Wilson Yards
Wilson Yards
Site #6 Description…
Wilson Yards refers to a TIF (Tax Increment Financing) development in Uptown just south of the Wilson Red Line stop. The core of the development is a large mixed-use building that sits on the site of the old Wilson train yards, hence the name (there’s also a skate shop by the same name a few blocks away on Wilson). You may recognize the Wilson Yards project from the large Target store at the corner of Broadway and Sunnyside. The development also included building the Aldi across the street. However, the story of Wilson Yards goes way beyond a new Target or Aldi—the main building is home to approximately 170 newly-constructed units of affordable housing for seniors and families. Furthermore, additional TIF money was used to build and renovate other low-cost housing in the surrounding neighborhood, bringing the total number of affordable units to 615. TIF funds also went towards improving local education facilities, assisting small businesses, and the renovation of the Wilson Red Line stop, completed in 2018. In spite of the many obvious benefits to the Uptown community, the Wilson Yards project has remained controversial. Some see the redevelopment of the station and the bringing in of a big-box store like Target as accelerating gentrification. Others in Uptown fought the provision of low-cost housing, fearful that affordable units would draw crime and lower property values. Finally, some are simply critical of the funding method, namely, Tax Incremented Financing or TIF, as historically there has been little oversight in the allocation of these funds.
1968 photo of Wilson Yard and Shops by David Wilson (Creative Commons).
As mentioned above, Wilson Yards got its name from the train yards and shops that were previously located on this spot. Constructed by the Northwest Elevated Railroad, a precursor to the Brown Line and the Red Line north of the Loop, these yards were used for working on and storing train cars. When the yards were built around 1900 this location made sense—the Northwest Elevated line terminated at the Wilson yards, so they served a purpose similar to that of the Howard station today. However, in time, with the founding of the CTA and the extension of the Red Line north, the location of maintenance yards at Wilson became less convenient, and the yards saw decreasing use. This culminated with the opening of an expanded Howard station maintenance facility in 1993, after which the CTA used the Wilson yard mostly for storage. However, as the yards saw less official use by the CTA they simultaneously became a hub for a more informal purpose—graffiti art. In hip hop culture, there has long existed an affinity between graffiti art and trains, especially metros like Chicago’s El and the NY subway, so a nearly abandoned train yard was the perfect place for graffiti culture to flourish.
At Uptown Theater, we learned a bit about TIFs and how they’ve been controversial in privatizing urban land development, making it more business-oriented. Many TIF areas in Chicago have been taken over entirely by condos and private retail development, but Wilson Yards is a TIF area that counters this trend. Wilson Yards has been redeveloped with attention to the retention of long-standing poor families who possess a right to the benefits of TIF development. Given the decades-long history of urban renewal resulting in near-total displacement of marginalized communities, how did this come about?
TIFs are a complex financial instrument used by the city of Chicago to raise funds for development. A major criticism of TIFs is that it’s a non-transparent public fund. To learn more, watch the full video via WBEZ’s Curious City.
In Uptown, it is widely understood that you either “loved or hated” Helen Shiller. She took her alder seat in 1987 on her third try and after approximately a decade and a half of organizing and activism in Uptown. Getting voted over “machine” candidates in the 46th Ward was a process; over the years she was able to build up the base of support to win as a pro-poor candidate, the work for which had begun with the ISC-backed 1975 aldermanic campaign to elect Jose Cha-Cha Jimenez. She became famous for resisting City Council budgets under mayor Richard M. Daley. Many saw her as a champion of the poor who resisted the Democratic Machine as an independent candidate. She was closely associated with the campaign, and later, the tenure of Harold Washington. Others, such as the Uptown Chicago Commission, saw her as endorsing gangs, “junkies” and “anti-social” elements in a bid to remain in power, while blocking Uptown’s path to progress in the process.
A 1991 cartoon by Daniel Sotomayer portrays alder Shiller as a knight that has defeated the Daley machine (depicted as a dragon).
The introductory issue (1981) of All Chicago City News, an Uptown-based radical publication, featured pieces by different activists in the area. In this section, Shiller focuses on low-income housing, a frontline issue for her campaigns for alderwoman in 1978 and 1979.
1996 photo by David Wilson of the Wilson yards area following the fire that year (Creative Commons).
The Wilson Yards project is arguably the biggest achievement of Helen Shiller, who served as alder of the 46th Ward from 1987 all the way to 2011. Throughout her tenure, she was consistent and highly controversial in her attempts to retain low-income housing in the area, pursuing a policy of “development without displacement” even as Uptown saw economic growth as a prime lake-adjacent neighborhood. As an active member of the Intercommunal Survival Committee since the 1970s, Shiller had a well-established record in advocating for mixed housing as a crucial means through which “urban removal” could be resisted. In 1996, the area around the Wilson yards were badly affected by a fire. This provided Shiller the opportunity to push for a mixed model of redevelopment in this now-blighted area, combining services and housing for low-income residents with those that catered to businesses and wealthier residents.
This 1974 map in an issue of Community Control, the Intercommunal Survival Committee’s newsletter at the time, shows that low-income housing continued to be a rallying point right from the Hank Williams Village movement. As we saw with Lawrence House and other sites, each decade brought up new challenges and new strategies around the issue.
A 2002 CTA map showing the parcel of land sold by the CTA for the development of Wilson Yards. Courtesy of Helen Shiller.
This 2004 annotated map shows the distribution different types of housing around Wilson Yard a few years after the designation of the TIF area in 2001. Courtesy of Helen Shiller.
In the case of Wilson Yards, apart from attracting private businesses, TIF funds were used to build or renovate numerous residential buildings of affordable housing (615 apartments for low-income families), provide funding to four small local businesses, and add facilities to two public schools and one public university. A Target store set up in the area offered training and employment to a few Uptown residents, though these numbers were not too high.
Given community organizations’ long-standing, and well-founded distrust of TIFs as an instrument of urban removal and a tool of the political machine, Shiller’s support of designating Wilson Yards as a TIF area was controversial on all sides. It took twelve years of legal and political contestation until the Wilson Yards project was finally completed in 2010. But this project was exemplary of Shiller’s practical approach to getting resources for affordable housing in the neoliberal era, where much of urban land development had become privatized and rapaciously market-oriented. As such, it entailed a different set of strategies than the ones Uptown’s poor had used in previous decades.
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