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AUSTIN WEEKLY news ■ Austin organizations get $1M MacArthur funding, PAGE 8
Vol. 32 No. 35
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August 29, 2018
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austinweeklynews.com
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Also serving Garfield Park
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Thrive i 2025, 2025 special p i l pullout section
$100M project planned for East Garfield Park
Rebirth Garfield Park the brainchild of West Side natives By IGOR STUDENKOV A couple who grew up on the West Side are looking to build an estimated $100 million mixedused development geared toward artists, designers and other area entrepreneurs in East Garfield Park. They have the funding and the land to pull it off, and are currently waiting to get the OK from the city of Chicago. The East Garfield Park Design District, also known as Rebirth Garfield Park, is the brainchild of Siri Hibbler, the CEO of the Garfield Park Chamber of Commerce, and her husband, Milton Hibbler. Both of them grew up on the West Side. Siri Hibbler is a graduate of Marshall High School. Stretching along the vacant lots on both sides of the section of Madison Street between California and Francisco avenues, the plan calls for an arts center, a business incubator and several mixeduse buildings that would have commercial and business spaces on the first floor and apartments above. Karl Guider, who is part of the Guider See REBIRTH on page 6
Courtesy of BUILD Chicago
Sounding off
Contributing Reporter
A young girl plays an instrument during BUILD’s second annual “summer of opportunity” street festival in Austin.
West Siders honor Bob Vondrasek By MICHAEL ROMAIN Editor
Hundreds packed the Austin Satellite Senior Center, 5071 W. Congress Pkwy., earlier this month to celebrate a well-known activist, whom Ald. Emma Mitts (37th) described as “the base of the Austin community.” “If there ever was a white person who could really deal with the black community, they need to come see you,” Mitts told Bob Vondrasek, the pioneering community organizer and activist who served as the executive director of the South Austin
Coalition Community Council before retiring recently due to health challenges. The Aug. 8 celebration, hosted by Congressman Danny K. Davis (7th), was held so that the notably taciturn Vondrasek — who sat quietly at a table near the podium — can still smell his flowers, so to speak. “When they first started the CAPS program in the city and you were the leader of the beat facilitators here on the West Side, I came up under you as one of those facilitators and I learned a lot from you,” Mitts said, before sharing a revealing anecdote illustrating Vondrasek’s can-do personality.
One day, Mitts said, she ran into Vondrasek while he was filling potholes on Jackson. “I said, ‘What in the world are you doing over there filling potholes?’” the alderman recalled asking the activist. “He said, ‘The city’s not filling them.’ That’s the type of man Bob is. He’s going to get something done.” As the longtime executive director of SACCC, Vondrasek and his longtime friend and collaborator, Lillian Drummond, became stalwarts in countless fights
Austin Chamber of Commerce on the move... 773.854.5848 • www.austinchicagochamber.com
See BOB VONDRASEK on page 13