it might be a good idea to gather people together to talk about those changes,” Ruppert explained. Those discussions took place the summer of See RUPPERT on page 6
TODD BANNOR
The Neighborhood Bridge: a new life for St. Catherine-St. Lucy rectory Services will be available for schoolchildren and their families
By LACEY SIKORA Contributing Reporter
For a little more than a year, a dedicated team of volunteers from Oak Park’s four Catholic parishes have been work-
WS ! NEF H S A L
ing with Father Carl Morello and the Oak Park and Austin communities to discern the next stage of life for the St. CatherineSt. Lucy rectory building on Austin AveSee RECTORY BUILDING on page 8
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Austin Weekly News, January 24, 2024
Kitchen Possible expands free cooking classes to Austin
The expansion is funded by a $10,000 grant
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Editor Erika Hobbs Staff Reporters Amina Sergazina, Amaris Rodriguez Special projects reporter Delaney Nelson
By AMINA SERGAZINA
Digital Manager Stacy Coleman
Staff Reporter
With the new year, the nonprofit organization Kitchen Possible is expanding its free cooking classes for children in Austin neighborhood. Kitchen Possible has been serving the communities of Garfield Park and Pilsen and this winter session Austin neighborhood joins. Kitchen Possible was founded in 2018 by Katie Lowman and uses the cooking classes as a tool to teach children, ages 8 through 12, life lessons outside of the kitchen, like the power of teamwork or starting again after failing. “I grew up cooking with my dad from about five years old, and it has always been a real personal passion hobby for me,” Lowman said. “I would consider myself an extremely avid home cook and an avid eater, who’s also really passionate about helping kids.” Although Kitchen Possible does not have a permanent building, it collaborates with local community centers to host their winter and summer sessions. Each session consists of 20 children and around seven to nine volunteers, Lowman said. Other focus areas of the cooking classes are broadening children’s world views and expanding their food palette. Each class begins with children learning a recipe and then breaking into groups of two to three with their volunteer adult to recreate the recipe. Children get to eat their creations as well. After cooking, the class then comes back together and reflects on the lesson about what was successful, challenges they faced, and lessons learned. “Cooking has a unique ability to transfer lessons to anyone, especially to kids,” said Lowman. “So many things happen every time you get into the kitchen. You learn about setting a plan when you follow a recipe, you learn about being flexible when you have to revise the recipe, you learn about asking for help when something goes wrong. Teaching those lessons in a way that they want to pay attention to, and of course, the side benefit is they learn how to feed themselves.”
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KITCHEN POSSIBLE INSTAGRAM
Kitchen Possible offers free cooking classes for children ages eight through 12. Lowman emphasized that it was important for her to use recipes that children could use daily with groceries available in regular grocery stores, as well as introducing them to new cultures and vegetables that they might not have liked before. Every time when cooking a dish from a different culture, Kitchen Possible teaches children about the background of the dish. Lowman said a lot of the times children walk out of the classes trying a vegetable they might not have liked before, like an eggplant, and loving it in the process of cooking. The program is funded through grants and donations, and the expansion to Austin was made possible through a philanthropic $10,000 grant from TURF Design, a Chicago- based acoustic solutions manufacturing company. “This grant has covered all of our supplies and ingredients necessary for the full session, including any startup cost required to move into that partnership,” Lowman said. “We are really excited about the opportunity to expand and to do it in partnership with a company that is so proud and excited about investing in the work that we’re doing.” During cooking classes, children do use knives, and Lowman said that safety is a big focus in the class. The students do not get to use knives until
a third lesson, and when knives are brought up, they make sure to establish firm and clear rules around knife use, like not touching it without the volunteers’ supervision. “I’m a really big believer that when we ask the kids in our class to bring their most mature and mindful selves to some of these more mature tasks, and we equip them with the lessons they need to be able to use them safely, they almost always step up to the plate and really show us that they can handle it,” Lowman said. The winter sessions for all three communities will be from Jan. 20 through May 9, from 11 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. However, Lowman emphasizes that the classes are not drop-in, but a full eightweek commitment for which parents need to register. Although the winter session is already full, interested parents can register through the Kitchen Possible website and join a waitlist for winter and summer sessions. “I’m really excited for us to expand the program into the Austin neighborhood,” Lowman said. “We’ve gotten such a quick response from families within that community who are really eager and excited to sign their kids up.” The Austin sessions will be held at BUILD, 5100 W. Harrison St.
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4 Austin Weekly News, January 24, 2024
Ogden Avenue plan could include safer crossings, parking changes
The Department of Transportation laid out solutions to fix Ogden Avenue’s dangerous roads and crossings By TREY ARLINE
CHICAGO DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION
Overhead view of the Ogden Avenue Corridor in North Lawndale.
The first plan includes adding a traffic signal along that stretch of Ogden, making the service lanes more accessible from the main lanes of traffic, adding more turn lanes and Two plans for traffic safety improvements and beautificaredirecting parking to side streets and service lanes, accordtion are being considered for the redevelopment of Ogden ing to new renderings shown at last week’s meeting at Legacy Avenue on the West Side. Charter High School on West Ogden Avenue. City transportation officials met with North Lawndale The second plan is similar to the first, though it would neighbors last week to discuss their two proposals to address safety and other concerns as part of a planned major over- repurpose the service drives to provide additional space haul of Ogden Avenue from Pulaski Road to Western Avenue. for placemaking and community space. Parking would be That stretch of Ogden Avenue includes the main thor- in specified travel lanes along Ogden itself, according to oughfare as well as “service lanes” on both sides of the the renderings. Both plans would also include: curb extensions to provide street that hold parking and curb access to shops and storefronts. The main lanes and service lanes are sepa- shorter crosswalk distances, bike lanes, pedestrian refuge islands in crosswalks, an off-street bicycle station, new bus rated by a concrete barrier. stop locations with improved accessibility, center medians with trees and other landscaping features and raised crosswalks, according to renderings. The changes are needed because Ogden’s current configuration is unsafe, Chicago Department of Transportation officials said at the meeting. Speeding is a major concern on the street, with 85% of drivers traveling at a higher speed than the posted speed limit, one official said. Ald. Monique Scott (24th), who lives on Ogden Avenue and attended the community meeting, said the plans are a good start, but added that it would be helpful to know exactly where the improvements will be installed along the corridor. “The overall plan is much needed, TREY ARLINE/ BLOCK CLUB CHICAGO because it is a very unsafe street,” North Lawndale residents weig in during a workshop for the redevelopment she said. of Ogden Avenue on Jan 10, 2024. North Lawndale resident Richard Block Club Chicago
Townsell, executive director at the Lawndale Christian Development Corporation, praised the plans for being community friendly for prioritizing safety, particularly for pedestrians having to cross the street. “Right now, it’s a nightmare in terms of crossing and trying not to get hit,” he said. “There’s schools on Ogden, so we really want to reduce [the likelihood of] young people being hit while crossing the street.” Neighbors are asked to weigh in on the plans and can voice their opinion to be held later this year. Dates for the meetings have not been announced. Planning for the road reconstruction project will take place throughout 2024, followed by engineering and construction phases beyond, according to DOT The project was awarded $20 million in federal funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Safe Streets and Roads for All program. A reconstructed Ogden Avenue plays into the city’s efforts to address traffic fatalities on the West Side. This includes improving pedestrian and bike access near the Garfield Park Conservatory. The 2017 Vision Zero Chicago Action Plan identified Austin, North Lawndale and Garfield Park as high crash areas. The report, which aims to reduce traffic fatalities in the city to zero by 2026, also found that Black Chicagoans are twice as likely to die in a crash than other city residents. Revitalizing Ogden Avenue is a central component to the North Lawndale Quality of Life plan. West Side neighbors spent years demanding that the CTA restore the No.157 Ogden bus between the Pulaski Pink Line station and downtown. The route was restarted in 2020. Other major developments along Ogden Avenue include Lawndale Redefined, a $31.4 million plan to build a community arts and tech center, affordable housing and a grocery store with a rooftop bistro on vacant land at 3400 W. Ogden Ave. Nearby will also be Grace Manor, a $40 million development of a former police parking lot into a six-story affordable housing apartment complex at 3201-3423 W. Ogden Ave.
Austin Weekly News, January 24, 2024
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Redevelopment plans for Central Avenue underway Recommendations for creating an economic corridor will be reviewed this week
By AMINA SERGAZINA Staff Reporter
Austin’s Central Avenue will become the “main street” in the neighborhood that will heighten safety, will be full of historical places, storefronts. Two meetings this week are expected to offer background or recommendations for planners and the public to begin to work with. Austin Coming Together, a nonprofit community development organization, is working on the Central Avenue redevelopment in Austin, a project aimed at turning the corridor into the “spine” of the area. The project is in its early planning stages. According to Ethan Ramsay, planning and investment manager at ACT, main intersections along Central Avenue that are targeted for redevelopment are Madison, Chicago and Lake streets, I-290 and as far as North Avenue. He also added that the project will take more than five years and millions of dollars to implement. ACT is funding the project through a local technical assistance grant provided by the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning. Another collaboration is with the Urban Land Institute Chicago that created the 2018 quality-of-life plan. “Austin is a really big neighborhood and there’s a lot of sub neighborhoods,” Ramsay said. “We felt that based on the planning process in 2018 there was emphasis on trying to create a plan for Central Avenue as a
corridor to act as the spine or the connection between all the sub neighborhoods.” The ULI’s plan is called Technical Assistance Planning Report and it outlined three areas to transform Central Ave. into Austin’s “main street.” They are:
Public Realm This includes public spaces such as streets, alleys, plazas and parks. The report recommends enhancing and celebrating historic sites such as Columbus Park and Austin Town Hall, connecting them with transit stops, schools and commercial corridors. It also suggests improving walkability and safety by adding traffic calming features, bike and scooter stations and reopening the Blue Line station at Central Avenue that closed in the 1970s.
Development This involves promoting development that improves quality of life and creates opportunities. The report cites data from the city and the Chicago Central Area Committee that shows Austin loses more than $175 million a year in retail and dining spending to neighboring communities. It proposes increasing safety by having a police officer at the intersection, attracting food-related businesses and filling vacant storefronts with grocery stores. It also envisions using the former Corcoran as a pop-up space, a long-term grocery store, or a coffee shop, restaurant or co-working space. Another priority is investing in fam-
ily capital by supporting homeownership, multi-family housing and live-work units.
Implementation This requires building community support and partnerships, finding funding sources and other resources to advance community goals. The report notes several ongoing planning and development projects in Austin, such as the Soul City Corridor Plan for Chicago Avenue, the Laramie Bank redevelopment on Chicago and Laramie, and the Aspire Center for Workforce Innovation on Central and Madison. It plans to create a master plan to integrate them. It also recognizes the need for multiple and sustained funding streams for the project. On Jan. 23 ACT will host a livestream on their Facebook page from 12:30 p.m. till 1:45 p.m. to offer background about the project. The recording will be available at the ACT’s Facebook group and YouTube page.
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Ramsay said the purpose of this live stream is to give an update on how the project evolved from a year ago. They will highlight buildings on Central Avenue, markets, Columbus Park, schools, and the Aspire Center For Workforce Innovation. ACT and Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning also will discuss the Central Avenue Corridor at 9 a.m., Thursday Jan. 25 at 5049 W. Harrison St. In Chicago. In early March, ACT is planning a community summit on the progress of the quality life plan and a big part of the summit will be engaging people around the Central Avenue plan. “If we’re really good at leveraging all these different institutions doing really impactful work and make sure that they’re collaborative in how they’re doing programming, projects, trying to impact the community they can have just even more impact.” Ramsay said. “That’s the philosophy of Austin Coming Together.”
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6 Austin Weekly News, January 24, 2024
RUPPERT
she said, was the second or third AfricanAmerican family on her block. “Within months the family on the right of us and the left of us had moved,” Danner said. from page 1 The roundtable discussions and will be archived within the Chicago library sys2022 with both laughter and tears as resi- tem as a way to ensure North Austin has a dents shared experiences and memories place in Chicago history, as opposed to bethat are reflected in exhibition pieces. A ing swallowed up by Austin, Danner added. Caucasian resident who did not leave the As for today, Danner attributes crime in community also took part in the roundtable. Austin in general to drugs, a breakdown in Danner suggested bringing North Aus- the Black family structure and overall lack tin residents together after of resources. hearing from a Woodson Family and community Regional Library archivist unification and supporting that there was very little, if Black-owned businesses are any, research information necessary for North Austin on North Austin. to thrive, she said. “Even though North AusRuppert’s work celebrates tin is part of Austin, techthe resilience of individunically, it’s its own comals and their hope as they munity,” Danner said. “So, continue to deal with sysI thought we need to get temic racism. some stuff.” “My artwork is my inA funding opportunity terpretation of a couple of made it possible. things filtered through the ANTONIA RUPPERT “I chose to get the voices idea that as a little girl, I of people who lived in the was a member of this comcommunity for over 30 years who’ve seen munity and coming up I saw things happen the changes in North Austin including and not realizing I was part of a system,” white flight that occurred in Austin in gen- Ruppert said. “My artwork is depicted from eral,” she said. my lens but also from my interpretation of Danner and her family moved to Austin what I was told through these interviews.” 50 years ago when she was 12. Her family, Ruppert is proud of her work featuring portraits of Austin community members and includes collaborations. Her acrylic portraits are complemented with collage, integrating the speakers’ words onto the image as a way to preserve the roundtable voices for generations to come. “We are producing a hanging piece where Mary Griffin, who is in the community, is taking some words such as one of the speakers saying she came to the community because it was a safe community and she wanted a better PROVIDED education, and put that onto a piece. “Jon Veal Speaks,” Oil and Arylic and Sharpie Collage, 20x20 I’m doing the back-
Celebrating resilience
PROVIDED
“Spring Over Lil Robbie,” Acrylic and Collage and Sharpie, 20x24 ground with layers, color, mostly abstraction. The rest of the pieces are all mine.” Residents are also involved with doing some of the underpainting. “Some of that work you won’t see because I went over it with the portrait work, “ Ruppert clarified. “We came together to teach them my technique and how I work. Quite a few hands got to work on these pieces.” When asked if artistic expression is an outlet for communities to use a healing process from the trauma of high crime, Ruppert said, “Art is the way we heal the community. It’s the expression, otherwise what do we have? Included in the exhibition is a piece called “A Healing Guide,” created by Rupperts’ two daughters. “One of them is a therapist and the other one is a graphic design student at Iowa
State University,” Ruppert said. “Under my direction, the therapist put together information about how you cope and get beyond issues of violence and the systemic things that have happened over time. We have about 12 pages or so and information on where you can go in the community for therapy, healing. My other daughter designed it. It looks amazing.” As the artist in residence in Austin from 2020 to 2021, one of the things Ruppert said back then was that she wanted to be able to have young people walk outside their door and look out and see art that looks like them. It’s still something she would like to see manifest. The exhibition at the North Austin Branch runs from January 20 - March 30. A reception will be held Feb. 17 from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Austin Weekly News, January 24, 2024
A frozen water pipe is no fun
W
henever Chicago gets hit with an Arctic freeze, it is the worst time in the world for anything to break down. Especially a furnace, hot water heater, locks to the door, or pipes bringing in the water. An Arctic freeze will quickly show you how poorly insulated your house is as that cold weather seeps through the doorway, and other cracks and crevices. It will make one long doing the weather stripping that was previously ignored and not taken care of during the warmer weather. I remember the Arctic freeze that happened around Christmas 2022. I was out of town and had completely forgotten to allow the water to drip. By the time I got back, the temperature had warmed up, but when I turned on the faucets upstairs, they sputtered and brown water came out, along with a lot of sediment. That was a sure sign the water pipes had frozen. My water pipes froze again during last week’s Arctic blast. Thankfully I had a case of bottled water, which saved me from not having any water. I finally narrowed the problem area down to the northwest corner of the basement. On the exterior of my house, that area doesn’t have any bushes or anything else to block cold or break the wind. I tried putting a heat gun and a halogen lamp in the area where I figured the problem was occurring. However, because a prior owner of my home had encased the water pipes in cement, that strategy didn’t work. Putting pipes in cement is great protection from being hit with a nail but horrible when it comes to trying to find out where the pipe
is frozen at. Having the pipes run behind the wall made it difficult as well. In trying to find and defrost the frozen pipe, I had both the furnace and a heater in the basement going. My basement was starting to feel like a tropic zone, so it was weird hours later that wherever the frozen pipe was, it hadn’t warmed up the area enough to defrost it. I finally solved the problem by running a heating cable into the area behind the wall. The extreme warmth worked! Twenty minutes later, the wonderful gurgling sound of water coming through put a smile on my face. One of the things I now have to debate is how much money it is going to cost me to replace the galvanized pipes currently in place with copper pipes. I’m pretty sure freezing has not been good for them. My water pressure is excellent, so it does not appear that those pipes are clogged. And ever since I moved into the house 34 years ago, I always let the water run for about two minutes after it has been standing all night. If there’s any lead leaching into the water, it would be more concentrated in water that has been standing than water that is moving. I think I’ll spend the next six weeks plotting all my projects for the upcoming spring and summer. My list, as usual, will be things I can do, and things I’m going to have to pay the professional to do. I know I definitely need to have some additional plumbing work done in addition to those incoming water pipes, so that project may be prioritized up. Home ownership is always an adventure!
ARLENE JONES
AUSTIN WEEKLY NEWS
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RECTORY BUILDING Seeing the prize from page 1 nue at Washington Boulevard. That new life is a new social ministry called Neighborhood Bridge, a kind of outreach to residents across Austin Boulevard that will launch by focusing on school families. The goal is to host a range of services Austin residents reported they need, including mental healthcare, primary healthcare and financial counseling. These services would be provided by established organizations leasing space in the building. Since the consolidation of the four Oak Park Catholic parishes in the Archdiocese’s Renew My Church initiative, the future of the SCSL rectory has been in flux. Housing Forward is now leasing the property for its emergency shelter program through April 30, but the long-term plan for the space has been to create a community services hub, bridging the divide between Oak Park and Austin. The SCSL School is a Big Shoulders School, and 85% of its students hail from the Austin neighborhood. Starting with FILE
Father Carl Morello giving remarks during Housing Forward’s soft opening of their emergency shelter at the St. Catherine-St. Lucy rectory building on Jan. 4., 2023.
FILE
St. Catherine-St. Lucy rectory building
SCSL school families and branching out to include the voices of others throughout Austin, a team of volunteers worked throughout 2023 to determine the shape of a program that will provide access to services to that families in Austin need. Dan Doody, co-chair of the volunteer committee, summarized the past year’s efforts saying, “The essence is: We were a feasibility team doing a feasibility study. We did 20 public forums and got really strong community engagement. We also got five to seven great new volunteers with great skills. We shifted to a ‘let’s do this’ stance. We’re a business now. We’re a start-up.” The Neighborhood Bridge’s purpose, he said, “is to connect people in need with the services that are available. The premise is that there are a lot of services and a lot of aid that our students and families qualify for, but there are a lot of barriers to getting
Austin Weekly News, January 24, 2024
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“That’s how we will make change. One family at a time.” DAN DOODY
Co-chairperson, volunteer committee
it. The goal of the Neighborhood Bridge is to break down those barriers.” Volunteers spent this fall presenting the ideas behind the Neighborhood Bridge at 20 public forums held at Oak Park, River Forest, and Forest Park congregations and at five schools in Austin. The information and support gathered at those meetings informed the volunteers’ next step to incorporate the Neighborhood Bridge as a 501(c)(3) charitable organization. The newly formed corporation has a three-person board made up of Doody, Jack Crowe and Kenna MacKinnon. The three-person board is assisted by five volunteer committees: development, planning, communications, facilities and service connector. Immediate goals include securing a master lease agreement with the Archdiocese and upgrading the lower level of the rectory to house some of the current ministries serving Austin residents and to be able to host adult educational programming and distribute needed household staples to families. The planning committee is currently focused on hiring an executive director and a development director. A local family that wishes to remain anonymous has pledged to fund the renovations to the lower level of the rectory. Doody said that the work of the past year has been made possible by the efforts of many throughout the community. “It’s a really great group of volunteers. All of these people have tremendous professional skills. Everybody sees the prize: we have neighbors who live to the east of us who have very significant needs and we have the resources to connect them with the services they seek,” he said. “We are accompanying them on their journey.” Father Carl Morello, who leads the four Oak Park parishes, noted that the work that has been done in the past year to create the Neighborhood Bridge is unbelievable.
TODD BANNOR
John Meister, Kenna MacKinnon, Debbie Holiday-Phillips and Dan Doody of Neighborhood Bridge after their presentation to service providers at Build Chicago on Tuesday January 9, 2024. “It’s a testimony to the community,” he said. “People here just have the mindset for social justice and ministry to others.” He added that from his standpoint, he sees the Holy Spirit at work, motivating people to care for others. As a priest, he said that this endeavor puts a public face on what the Church should be doing: helping people in need. The community at large is motivated at its heart by love and care for others, and Morello said that is evident in their sup-
port for ministry to migrants and for their desire to help their neighbors. “The Oak Park community and beyond have a mindset and a heart-set for service,” he said. Doody and Morello agreed that community support and sentiment are strong and that the next step is to get financial backing to support the operating costs and necessary renovations to the building. Doody, for one, is excited to jump in. “We’re working with five different schools. We can be getting to know the
families and staff right away and focused on getting our executive director out into the community.” He added, “If it’s going to be successful, it will be one case at a time. That’s how we will make change. One family at a time.” In the interest of transparency: Jack Crowe, a GCM columnist, was also a cochairman of the feasibility study committee for the future of St. Catherine-St. Lucy’s rectory. He was not involved with this article.
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