Greater Chatham Initiative performs the role of a strong local anchor institution.
The Greater Chatham Initiative was born from a comprehensive plan for economic growth and neighborhood vitality (The Plan) dedicated to strategically investing (consistent with The Plan) in the Chicago communities of Chatham, Greater Grand Crossing, Avalon Park, and Auburn Gresham so they can re-emerge as communities of opportunity and choice.
Historically, the Chatham neighborhood’s residential and economic stability has been both a beacon and an anchor for Chicago’s south side, which bodes well for Chicago as a whole.
The Greater Chatham Initiative is a necessarily ambitious undertaking. This plan aims to make the community one of both opportunity and choice. These are suggested goals and metrics. We will further refine the following as we investigate, plan, and undertake the initiatives.
Connect and align the residents and businesses of Greater Chatham with the Chicago region’s next economic growth opportunities.
Revitalize and upgrade housing, stabilizing underwater homeowners and enabling new homeownership.
Enrich the community’s retail, support services, and other amenities.
Increase public-sector and private-sector investments and decrease individual public support.
Create a next-economy-inclusive civic infrastructure that connects community residents and businesses with regional stakeholders in fluid, flexible, innovative networks accountable to communities and markets.
Enhance the social system and quality of life.
The Greater Chatham Initiative Guiding Principles
To build something that is real and tangible, it is important to follow these principles:
- State the goals and what metrics will need to be tracked
- Outline the strategies that could help achieve the goals
- Identify a series of initiatives that are tactical project/ program ideas to execute. They must be:
- scalable so they can broadly and substantially impact the community
- sustainable so they can continue after strategic-investments conclude
- innovative and transformative, minimally making great strides to positively changing existing systems and maximally making fundamental paradigm shifts
- rapidly deployable and have a fast-moving trajectory toward a successful tipping point.
- Create an action plan that builds a platform to identify and prioritize initiatives based on neighborhood specific goals, identify resources and community partnerships, and put forth timelines.
Source:
Greater Chatham Initiative
greaterchathaminitiative.org
info@greaterchathaminitiative.org
P.O. Box 19217
Chicago, Illinois 60619