As the year ground to a dismal end we dialed up a few of the folks featured on this page over the last 12 months, looking for a bright spot of news to ride out on. The Acme Artists’ Community seemed like a decent prospect. The subsidized condo development at 2418 W. Bloomingdale, touted as a model for artists’ housing, had been plagued by floods and leaks since it opened in 2003, but last time we checked the city had ordered the developer, the Near Northwest Arts Council, to correct construction problems by August 1. By now, we thought, the Acme community would be snug and peaceful. Wrong, says resident Heather Graham: flooding has been even worse since the developer made efforts to correct it. Three of the residents recently received buyback letters from NNWAC–a bad sign, says Graham, when “all we want is the faulty construction fixed and the water-damaged materials replaced.” Residents will hear reports from independent plumbing and roofing experts in the next couple of weeks, and in an effort to distance themselves from NNWAC and its Acme Art Works gallery across the street, they’ll host an artists’ open house February 4 under the moniker Bloomingdale Studios.
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An artists’ housing proposal for Wilson Yard hasn’t fared any better. A group of Uptown residents floated the idea last summer, right after learning of Alderman Helen Shiller’s plan to include two subsidized apartment buildings in the development mix for five acres of CTA land along Broadway between Montrose and Wilson. But a spokesperson for Shiller says the alderman hasn’t heard anything about artists lately, and this month the city’s Plan Commission approved her proposal for 71 units for seniors and 70 for households with annual incomes between $20,000 and $40,000 in two nine-story towers. Shiller expects full City Council approval within a month or two, with construction scheduled for completion by spring 2007. Randy Lehner, a member of the Uptown Neighborhood Council, which came up with the alternative proposal for artists’ housing, says the group would still like to see artists on this site, but “no one seemed to want to go with it.” The UNC is concerned about Uptown’s concentration of poverty. “What we don’t understand is why in other parts of the city [artists’ projects] are lauded but in Uptown it’s somehow viewed as an elitist thing, a way to keep out or push out the poor,” Lehner says. “No one’s making that argument in Bronzeville.”
Child’s Play Touring Theatre was in dire straits last spring: its touring business had taken a dive after 9/11 and never recovered. “I had to let people go who’d worked for us 14 years,” says founder June Podagrosi; the layoffs included four full-time actors and two associate directors. The downsized troupe is using $50,000 in grants from McDonald’s to finish a black-box studio in its Armitage Avenue home and launch after-school programs Podagrosi hopes will take up the slack. “We’ve always been kids’ mouthpiece, but a lot of other people appear to be doing that now,” she says. “After 25 years I have to figure out how Child’s Play will sustain itself.”
