Reclaim Winnetka for people, not profit

In Winnetka, just a couple of blocks south of Tower Beach, where a young Black man named Otis Campbell was recently accosted by a white woman who told him he didn’t belong there, there is a statue of “Everyman” commemorating nineteenth-century muckraker Henry Demarest Lloyd. The message on the sculpture still nudges the conscience of this opulent, mostly white northern suburb of Chicago: “No tenements for some and castles for others.”

The commitment to humanity and social justice behind that century-old sentiment seems to be taking hold. Horrified at news of the harassment of Campbell, members of the community organized a welcome rally for him at Tower Beach on September 6th. He and his friends biked back to the site of the confrontation, where they were met by over 100 people from Winnetka and neighboring suburbs who had gathered on short notice to protest against hate and for racial unity. These people were notified of the event by an email, telephone, and social media chain that included Evanston Fight for Black Lives, HEROS (Healing Everyday Racism in Our Schools), Skokie Citizens for Action, and The Justice Project: The March Continues, a campaign organized in 2015 to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the North Shore Summer Project.

While the rally in Winnetka is an encouraging sign, so much internal work remains to be done.

We can visualize the stark results of generations of systemic racism and income inequality: abandoned homes in mostly Black and economically disenfranchised city neighborhoods and luxury housing in white suburbs. We can read charts that demonstrate the enormous difference in life expectancies and student test scores between the two types of neighborhoods.

But what we don’t usually see is the anxiety among residents themselves in white and privileged communities. Today, the coronavirus and the surge of white support for Black Lives Matter have brought this tension to the surface in Chicago’s North Shore.

I journeyed from that joyful gathering of affirmation for race unity at Tower Beach to the silence of a once-bustling commercial corner, emptied of activity by developers who are deliberately warehousing properties so they can repackage them to generate maximal monetary returns, at the cost of community life.

That shuttering on the intersection of Lincoln and Elm in Winnetka started years ago with the acquisition of the site, which included the former Fell clothing store. Over time, these plans have forced the relocation of other stores.

The proposed, largely unpopular “One Winnetka” luxury monstrosity, meant to look Parisian, went belly-up two years ago when David Trandel, the developer, could not clinch the financing. Now comes Greg Hoffmann, another owner and luxury developer who lives in Winnetka, to bid for the property, as reported by the Chicago Tribune.

“We’re now fine-tuning a project that we think is something in keeping with the character of the village,” Hoffmann told the reporter, Karen Ann Cullotta. As a resident, he seeks to wield his power as a developer to shape the kind of quaint, New England-style shopping district he himself would enjoy from a “customer’s point of view.”

The very next day, also reported by the Tribune, he shut down with no notice the two remaining anchors of that intersection, the popular Café Aroma, run by a single immigrant mother from Iran, and the restaurant Little Ricky’s, the day before. Owner Mitra Ryndak told Cullotta, “I’m heartbroken… I put my heart and soul into this restaurant, and my customers were like my family.”

Which Winnetka “customer” are we treasuring: the boutique shopper, or the family of any income, race, or age?

From what I could tell, there is significant support in Winnetka for a humane, inclusive community. But it will take concerted pushing from the people to ensure that Hoffmann’s vision is not assumed to be every Winnetkan’s vision.

The “character” of Winnetka as white and wealthy was shaped by developers and the real estate industry. Unless people and their elected officials seize the moment and control that narrative in the name of the majority of people, it will continue to be manipulated by exclusionary interests.

This truth was revealed by the 1965 North Shore Summer Project, the grassroots group of north suburban residents who, inspired by the Mississippi Summer Project, decided to tackle head-on the North Shore Board of Realtors and its policy of steering Black home-seekers out of white suburbs and neighborhoods. Volunteers fanned out to interview every homeowner with a listing. They found, and documented in a report delivered to the doorstep of the Board of Realtors, that the vast majority – 73 percent – of homeowners interviewed were against racial restrictions and in favor of open occupancy.

Their call to action climaxed with a rally of 10,000 on the Winnetka Village Green, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called for an end to racial discrimination in housing.

Despite the advent of the federal Fair Housing Act in 1968 in the wake of Dr. King’s assassination, Winnetka has barely changed. The Act is hardly enforced anywhere, and is now under direct attack by the Trump administration. Less than a handful of northern suburbs have taken affirmative steps to invite Black and other families of color into their towns.

Moreover, since the 1970s, runaway housing prices combined with stagnant wages that fell especially hard upon Blacks have exacerbated racial segregation, as Black families on average earn less than white families. The single-minded promotion of expensive housing in affluent suburbs has had a disparate impact on Black and brown families. In the 1990s, the Chicago Tribune described the North Shore as “estate of mind.”

It isn’t just people of color who feel the pinch. The greater the racial and economic homogeneity of a community, all those of ordinary means and all people of good will who simply want to live in a vibrant, inclusive, and diverse community find themselves outsiders in a town designed to accommodate the one percent.

The developers who see in Winnetka nothing but a posh brand are in fact acting against the economic health of the community. They are creating a sort of ghost town eerily similar to the empty streets in poor neighborhoods long since abandoned by investors.

It is a wake-up call: communities need to be run not by and for developers and investors, but by and for the people who live in them.

Since the murder of George Floyd by white police officers in Minneapolis, white residents are mobilizing nationally at a pitch not seen since the civil rights movement. Today, they are not only coming together against police brutality, but in favor of mixed-income and racially integrated suburbs. “Black Lives Matter” is now understood as more than a protest against police brutality, but also a message about ending the exclusionary status quo and taking steps make every community welcome to all.

“We’re riding for love. We’re riding for peace. We’re riding for unity,” Campbell said to me the day before the Tower Beach rally.

To put that love into action, residents can signal to their local governments that the community they want to live in makes room for a diverse housing stock and locally owned small businesses. It’s a community that not only accommodates but affirmatively invites people of all income levels, abilities, ages, and ethnicities. It’s a community that treats residents not primarily as investors and consumers, but as friends and neighbors.