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

"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 "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 "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

Lois Wille's illustrated account provides behind-the-scenes insight into how a small number of Chicago business leaders transformed the dangerous and seedy South Loop into an integrated and thriving community in the heart of the central city. The obstacles to the evolution of Dearborn Park were quite formidable, including a succession of six mayors, huge economic impediments, policy disputes engendered among people used to making their own corporate decisions, the wretched reputation of the South Loop, problems with the Chicago public school system, and public mistrust of a project supported by the wealthy, no matter how altruistic the goal. It took twenty years and millions of dollars, but it will pay off and in fact is paying off right now. With Dearborn Park, Chicago left a formula that other cities can use to turn fallow land into vibrant neighborhoods--without big government subsidies. As Wille explains, the realization of this vision requires shared investment and shared risk on the part of local businesses, financial institutions, and government. It links private and public influence and capital. Wille explains how these elements worked together to build a neighborhood in a blighted tract of Chicago's Loop. She also describes how key decisions affecting the public interest were made during a time of profound change in the city's political life: Dearborn Park was conceived during the final years of the most powerful political machine in America and had to adapt as that machine crumbled and city government was reshaped