Chicago seeks to make the West Side's Madison Street shine again

Madison Street on the city's West Side has been rocked by some serious body blows over the last 60 or so years and it shows: the unhealed scars left by the civil unrest that followed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1968 assassination, nearly three generations of disinvestment and scores of vacant commercial buildings.

Yet the street goes on. Down, perhaps. But never quite out.

And now, the thoroughfare is the focus of a city study aimed at helping bring new retail, housing and other activity to three miles of Madison Street, stretching from the shadow of the United Center to the heart of K-Town.

"Madison [is] probably the most visible and historically significant commercial corridor on the West Side," Chicago Department of Planning Supervising Planner Brian Hacker said of the Madison Street Corridor Study. "We're looking at the levers that we can pull as a city planning department — zoning, regulatory, environmental ... to facilitate development."

It's not a bad time to rethink Madison Street, particularly within the study's boundaries that include the Near West Side, East Garfield Park and West Garfield Park.

East of the study area, construction will soon begin on the 1901 Project, a $7 billion effort by the Reinsdorf and Wirtz families to turn those barren parking lots around the United Center, 1901 W. Madison St., into a new neighborhood and entertainment district.

Also within the study's boundaries are the new $50 million Sankofa Wellness Center, at 4305 W. Madison St., and the planned $42.2 million Madison Street Athletic & Cultural Complex — a project selected by the city in January to be built on a 1-acre city-owned site at 2905-29 W. Madison St.

The street's existing bones are battered, but they're still good.

Madison Street runs through the south portion of the remarkable 173-acre William Le Baron Jenney and Jens Jensen-designed Garfield Park. And there is an enviable collection of surviving retail buildings still hanging on at Madison Street and Pulaski Road.

Not to mention Out of the Past Records, a vinyl records haven at 4407 W. Madison St. that's been an institution in the community since 1968.

Sharif Walker, CEO of the West Side nonprofit Bethel New Life, is among the 18 community members working with the city on the corridor plan.

"You have everything you need," Walker said of Madison Street. "You have a major park. You have schools. You have shopping ... all the ingredients are there."

Work on the corridor study began last fall with a community meeting at the Garfield Park Fieldhouse.

Hacker said residents want to see commercial development return to Madison. In the street's heyday, between 1920 and 1960, it was jam packed with retail stores, movie theaters and the like, and it could give a downtown street a run for its money in terms of earnings.

"They want to see more housing units on the corridor," Hacker said. "People are supportive of mixed use, walkable development."

But not tall buildings, despite there being potential to go big overlooking Garfield Park or at the Madison/Pulaski commercial junction, the city was told.

"If you want to go higher on a building, [they said,] 'We see that as something that's more appropriate in that Near West area. We want to see more mid-rise development,'" Hacker said.

Hacker said, "Those nuances that we're getting from our community engagement ... are going to be really helpful for us to create the right kind of zoning environment along the corridor — to pave the way for the development that fits the vision of this plan."

The study will also help guide how city-owned lots are redeveloped, Hacker said. Instead of being sold on a deal-by-deal basis, the lots will be handled according to a larger plan.

That's a potential plus.

So would be addressing the issue of crime.

"It won't change unless we implant some things into that corridor that point to the change," Walker said.

Hacker said more community engagement is planned in the coming months. The final version of the study could be presented before the Chicago Plan Commission for approval in the fall.