As Chicago proposes making Pilsen the city's largest landmark district, residents fear more displacement

CHICAGO — Nearly 45 years ago, Marcos Carbajal’s father opened a restaurant that would become a staple of the Pilsen neighborhood in the first building the Carbajal family was able to buy after migrating from Mexico.

After aggressive gentrification in the area over the past two decades, Carnitas Uruapan is one of the few family-owned businesses left on 18th Street that recall the identity of one of Chicago’s largest Mexican American neighborhoods.

In an attempt to preserve the character and culture of the area, including the Baroque-style building that’s home to Carnitas Uruapan, city officials two years ago proposed designating part of Pilsen as a city historic landmark district. The area now is under preliminary landmark status and if made permanent, it could be the largest landmark district in the city and the only one in a Latino neighborhood.

The area, originally home to a population of Czech immigrants who built many of its distinctive buildings and gave Pilsen its name, already is covered by a national and state historic district, which provides some tax incentives for building owners.

Carbajal and other property owners, as well as the area’s aldermen, oppose the ordinance, citing unnecessary expenses and hurdles to maintaining their buildings that they believe could force some to leave their longtime homes.

“We are the owners of these properties and we have the right to choose what we want to do with them, not the city,” said Carbajal, who grew up in Pilsen watching his father, Inocencio Carbajal, grow their business of Michoacan-style carnitas.

According to Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez, 25th, in recent weeks more than 300 property owners within the proposed Pilsen Historic District, like Carbajal, have signed affidavits opposing the ordinance spearheaded by the Commission on Chicago Landmarks.

Far from benefiting the residents in his ward, Sigcho-Lopez argues the ordinance would inflict exorbitant expenses on working-class property owners and so push more Latino families out of the neighborhood.

During a community town hall last Wednesday, city Plan Commissioner Maurice Cox acknowledged the concerns and the opposition to the ordinance but said the department considers the designation “an important tool for the preservation of Pilsen.”

Gerardo Garcia, coordinating planner for the planning department, said the goal of the designation is to preserve the area’s architecture and help the people of Pilsen remain there. The idea that the designation will result in increased costs for maintenance of landmarked properties “is just not true,” he said.

“Just as important as those buildings are the people that inhabit them, that use them, that bring vibrancy to their communities, and their stories,” Garcia said.

But Carbajal said preserving his building’s facade won’t maintain the neighborhood’s identity. He realized that after he was told the signage that makes his nearly 50-year-old storefront stand out does not meet landmark standards.

The carnicería has a modern black canopy sign running the width of the building, with a white silhouette of a pig pork in the middle of the shop name, Carnitas Uruapan, in large white letters. The district’s preliminary landmark status has kept Carbajal from renovating his sign, he said.

A process to get approval to repair the sign, which in the past only took a few minutes and $150, has dragged out for almost a year, he said. He has had to hire a permit expediter, costing him more than $2,000.

According to Carbajal, the Landmarks Commission wants him to “change the entire storefront to make it look more minimal so that the architecture of the building can be seen,” erasing the character his family has added to the building.

“The way they pick and choose what is historically valuable is arbitrary and kind of silly,” Carbajal said.

The current culture of the neighborhood was fostered by Mexican immigrants like his father, who were able to transplant their language, food and art to the Lower West Side decades ago.

City officials say the proposal is a part of a strategy aimed at preserving Mexican American communities in Pilsen and Little Village. The initial ordinance sought to preserve the exteriors of nearly 900 Baroque-inspired buildings built between 1875 and 1910 along the 18th Street corridor from Leavitt Street to Sangamon Street, as well as other residential and commercial buildings between Ashland and Racine avenues down to 21st Street. At recent community meetings, the planning department has presented an alternate plan that would reduce the number of buildings covered by the district to 465.

A historic landmark designation means property owners must get permission to make any repairs, which in Pilsen’s case are required to match buildings’ original Bohemian Baroque construction.

Caroline Skolnik Muñoz, said the ordinance wouldn’t be worth it.

When she and her husband first learned of the historic district in December 2018, “it looked good on paper,” because of its potential to preserve history and stop displacement, she said.

That changed after she and some of her neighbors began investigating what the landmark district could mean for them. They say it will result in restrictions on the use of their properties and a complex permitting process.

“But the most concerning part is the potential amount of homeowners and renters that could be forced to leave because they won’t be able to keep up with repair costs, attracting a higher-income demographic, raising rent and raising taxes,” Skolnik Muñoz added.

Even after the community voiced disapproval of the proposal and sent letters against it, the Landmarks Commission designated the area as a preliminary landmark district in May 2019. So city guidelines apply while a vote on the ordinance is pending.

Spurred by the potential demolition of historic buildings in the district, that same month the commission voted unanimously to recommend the landmark district to the City Council for a final vote.

The vote was delayed after a plea from Sigcho-Lopez for a one-year extension on the proposal.

In July the City Council approved another six-month extension to allow the planning department to get reaction from residents to the proposal. Before going to the City Council for a final vote, the ordinance must pass through the zoning committee, but under city landmark rules, because the commission has approved it, the district would go into effect in January if no vote takes place.

“We want a vote,” demanded Moises Moreno, director of the Pilsen Alliance advocacy group, during a rally against the Historic Landmark Proposal on Oct. 4 in Pilsen’s Plaza Tenochtitlan.

In a letter to aldermen, zoning chair Alderman Tom Tunney, 44th, said he intends to hold a special hearing on the matter in November after community meetings with the planning department and the zoning committee are completed. Tunney’s chief of staff Bennett R. Lawson confirmed in an email to the Chicago Tribune that Tunney plans to consider the Pilsen district plan in a November meeting, but did not specify a date.

In May, Sigcho-Lopez introduced an alternate “demolition-free district” ordinance, also pending in the zoning committee, that would protect the same area as the proposed district, plus the former St. Adalbert’s Catholic Church, 1650 W. 17th St.

Sigcho-Lopez said the ordinance is the best alternative to the proposed landmark district to halt Pilsen gentrification. Instead of following the usual procedure for approving changes in buildings in landmark districts, it would prohibit the city from issuing demolition permits or approvals for major projects until the local alderman holds a public meeting about each request.

Marissa Meza, a Pilsen resident and property owner, said she is disappointed with the way city officials have responded to the community’s concerns.

Meza, Skolnik Muñoz and 10 other property owners in the district participated in an advisory committee that met last summer with Sigcho-Lopez, administration officials and representatives of the Landmarks Commission, Meza said.

The committee discussed alternate ways to guarantee affordable housing in the area, halt gentrification and preserve architecture, “but I don’t think they considered anything of what we discussed,” Skolnik Muñoz said.

City officials say they are trying to respond to neighborhood concerns by adding special provisions to the ordinance. Incentives include a property tax assessment freeze. To qualify there’s a minimum investment of 25% of the property’s market value, according to the city.

The incentives that the planning department intends to offer as part of the historic landmark district are “absurd,” Meza said.

“We don’t have that kind of money just lying around,” Meza said. “This is all created for people who have money, not for us.”

There is also a three-year, $3 million Adopt-A-Landmark pilot program to assist commercial property owners who have been in the district for at least 10 years. Another $3 million from the Department of Housing would also be available to homeowners to help them maintain affordable rent, Garcia said during the most recent town hall meeting.

Still, Meza said, “It’s been our property for over 60 years and all of a sudden they want to mandate over it? No.”

Laura Paz, a Pilsen property owner, and once an activist featured in the book “Chicanas of 18th Street,” said that she has seen Mexican residents pushed out of Pilsen for decades, “and this landmark will make no difference.”

“Saving buildings will not save people.”

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