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Garfield Park urban farm planning upgrades
- Austin Weekly News, Igor Studenkov, Oct 28, 2019
FarmWorks wants to build rain garden to help prevent flooding
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City Wants To Fix Dangerous West Side Streets By Adding Bike Lanes, Pedestrian Islands And More With $6 Million Infrastructure Plan
- Pascal Sabino, Sep 16, 2019
GARFIELD PARK — Some of the most dangerous streets in the city for deadly crashes are on the West Side. Now, Mayor Lori Lightfoot and West Side community members are hoping to change that with a $6 million infrastructure improvement plan designed to make West Side streets safer.
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Affordable housing developer tapped for East Garfield Park project
- Danny Ecker, Crain's Chicago Business, May 16, 2019
The firm Preservation of Affordable Housing plans a $22.3 million environmentally friendly mixed-income housing development in the West Side neighborhood after winning a design competition.
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Hatching New Businesses: How Accion & The Hatchery are Supporting Entrepreneurship
- Kevin Beerman, Chicago Ideas Blog, May 16, 2019
EAST GARFIELD PARK — A few years back, Accion Serving Illinois and Indiana, a nonprofit lending organization that provides fiduciary support to underserved populations, had an unexpected epiphany: they needed more kitchens.
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Kuumba Tre-Ahm Community Garden hosts Food Sovereignty Action Day Sat. May 18th
- Pascal Sabino, The Real Chi, Free Spirit Media, May 16, 2019
Kuumba Tre-Ahm Community Garden will be hosting a Food Sovereignty Action Day at 9 a.m. on Saturday, May 18. The event, organized by Advocates for Urban Agriculture, will bring together community members to volunteer at the garden while also supporting local food sovereignty goals.
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The Hatchery Chicago Cooking Up Food and Jobs on the West Side
- Andrea Silets, WTTW, Apr 25, 2019
There’s a new business incubator in Chicago that's cooking up some innovative food products on the West Side. And it's the home for a culinary wizard’s passion project.
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Cooking Up New Businesses in The Hatchery
- Brad McConnell, CEO of Accion Serving Illinois and Indiana, for The Aspen Institute, Apr 10, 2019
While headlines tout a booming economy and low unemployment, many parts of the country still have not fully recovered from the Great Recession. What’s more, recent research shows that inequality within urban areas can be stark and that the divides in economic opportunity between neighbors even within a city can have lasting effects on their children’s futures. Addressing these inequities can expand opportunity now and help set up the next generation for success.
A new collaborative effort between two organizations in Chicago is working to address this challenge.
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Researchers launch plan to cut Chicago death gap in half by 2030
- Dan Williams, CGTN America, Apr 2, 2019
The sprawling West Side area of Chicago is just a few miles away from the city’s downtown. But the average life expectancy here is just 69 years of age that’s nine years below the national average and 16 years behind those living in the more affluent downtown area. That’s why researchers and the local healthcare community launched a plan to cut the death gap in half by 2030.
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Member spotlight: Garfield Park Community Council
- Steven Vance, Chicago Cityscape, Mar 27, 2019
Allen Bosbyshell is an AmeriCorps/VISTA staffer at the Garfield Park Community Council and answered the survey this month. He works with GPCC’s Housing Specialist La Shone Kelly to increase affordable housing and prevent foreclosures and demolitions.
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The Hatchery’s Packed Valentine’s Market Proves ‘There Is A Lot Of Buying Power On The West Side’
- Sarah Conway, Block Club Chicago, Feb 14, 2019
Of the 32 vendors at the market, 80 percent are West Side entrepreneurs. And lots of the small business are being helped by the new sprawling, $34 million food incubator in Garfield Park.
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Leaders do post-mortem on Hatchery's outreach efforts
- Igor Studenkov, Austin Weekly News, Feb 13, 2019
During Jan. 24 City Bureau event, experts dissected what went right, wrong with The Hatchery's engagement process
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These are the 14 candidates running for Chicago mayor
- Chicago Tribune Staff, Jan 27, 2019
Here's what you need to know about each of them.
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Chicago Neighborhoods Front and Center at Forum for Mayoral Candidates
- Linda Lutton, WBEZ, Jan 13, 2019
Hundreds of Chicagoans from Belmont Cragin to the southeast side packed an auditorium at the University of Illinois at Chicago on Saturday—many of them arriving from their neighborhoods in yellow school buses— to hear the city’s mayoral candidates talk about their plans for helping neighborhoods, which they say have been left out of Chicago’s growth.
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More than 1,000 people pack UIC's mayoral candidate forum focused on improving all Chicago neighborhoods
- Bill Ruthart, Chicago Tribune, Jan 12, 2019
A standing-room-only crowd of more than 1,000 people packed the University of Illinois at Chicago Forum on Saturday morning to watch a Chicago mayoral forum focused on doing more to improve all of the city’s 77 neighborhoods.
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Rising housing prices in distressed neighborhoods foster new worries about gentrification
- Corilyn Shropshire, Chicago Tribune, Dec 20, 2018
Some parts of Chicago that historically have seen a pattern of disinvestment are experiencing a significant uptick in housing prices, as a strong economy attracts investors to more neighborhoods.
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New food and beverage incubator opens in Garfield Park
- Jessica D'Onofrio, ABC7, Dec 6, 2018
One of the largest food incubation spaces in the country is open for business in the East Garfield Park neighborhood
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The Collateral Damage of $1 Vacant Lots
- Nona Tepper, Chicago Mag, Nov 20, 2018
Chicago’s Large Lots Program seems like a good idea. But the reality has been complicated.
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6 Things to Know about the Eco Orchard
- Sarah Conway, City Bureau, Austin Weekly News, Oct 30, 2018
The $1M Garfield Park development has garnered support and pushback
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Vision Zero Chicago Hopes to Engage West Siders in the Traffic Safety Conversation
- Lynda Lopez, Streetsblog Chicago, Sep 25, 2018
Traffic safety is not always the easiest issue to engage residents on, especially those with other pressing concerns, but Vision Zero Chicago seeks to change that.
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Residents chime in on proposed fruit orchard
- Igor Studenkov, Austin Weekly News, Sep 18, 2018
The Garfield Park Community Council recently teamed up with the City of Chicago Department of Planning and Development and the Metropolitan Planning Council to figure out the details of the Fifth Avenue Eco Orchard — a fruit orchard that would be built near the intersection of 5th Avenue and Sacramento Boulevard. And they want the community to weigh in...
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Rent on the rise: How high will rent in Chicago climb?
- Deborah Bayliss, Chicago Defender, Jul 11, 2018
Denitha Polk, like many other Chicago residents with low- to-moderate income, is challenged with financial and other barriers to finding rental housing she can afford.
A report released recently by The Institute for Housing Studies at DePaul University shows Cook County rentals “remain” unaffordable for the majority of low- and moderate-income households with an increasing gap in the number of available affordable units and the number of renters who need them...
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Harnessing the Power of Collaboration to Create Opportunity in Chicago
- Robin Lee Greiner, Harvard Business School, Mar 28, 2018
We all know that small business is the growth engine of any economy. This is even more true for distressed communities where jobs are hard to come by, crime rates are high and access to fresh food is limited. To deepen Accion’s impact and with an eye towards Accion’s long term sustainability, I spent the better part of the last four years spearheading a joint venture to create The Hatchery Chicago, a $34 million facility that will be the region’s premier food and beverage business incubator when it opens later this year.
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Fruit Orchard will Add to Selection at West Side Neighborhood Market
- Katherine Newman, The Chicago Citizen, Mar 21, 2018
The Garfield Park Community Council recently announced that they would be moving forward with plans to create the Garfield Park Eco Orchard in the community that would add a new variety of fresh produce to their existing neighborhood market.
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An orchard on the West Side? After City Council vote and $500K in funding, the idea could come to fruition
- Igor Studenkov, Austin Weekly News, Mar 6, 2018
The Chicago City Council recently voted unanimously to approve spending $500,000 to build a fruit orchard somewhere on the stretch of 5th Avenue, between Kedzie Avenue and Sacramento Boulevard.
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ABC7 story on the groundbreaking for The Hatchery.
- Oct 24, 2017
ABC7 interviews Angela Taylor and community residents at the groundbreaking for The Hatchery.