Eighteen minutes can wipe away a century of history. Back in 2006, that is all it took to erase huge swaths of this city’s cultural and architectural legacy when a fire tore through the Pilgrim Baptist Church at 33rd and Indiana. Five years later, its fragile shell is supported by steel beams, but little else has materialized from grand plans to bring the building back. But a new plan with a phased approach and clearer vision has us optimistic that something will happen soon…finally… more ›

Liquor stores have been problematic in the slow rebirth of the South Side Bronzeville neighborhood. So problematic, that community groups and the 3rd Ward Alderman Pat Dowell are pushing a ballot initiative to make the neighborhood go dry, eliminating two stores that have been labeled as nuisances. But Chicago Public Radio’s Natalie Moore talked to a number of residents questioning whether the move would really fix what ails the area, noting that area problems run far deeper. A recent store closure could give Bronzeville voters a better sense of the potential impact of the initiative. more ›

Had an itch last night for some Lou Rawls that needed scratching. The question was, however, which part of Rawls's career to dive into? The easy route would be to choose something from the Philadelphia International years and those Gamble and Huff productions like "Lady Love" or "(You'll Never Find) Another Love Like Mine." Or do I go way back to Rawls's Gospel days in Bronzeville, where he had the enviable task of replacing his good friend Sam Cooke in the Highway QC's? more ›

The city announced yesterday that they're going to tear down three of the final four buildings in the Michael Reese Hospital campus, including the main hospital building. In announcing the teardown, the Public Building Commission said that the structure was too dangerous to leave standing. The campus's parking structure and hospital administration building are also slated for demolition. more ›

Once viewed as the anchor of a surging Bronzeville neighborhood, the Harold Washington Cultural Center is again the center of controversy as the City considers taking over the building. Despite assertions to the contrary, the state-of-the art theater at 47th and King Drive has fallen under a foreclosure cloud with a $1.3 million dollar suit against former Alderman Dorothy Tillman’s Tobacco Road Productions. The Sun-Times reported that the Mayor has taken notice of the situation and has announced that he may use TIF money to finance a City Colleges takeover of the performing arts facility. more ›

Is Chicago’s newest food juggernaut massing quietly on the South Side? Since opening in the fall of 2008, the Zaleski & Horvath MarketCafe has gathered a growing army of devotees in Bronzeville and Kenwood. After all, the deli/grocery’s quirky mix of premium foods, outstanding sandwiches, Metropolis coffee and attentive staff are pretty much absent from the area, particularly the barren 47th Street commercial corridor. Hyde Parkers nearby noticed. It is rare for denizens of that leafy hood to look with envy at the nearby neighborhoods, but Z&H fills a niche missing throughout the South Side. Well, folks on 57th Street needn’t fantasize about the “pig on a pretzel” or Clover-brewed coffee drinks any longer---Z&H quietly opened a new outpost right next door to Hyde Park stalwart Medici this week. more ›

During an eight-hour period of overnight gun violence as detailed via the Chicago Sun-Times, one man was killed and 15 other people were injured from Saturday evening into early Sunday, police said. David A. Buckner, 47, of the 630 block of East 89th Street, was fatally shot while two rival groups exchanged gunfire at Ada Park. The shooting happened around 8 p.m. and also wounded three other people--a 37-year-old man and a 22-year-old woman suffered gunshot wounds to the leg and a 19-year-old man suffered a graze wound to the neck. All three were taken to nearby hospitals. more ›

Six months after the loss of the 2016 Olympic bid, Michael Reese Hospital, the planned site in Bronzeville for the Olympic Village is a thirty-seven-acre deconstruction site and the future remains uncertain. This week, NewCity took an excellent in-depth look at what's next (or not) for the site. The city took over the Michael Reese Hospital’s thirty buildings last July with plans to demolish most of it for the Olympic site, which upset local preservationists. They formed the Gropius in Chicago Coalition led by architect Grahm Balkany with hopes to save his work. Even though the Illinois Historic Sites Advisory Council voted unanimously to add the site to the National Register of Historic Places, the demolition had already begun and only two buildings are planned to remain, a plan that was the subject of scrutiny. more ›

The late January fire that crisped up the 47th Street Marketplace was a shot in the gut for Bronzeville residents. For many, the building at 47th and Martin Luther King Drive had come to symbolize the slow rebirth of Chicago’s oldest and most prominent black neighborhood. The blaze was not only a symbolic hit, but it also robbed the area of its only upscale restaurant in Blu 47, a burgeoning art gallery, and the oddly oft-closed Spoken Word Café (not to mention a double hit to Jamaicans with the loss of that country’s consulate and the prospect of another Uncle Joe’s Jerk Chicken restaurant that was due to open soon after the fire). more ›

A judge denied bond to a Joliet man charged with the first-degree murder of an elderly Hyde Park man who was picking up dinner for his waiting family on Christmas Eve, the Sun-Times reports. more ›

Here's a shock: there may be some financial shenanigans afoot dealing with the 2016 Olympics and TIFs. A few weeks ago, we took at a look at the city’s new TIF Sunshine website where you can see all of the city’s TIFs, what they’re for and where they’re boundaries are. Last winter, the city announced Michael Reese Hospital would be the future site of the Olympic Village should Chicago be awarded the 2016 Olympics. In June of this year, the City of Chicago bought Michael Reese hospital for $86 million and Mayor Daley later announced that a new TIF would be created to help finance some of those Olympic dreams. That didn’t quite gel; we thought the hospital was already located in the Bronzeville TIF. So we took a look at the TIF transparency website with Friend of Chicagoist Adam Verwymeren and, lo and behold, Michael Reese Hospital was already in the middle of that existing Bronzeville TIF. more ›

John Murray, chief of bid operations for Chicago 2016, said earlier this week that funding for Chicago's Olympic bid will come from a trust fund that is 100 percent privately funded. He said that public funds will not go directly toward the Olympics, and the CTA's expansion would occur without the Olympics and Bronzeville residents need not be worried about being displaced. Murray is also trying to downplay the role of the Blagojevich controversy in all this more ›

The Bronzeville Children’s Museum is growing so much it's relocated to a bigger space. The only children’s museum in the country devoted to African-American history, it has outgrown its former space in a shopping mall in Evergreen Park, re-opening yesterday at its new location at 9301 S. Stony Island Ave. in the far South Side. The new building has nearly ten times the space as the old museum, and room for three times as many exhibits, including a "Motherland to Chicago" tour, "African-Americans in the Food Industry," and "African-American Inventors." The museum is named after the Chicago Bronzeville neighborhood, a significant urban landmark in African American history. [Trib, abc7, WBEZ] more ›

Show of hands from those who didn't see this one coming: new Bronzeville hotspot Rosscoe's House of Chicken and Waffles, which has been getting atrocious reviews for its service and long wait lines from customers who might mistake them with the more famous Los Angeles eatery, just had a trademark infringement lawsuit filed against them Tuesday by the latter. more ›