For several years, it seems the City of Chicago has been turning itself inside out to create cultural facilities on the south side. It’s provided tax-increment financing for the Beverly Arts Center, quick-take eminent domain authority on behalf of Second City Bronzeville, and support to ETA Creative Arts for a complex on South Chicago Avenue. Yet here’s Dan Peterman operating a south-side arts center, and he can’t even get a building permit.
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But just before it burned, Peterman’s property was the target of an eminent domain proceeding instigated by the Chicago Public Schools, which sought to condemn the building and acquire the grounds to add to the campus of neighboring Carnegie Elementary. CPS ended up getting a small piece of the property that didn’t include the building, but after the fire, says Peterman, the city didn’t waste any time getting back on the demolition track. “We had a building inspector out here before the firemen left….There was a hard push to get rid of the building. The fire was Wednesday, and on Friday we were in court.” The judge ruled for Peterman and after several months issued a consent decree governing reconstruction–subject, of course, to Peterman’s securing a building permit.
“We made some simplifications so it would go through,” says Peterman. “But it’s a one-story building. This is not brain surgery….We would have had this thing back up in six months and everyone back at work given a little cooperation.” Peterman’s tenants are still with him, working out of construction trailers, though very slowly: the Baffler sent out its first postfire issue to press just last week.
If community leaders are grateful, they’re keeping their own counsel–though no one will admit to objecting to Peterman’s plan either. The Woodlawn Organization, a real estate developer as well as the area’s most powerful community group, professes itself ignorant of the property (located one block from its headquarters) while welcoming the idea of cultural facilities in the neighborhood. Alderman Arenda Troutman did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
