At Home in the Loop: How Clout and Community Built Chicago's Dearborn Park - Hardcover

"Today over 100,000 people make downtown Chicago their home, a migration sparked by the success of Dearborn Park. This South Loop community serves as a model of urban renewal unlike any other in the United States, and Lois Wille's chronicle of its twenty-five-year development provides keen insight into the history of the city of Chicago."--Tom Cokins, Executive Director, Chicago Central Area Committee "[A] must-read for anyone who has ever wondered how good things actually get done in big cities."--Chicago Tribune "[This] extremely readable book, full of vivid anecdotes (and 38 color photographs), makes fascinating reading for lovers of cities, lovers of Chicago, and especially lovers of the South Loop."--Chicago Sun-Times "[An] artfully written celebration of how this amazing neighborhood came to be." --Illinois Times "Simply one of the best books written about Chicago--its business community, politicians, planners, bureaucrats, and activists--as told by one of the city's most revered journalists and distinguished Pulitzer winners."--Donald Haider, Kellogg School Professor, Northwestern University "An inside look at a remarkable venture: the building of Chicago's new-town-in-town --without huge subsidies or resident displacement."--Ed Marciniak, President, Institute of Urban Life

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Lois Wille tells how a small group of Chicago business leaders created a thriving and viable neighborhood on the carcass of old rail yards and, in tbe process, managed to reinvigorate the central city. Alarmed at the fate of other cities after decay had ravaged central business districts, Chicago's business leaders - several with substantial corporate investments in the South Loop - took action to protect not only their own property but also the entire downtown. The best way to shore up Chicago's downtown, they decided, was to entice middle-class families to form an integrated community and live there. The quest for a new neighborhood in the Loop began early in 1972 in the office of Mayor Richard J. Daley, with the heads of the Midwest's biggest utility company, the city's biggest bank, and the world's biggest retail firm in attendance. Mayor Daley loved the idea but would commit no city money in the early stages. It seemed, in fact, as if this small group would not even be able to buy the rail property. Reluctantly, however, George "Papa Bear" Halas agreed to part with fifty-one acres of rail yards, even though he had envisioned the property as a perfect site for a new football stadium for the Bears. Against all odds, the project withstood a twenty-year roller coaster ride propelled by political and economic turbulence. Dearborn Park is now one of the most successful urban renewal efforts in the country. This peaceful little community of green parks and tree-lined walkways in the shadow of Sears Tower is that rarity in the city - a genuine neighborhood. Wille tells the fascinating and heartening story of how it came to pass.