Garfield Park Community Council Breathes Life into an Underserved West Side Community

Garfield Park is a close-knit community on Chicago’s West Side. The neighborhood has a rich history, stunning architecture, and is home to 184-acre Garfield Park, the site of one of the largest plant conservatories in the United States. But since the late 1960s, the area has been plagued by poverty. Looting in the wake of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. devastated the already struggling community and led to a mass exodus of businesses and middle-class residents.

But today, a coalition of neighborhood residents and supporters is preparing the area for a comeback. The Garfield Park Community Council is working to revitalize the community by improving conditions around housing, business development, wellness, and public safety. We spoke with Executive Director Mike Tomas about the GPCC’s mission and his vision for the future of the neighborhood. 

A product of Chicago’s Northwest suburbs, Tomas has been with the Garfield Park Community Council since 2005. Before assuming the Executive Director role, he spent time in San Francisco, working on social justice issues in Black and Latinx communities. Now, he’s rolling up his sleeves to help develop a comprehensive community plan for the city’s West Side.

The COVID-19 pandemic has made it challenging for the GPCC to maintain its normal level of community outreach, but they have done their best to provide support to Garfield Park residents during this challenging time, including providing rental assistance to needy families.  

According to Tomas, one of the GPCC’s top priorities is bringing commerce to the neighborhood, which is lacking many essential businesses like grocery stores and banks. Tomas describes Garfield Park as a donut hole, forcing residents to travel outside to neighboring communities for the goods and services they need. “We need the bare essentials. The laundromat moved out of the community. Now residents have to take a bus or walk a mile to wash their clothes,” he says. “And when we tried to convince another nearby laundromat to move into the space, the owner just got a van to bring people to his existing location.”

Although Garfield Park is conveniently located near the Eisenhower Expressway and the CTA’s Green and Blue Lines, the area’s income levels and crime statistics often discourage new businesses from coming into the area. “The annual income level is $25,000 to $30,000 for half of our residents. When businesses look at the kind of money people have here, they don’t see an opportunity,” Tomas says. But he adds that while Garfield Park does need to work on bringing its crime rates down, the negative stats can be more of a perception than reality. “I tried to get 7-11 here years ago. They said because they are a 24-hour business model, they consider homicide rates, and that ours was too high. But another neighborhood they were moving to, had the same homicide rate as ours, just more white people,” he says.

The GPCC’s work is a careful balancing act. As they work on improving conditions in Garfield Park, they want to make sure the current residents aren’t left behind. Revitalization often comes at the expense of long-time residents who are priced out of the area due to rising housing costs and property taxes. Tomas says they are working with various community stakeholders to develop a plan that works for everyone. “We’ve formed a housing coalition which includes local residents and organizations. We worked with researchers from DePaul University and a regional planning group to develop an affordability blueprint,” he says. 

The GPCC has also formed strategic partnerships to educate Garfield Park residents on ways they can bring valuable resources to the neighborhood. Under the leadership of Habilitative Systems, Inc. (HSI) and Dr. Donald Dew, the GPCC joined forced with nearly 30 community groups across the city as part of the Counting on Chicago Coalition. The group focused on outreach to residents on the importance of completing the 2020 census. “We told people that this is the easiest way to try to bring resources back to the neighborhood to help out with health clinics, after school programs, and food programs,” he says.

The GPCC has received a great deal of input from community residents, but Tomas admits that not everyone shares the same long-term vision for Garfield Park. Some long-term residents believe higher-income residents will attract new businesses and resources to the area. Others argue that an influx of higher-income residents will only drive housing costs up, and make the case for more affordable housing instead. 

“We’re not a monolithic neighborhood,” Tomas says. “But we’re excited to work with the city and our elected officials to lay out a vision for housing development in the neighborhood. “We’re not all going to agree, but hopefully we can find a compromise that includes both market-rate and affordable housing that the entire community can get behind,” he says.