Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s plan to revamp the Neighborhood Opportunity Fund designed to reverse decades of disinvestment in the South and West sides cleared a key city panel Tuesday.

Lightfoot’s proposal (O2020-103) would allow the city to reimburse 50 percent of a project’s construction expenses. The current rules cap that amount at 30 percent for grants of $250,000 or less, even though a project can be reimbursed for 50 percent of the cost of rehabilitating an existing building under the current rules.

Related: After Emanuel’s ‘smoke and mirrors,’ Lightfoot claims Neighborhood Opportunity Fund as her own

The proposal would also give businesses that receive grants access to a pool of technical advisers to help them to bring together the capital and manage contractors.

The City Council’s Committee on Economic, Capital and Technology Development unanimously approved the changes, which head to final vote at the full City Council meeting set for Feb. 19.

Lightfoot has already moved to allow grants from the Neighborhood Opportunity Fund to be used to cover 100 percent of a project’s total cost — if both the owner and their employees are residents of the South or West sides. Otherwise, the grant is capped at 65 percent of total costs.

Ald. Walter Burnett (27) praised Planning and Development Comm. Maurice Cox and Lightfoot for the changes.

“I commend you for taking something that is good and making it better,” Burnett said. “It is like the Robin Hood thing without stealing.”

Mayor Rahm Emanuel created the Neighborhood Opportunity Fund in 2016 in an attempt to capitalize on the boom Downtown and in the West Loop by giving developers the green light to build taller and denser projects — for a price.

In addition, applicants can ask for as much as $25,000 before the project breaks ground to pay for appraisals, environmental surveys and architectural services. Under Emanuel, funding was limited to projects that were under construction.

Lightfoot has also changed the rules to allow more projects to qualify for grants up to $250,000 in order to reduce the need for bridge loans during construction. The new rules also permit the funds to be held in escrow for large projects, in an effort to help entrepreneurs qualify for other loans.

When Lightfoot took office, the Neighborhood Opportunity Fund had $57 million, but Emanuel awarded just $890,000 in grants, as the program was mired in red tape and confusing regulations.

In all, $202 million has been committed to the fund, with $53.8 million coming just from the approved but not yet started redevelopment of the River District/Tribune properties.

Lightfoot has also earmarked $30 million from the Neighborhood Opportunity Fund to be used by the Invest South/West initiative, which is designed to boost 10 neighborhoods that each have “at least one well-developed community plan with a commercial component” and “at least one active commercial area at a specific node or intersection,” according to the Department of Planning and Development.

Invest South/West will focus on Austin, Humboldt Park, North Lawndale, New City, Greater Englewood, Auburn Gresham, South Shore, South Chicago, Roseland/Pullman and the Quad Communities of Bronzeville, Oakland and Kenwood, according to the mayor’s office.

South and West side businesses and entrepreneurs can apply online for $10 million in grants through Feb. 29, as part of the first application period since Lightfoot took office. Officials can award grants of up to $250,000, while bigger projects have to win approval from the City Council.

Those who apply should get a decision by the end of March, with another application period set to open in July, according to the mayor’s office.

Woodlawn resident Patricia Hightower addresses the crowd during the sit-in outside the mayor's office. [Heather Cherone/The Daily Line] 

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Critics of a city-crafted plan designed to prevent longtime residents from being pushed out of gentrifying parts of Woodlawn near the planned Obama Presidential Center blocked the main entrance to Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s office Tuesday.

The protest was the latest effort by the Obama CBA Coalition, which comprises seven groups, to spur Lightfoot to take immediate action to protect low-income residents who fear the Obama Center will ratchet up housing prices and leave them homeless.

Aldermen declared a climate emergency in Chicago on Monday, pledging to act to combat “catastrophic lakefront erosion, citywide flooding and severe unseasonable weather.”

Chicago housing officials spent less than $800,000 to subsidize apartments to make them affordable to low- and moderate-income Chicagoans between July and September 2019, a sharp drop-off as compared with previous months that could keep the city from meeting its self-imposed goal.

There will be one official candidate on the ballot in the race for 1st Ward Democratic committeeperson, but it is not clear whether any votes cast for him will count.

Aldermen would no longer have the power to unilaterally approve signs on city sidewalks under a measure introduced by Mayor Lori Lightfoot as part of her effort to strip them of the final say on ward-level issues.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot campaigned on a promise to reverse decades of disinvestment on Chicago’s South and West sides — and when she took office, she found a nearly $57 million pot of money earmarked for just that purpose.

Stung by accusations that Chicago’s neighborhoods languished on his watch, Mayor Rahm Emanuel created the Neighborhood Opportunity Fund in 2016 in an attempt to capitalize on the boom Downtown and in the West Loop by giving developers the green light to build taller and denser projects — for a price.

 

The first day to cast a ballot in the Democratic presidential primary and a slew of Cook County races will be Feb. 19 — at a new location and on new equipment, elections officials said Friday.

Aldermen will consider declaring a climate emergency in Chicago on Monday, citing “catastrophic lakefront erosion, citywide flooding and severe unseasonable weather.”

Jonathan “Yoni” Pizer was appointed to the Illinois House of Representatives amid a cloud of controversy on Sunday, as several other candidates running to succeed former Rep. Sara Feigenholtz (D-Chicago) cried foul over what they called a scheme to tip the upcoming primary election in Pizer’s favor.

Aldermen advanced a measure Thursday that could send fake ride-hailing drivers to jail for six months and fine them $20,000.

Cook County Assessor Fritz Kaegi and his allies in the Illinois House of Representatives are poised to introduce a revised version of a bill he says is designed to improve how the county’s millions of commercial properties are assessed.

Aldermen are set to consider a measure Thursday that would crack down on imposters posing as ride-hailing drivers.

A tight group of North Side Democratic Party leaders is set to choose Sunday among seven candidates who want to be Lakeview and Lincoln Park’s next representative in Springfield.

Ald. Jeanette Taylor (20) vowed Wednesday to block a proposal crafted by Mayor Lori Lightfoot to prevent longtime residents from being pushed out of gentrifying parts of Woodlawn near the planned Obama Presidential Center that she said was totally inadequate.

In a fiery news conference at City Hall, Taylor said the mayor’s proposal would not protect Woodlawn residents from being pushed out of the area around the Obama Presidential Center, set to be built in Jackson Park. In addition, the freshman alderman accused Lightfoot and housing officials of disrespecting the largely Black and low-income community by crafting their own proposal, rather than endorsing the plan backed by a coalition of community groups.

“I was never told they were going to write their own ordinance,” Taylor said. “We are very smart, competent folks. We can come up with our own plan for our own community.”

A measure introduced by the mayor but opposed by the alderman whose ward it affects would be unlikely to pass, as aldermen would follow the unwritten but deeply entrenched practice of aldermanic prerogative.

Don Terry, a spokesman for the Chicago Department of Housing, said the Lightfoot administration was committed to "an inclusive approach to creating well-rounded legislation that will preserve access to housing for low- and middle-income residents in the area and ensure equitable, inclusive growth."

The mayor’s proposal would apply only to census tracts within three-fifths of a mile of the Obama Presidential Center. The proposed community benefits agreement backed by Taylor and the Obama CBA Coalition, which comprises seven groups, wants protections to apply to all properties within a two-mile radius of the center. While Woodlawn would be included in the mayor’s plan, most of South Shore and Washington Park would not.

Related: City unveils scaled-back plan for preserving affordable housing near Obama Center; Coalition blasts scaled-back plan for preserving affordable housing near Obama Presidential Center

The coalition’s proposal is designed to ensure that housing built on land now owned by the city is affordable to families earning $40,000 a year or less.

In addition, any new housing developments should be required to set aside 30 percent of their units for low- and moderate-income residents, according to the coalition’s proposal.

The coalition also demanded that the current proposal be expanded to include not only Woodlawn but also South Shore, Grand Crossing, Hyde Park, Washington Park and Kenwood.

“This is not what the community asked for, and they’ve said it over and over and over and over and over again,” Taylor said. “This doesn’t protect anybody.”

A majority of aldermen have endorsed the coalition’s proposal for a community benefits agreement.

The Obama Foundation and former Mayor Rahm Emanuel rebuffed the coalition’s demand for a community benefits agreement, but Lightfoot promised during the 2019 mayoral campaign to back legal protections for residents near the Obama Center.

Taylor said city officials had failed to take the demands of Woodlawn residents seriously because they are Black and low-income.

“If this was anywhere else there would not be a conversation,” Taylor said.

Taylor called the Lightfoot’s administration’s draft report outlining guidelines for development in Woodlawn near the planned Obama Center released Jan. 30 at a community meeting “a sham.”

“I don’t feel like this process has been fair,” Taylor said. “I’ve been told one thing, and another has been happening.”

The city must act immediately to stop gentrification and displacement, Taylor said, adding that she would “meet in the middle” to reach an agreement with the mayor.

Taylor said Lightfoot had given commissioners too much power as she works to end aldermanic prerogative.

“She thinks she does not have to listen to me and she does not have to work with me,” Taylor said. “So I’m going to fight her and everybody else on making sure that this doesn’t pass. It is either get right, or get right out of office.”