A stretch of land in Little Village that was once a railroad line is now a walkway of mostly gravel and overgrown weeds, a garbage dump, a junk car parking lot and even a canvas for a spray-painted Super Mario Brothers mural.
But the space could become Chicago’s latest rails-to-trails project that city officials are calling the Little Village Paseo.
The project is a proposed street-level multiuse path about 1.3 miles long that snakes along an abandoned railroad corridor from 26th Street near Rockwell Avenue, past the Cook County Jail, Discount Mall and La Villita Park and down to 32nd Street near the Paul Simon Job Corps Center.
With the project in the very early planning stages, community organizations said the densely populated Latino neighborhood is in need of more green space, so they welcome the trail, a space now used by some residents as a diagonal shortcut through Little Village.
“Spaces like these are important for the community, but there are a lot of concerns that come with it,” said Luis Gutierrez, executive director of Latinos Progresando.
Among them are how the project will involve residents who live around it, from the design to artwork to construction, whether lights and bathrooms will be among the features, and whether it will lead to residents getting priced out of the neighborhood, he said.
“How are we going to ensure this passageway, as beautiful as it’s going to be, will be enjoyed by the people who live here and not used to displace people?” Gutierrez asked.
The Little Village community has been watching for the impact of The 606 since the June opening of the 2.7-mile trail that cuts through Bucktown and Wicker Park on the east and Humboldt Park and Logan Square on the west—an area where residents are concerned about gentrification and rising property values.
The model one organization points to instead is the Richmond Greenway, a 3-mile community bicycle and pedestrian rail-trail in an underserved community of color with little green space in San Francisco’s East Bay area.
The Richmond trail is a collaborative effort to bring the community together, said Sherman Dean. Dean is a project manager of edible forest and greenway gardens for Urban Tilth, one of more than a dozen local organizations that are part of the Friends of the Richmond Greenway, which acts as steward of the space.
Urban Tilth manages three community gardens along the sides of the trail, growing vegetables, herbs, berries and fruit trees. Residents can plant, water and harvest what is grown for free as a way to create a stakeholder mentality and promote healthier living, Dean said.
“We were trying to figure out collectively how we can use this space to benefit ourselves and beautify the community,” Dean said.
Urban Tilth hires at-risk youth living near the greenway with limited access to healthy foods and grocery stores. They learn about urban agriculture skills and healthy eating, Dean said. The organization collaborates with the city on plans to build a park along the greenway, to help make sure the project is community driven and residents are involved in the design and get the jobs to build it, he said.
The Little Village Environmental Justice Organization is following the same approach for the paseo project. For the past five years, the group has been engaging the community and seeking input about what residents would like to see developed along the unused rail line. Ideas included community-designed artwork, urban agriculture, recreational space, water fountains, benches, bike racks and trees.
The Little Village Paseo, too, could serve as a connector in the community, providing access to La Villita Park, the Semillas de Justicia Community Garden, the 26th Street shopping strip and bus route, the 31st Street bus, bike lanes leading downtown and the riverfront, if the trail extends slightly farther south to the Chicago River.
“There’s an opportunity to develop a trail here that can have a number of different benefits to the community if conceptualized as an environmental justice project,” said Antonio Lopez, executive director of the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization.
The project would be bigger than simply a trail. It would be a way to transform an industrial corridor and create additional usable public space to help make Little Village a healthier community, he said.
The organization pushed to close two coal power plants and turn brownfields that sat contaminated for years into a public park and a community garden. Between the park and garden lies what would be a segment of the paseo.
In addition to being a safe way to travel through the neighborhood, the walkway could be a “living classroom” with gardens and prairie landscapes instead of only a paved trail, said Viviana Moreno, community organizer for LVEJO. The project could provide job opportunities for the community, but concerns about gentrification would need to be addressed, she said.
“We want to make sure the same people who fought for these things aren’t pushed out and can still afford to live here,” Moreno said.
Currently, the project is in the midst of a $150,000 feasibility study by the Chicago Department of Transportation and the Department of Planning and Development with completion of the study expected in December or January, CDOT spokesman Mike Claffey said.
The study, which looks at how the path would be aligned and would intersect with streets, is the first step before the trail gets designed and constructed. Currently, parts of the walkway are paved and missing traffic signs at intersections and pavement markings for crosswalks.
City officials expect to share preliminary design concepts at a public meeting in December or January, Claffey said.
The later phases of buying the land from Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, conducting an environmental study and creating a detailed design for the trail depend on funding, he said.
So far, there is no cost estimate for the project and no funding has been identified for future phases, he said.
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