Megadevelopments, environmental rules, logistics facilities and a new citywide plan could upend the way Chicago develops.
By Alma Campos, Sarah Conway and Phoebe Mogharei, City Bureau
(Illustrations: Cori Lin/City Bureau)
This article is part of Will That New Development Benefit Your Community? The People’s Guide to Community Benefits Agreements and Alternatives.
While communities continue to mobilize to have a say in the developments coming to their neighborhoods, policy experts see some positive changes at the city level, signaling the importance of community input in proposals citywide. Though residents fighting for equitable development say a few recent ordinances, as well as pending legislation, would increase community engagement requirements or strengthen regulation for certain types of new developments, they also say there are policy gaps that still need to be filled.
More scrutiny on “megadevelopments”
In April 2019, City Council controversially approved huge public subsidies for Lincoln Yards and the 78. Both are large mixed-use developments projected to generate enormous profits for their private developers, and people criticized the process as opaque and unfair, considering the TIF program is meant to encourage development in less-wealthy neighborhoods.
Afterward, the city announced it would begin requiring more community input and city oversight for so-called megadevelopments, formally dubbed Master Planned Developments (Master PDs). These new guidelines require developers of Master PDs to have pre-submission meetings with city department staff and at least one city-hosted community meeting where residents can give their input and feedback about the project.
Currently, some development sites that would meet the size/complexity criteria to be classified as Master PDs are the 48-acre former Michael Reese Hospital site in Bronzeville, the over 400-acre South Works site on the Southeast Side and an approximately 34-acre site adjacent to Soldier Field on the Near South Side.
Patchwork of environmental rules
In 2019, an investigation by the Better Government Association found “a dramatic decline in environmental enforcement actions by the city since [former mayor Rahm] Emanuel eliminated the environment department in 2012.” While then-candidate Lori Lightfoot pledged to bring the department back during her mayoral campaign in 2019, that change has yet to come.
Environmental justice advocates have gained momentum in recent years, criticizing both the city and the state for lax enforcement of rules and weak regulations. In response, local government has made incremental changes.
In 2018, McKinley Park residents expressed outrage after the IEPA sent notice about an asphalt plant only two weeks before construction started. The next year, the state legislature passed a law that requires the IEPA to inform state representatives when a permit is required to construct a new facility—which would apply to any facility capable of producing air and water pollution. In March 2021, the city passed the Chicago Air Quality Ordinance, which imposes additional regulations and limited community outreach requirements on certain industrial developments.
But critics say these measures fall short. “You realize how unjust something is when it's right in your face and you can see the pollution with your eyes,'' says Billy Drew, cofounder and former member of Neighbors for Environmental Justice, one of the groups fighting MAT Asphalt. “There needs to be more mechanisms and requirements for local decision making … [politicians are] just going to have a meeting to say, ‘Hey, I had a meeting,’ and then that’s it.”
The proposed Illinois Environmental Justice Act could enact those mechanisms and provide stricter regulations for already-burdened neighborhoods, plus it has support from environmental justice advocates across the state. The bill would create an independent Illinois Environmental Justice Advisory Council tasked with enforcing regulations in “environmental justice populations”—Black and brown, low-income communities that are disproportionately affected.
Closer look at warehouses and logistics facilities
Manufacturing and industry in Chicago aren't what they used to be. Many of the old facilities that produced everything from steel to pianos to gum are gone. Now, Chicago's planned manufacturing districts and industrial corridors are seeing logistics and distribution warehouses in their place.
Residents, civic nonprofits and environmental justice activists have opposed these centers, arguing the facilities would be a bad fit for the neighborhoods due to pollution from large delivery trucks and high job injury rates. According to the Center for Investigative Reporting and Warehouse Workers for Justice, Amazon fulfillment centers have injury rates that are higher than industry average, and are increasing over time.
That is why a coalition of residents, policy advocates and environmental justice organizations asked the Chicago Plan Commission in late 2020 to put a moratorium on rezoning for logistics facilities on the South, Southwest and West Sides until City Council passes ordinances that address the inequitable distribution of the logistics facilities that are rapidly appearing.
In June 2021, Amazon announced a new distribution center in West Humboldt Park at the former Allied Metal facility. A group of residents gathered in late 2021 to discuss their hopes for a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) with Amazon. Their proposal included hiring 60% of the workers locally, a starting wage of $28.50 an hour, a community center and an arrangement where Amazon would cover residential property taxes, according to the Chicago Tribune.
A citywide plan
Critics say the city’s development process can be confusing, inconsistent and outdated. Chicago has not produced a comprehensive land-use plan since 1966—but that’s about to change.
We Will Chicago, a citywide planning initiative, began under Mayor Lori Lightfoot and attempts to address these critiques and more. The three-phase process began in August 2020 and is ongoing. (Disclosure: City Bureau is a paid subcontractor on the We Will Chicago project, sending trained local residents to take notes at meetings.) City plans typically include policy proposals and strategic priorities that guide future regulations, funding decisions and goal-setting for neighborhood development. We Will Chicago plans to present recommendations to the Plan Commission and City Council in 2023.
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A city plan could be a big opportunity to update Chicago’s approach to development, not only to match the transformed landscape and economy of the city, but also to place an emphasis on equity and resiliency, the two key “guiding principles” identified in early We Will Chicago meetings.
"There are some trends that are at least showing that the city is listening to what people are saying [about lack of community input] … I think that's a step in the right direction,” says Christina Harris, director of land use and planning at the Metropolitan Planning Council, an independent regional policy and planning organization. “[But] they don't go quite far enough. They should have a more robust system of actual meetings. It would be great if each ward had a similar process for how they do community outreach and engagement."
It’s still early in the process, and people are a mix of cautiously optimistic and skeptical about how far the plan will go. Veterans of CBA campaigns, like Alliance of the Southeast (ASE) executive director Amalia NietoGomez, warns that policymaking shouldn’t replace the CBA process, but rather, “they are intertwined … I don’t think that a government policy can go into the nitty gritty details of what the community needs.”
She adds, “We want a co-decision process. Racial, social and environmental impacts need to be taken into account for whether or not a development makes sense for the community.” (For more on impact assessments, visit chicagounitedforequity.org/reia)
Will That New Development Benefit Your Community? The People’s Guide to Community Benefits Agreements and Alternatives informs, engages and equips Chicago residents to be active participants in the development process. Want to share this zine with your neighbors? You can order print copies in English and Spanish here.
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