UPDATE: Latest setback for new Galewood library, North Lawndale Chamber of Commerce relaunches and other West Side news
The Westside Weekly Review for the week of March 8 - 15, 2025
UPDATE: Since this originally went up, we got an update on what’s going on with the Galewood library (the deal did not go through after all). The title of the post has been changed accordingly. See updated version of the post further down.
Good afternoon, folks. Sorry for the late entry, but, well, life sometimes gets in the way. There is plenty of interesting news coming out of the West Side, some of which, admittedly, flew under our radar. As we continue to fundraise, we hope to cover them more thoroughly. We appreciate all the pledges we got so far, but we still need a bit more funding to pay folks to do the hard work of investigating and writing stories.
In the meantime, read on, share this around, leave a comment, and if you aren’t subscribed yet, please subscribe
City tries to buy a building for the new Galewood-Mont Clare branch library
If you read Westside Review Issue 0, or checked out some of the articles from that issues we posted on this Substack, you may recall that the city was considering buying a building at 1751 N. Harlem Ave. to serve as the new home for Galewood-Mont Clare branch library. Well, one of our subscribers tipped us off that the city approved the purchase of the building back in January. The branch library was stuck in a single room at Rutherford Sayre Park fieldhouse between 2010 and 2020 in what was supposed to be a temporary arrangement, and even that closed during the pandemic and never reopened.
Our Issue 0 feature article went into exhaustive detail about all the twists and turns it took to get this far. The city agreed to pay $360,000 for the building, but it’s not entirely clear whether the deal went through. The fact that there haven’t been any announcements isn’t exactly encouraging, but we’ll see what happens next.
Update: According to Steve Green, president of Galewood Neighbors community organization, Ald. Chris Taliaferro (29th) said the deal fell through, setting the process back to square one (again). Hopefully, we will have further updates by next week’s newsletter.
West Side art gallery looking for submissions
Art West Chicago, which is owned by West Side artist and Westside Review supporter Alexie Young, is looking for submissions for upcoming “Black Plant It: The Cultivation!” exhibition.
We’re looking for works that explore the rich connections between the Black human experience and the natural world — themes of growth, resilience, and spiritual freedom.
Submissions are due on March 31. The exhibit will off on April 19 and end on May 14. Click here for more details.
Last week in West Side News
Austin Weekly News continues to cover the latest developments in the West Suburban hospital’s ongoing troubles, reporting on the hospital appealing its loss of accreditation and the appointment of the new president for the hospital’s medical staff (the article gets into what that position entails)
Also in Austin Weekly News, Lacey Sikora, the freelance real estate columnist at the paper’s sister newspaper Wednesday Journal but occasionally contributes stuff to Austin Weekly as well, gets into more detail about the troubled Frank Lloyd Wright designed home in Austin. As we mentioned last week, this was one of the buildings Preservation Chicago advocacy group flagged as endangered.
Chicago Sun-Times reports on the new mosaics installed at North Lawndale’s Lazaras Apartments. The building recently got renovated by the Lawndale Christian Development Corporation.
The Triibe reports on the shift in policy coming from the new Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke that narrowed the scope of what kind of cases Restorative Justice Community Courts can consider. The courts don’t impose penalties/sentences, but instead work with victims and perpetrators to “repair the harm” the perpetrators caused. As the article notes, the first RJCC was set up in North Lawndale’s UCann campus, and more courts since opened in other parts of the city.
Coming up this week on the West Side
On Tuesday, March 18, Westside Environmental Justice Alliance is meeting at the Garfield Park Conservatory, 400 N. Central Ave., to discuss the city’s Cumulative Impact Ordinance and how to take care of trees on the West Side. The meeting will be held at 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.
On Thursday, March 20, Reimagining 16th Street, the joint project of the Lawndale Pop-Up Spot and North Lawndale Community Coordinating Council Committee on Greening, Reclaiming, Open space, Water, Soil, and Sustainability (GROWSS), is holding a meeting to give North Lawndale residents an opportunity to sound off on, as the name suggests, what they would like to see in the 16th Street corridor. The corridor has seen some development, but it also has plenty of vacant commercial spaces and vacant lots. The meeting will take place between 6:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. at the Starling shared community space, 3243 W. 16th St. (next to Monday Coffee)
On Friday, March 21, North Lawndale Chamber of Commerce is holding an information session about what it does and how it can help North Lawndale businesses. The session will be held at 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. at Monday Coffee, 3243 W. 16th St.
If you’re thinking “wait, North Lawndale has a chamber of commerce?” you’re not the only one. Apparently, it’s been dormant for a while. Your editor can’t make it to the session, but hopefully some news outlet will sit in and report on it. If anyone reading this does end up attending, we’d be curious to hear what you thought.
On Saturday, March 22, the Garden Club of Galewood-Montclare is holding a free garden planning workshop. The workshop will be held at Rutherford-Sayre fieldhouse, 6871 W. Belden Ave., “at 10 a.m. sharp. Attendees are asked to RSVP,
West Garfield Park’s Tilton Park, 230 N. Kostner Ave., is hosting a March Madness youth basketball tournament on March 21-22. Teams of kids ages 8-13 will play on Friday, and teams of teens ages 13-19 will play on Saturday. See this flyer for more information, and register your team here.