Current Temperature

CHICAGO WEATHER

Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Tribune: Chicago area pays steep price for segregation, study finds

Another article I saw referred to Chicago as "Balkanized" i.e. divided. There's a price to this division:
The seven-county area's murder rate could be cut by 30 percent, its economy could churn out an additional $8 billion in goods and services and its African-American residents could earn another $3,000 a year if it could reduce racial and economic segregation to the median level for the nation's largest metro areas.

And 83,000 more residents could have earned bachelor's degrees, spurring another $90 billion in collective lifetime earnings.

Those were the findings of a study by the Metropolitan Planning Council, a Chicago-based public policy research group, and the Urban Institute, a Washington think tank.
The Capitol Fax has more on this and the full study.

Crossposted from The Sixth Ward

Friday, March 24, 2017

HINZ: Chicagoland leads U.S. in population loss

What are we going to do to change this decline?
The estimates are that the three-state Chicago metropolitan area lost 19,570 people in the year ending last June 30, dipping to 9.513 million. That's bigger than the drop of 11,324 people the year before, according to the bureau.

The region did gain a little bit since the last census in 2010, moving from 9.461 million then. But the increase of .4 percent is a small fraction of the hike in the same period by large peer cities like Los Angeles (up 3.6 percent), New York (+2.8 percent) and San Francisco (+7.7 percent).

However, Chicago's decline last year and small rise over the past six years is roughly similar to that of other big Midwestern cities, lagging the Minneapolis/St. Paul area and Indianapolis, but ahead of Cleveland, Detroit and St. Louis. Even so, all of them did better than Chicago in the last year alone.

The metro area declines are heavily concentrated in Cook County, but show signs of spreading to outlying counties, too. For instance, the bureau estimates that DuPage County lost 3,000 people in the past two years, and that Will and Grundy Counties had small population losses last year.

Though the percentage drop was more elsewhere, the numerical population of Cook County dropped more last year than in any other county in the country, according to new U.S. Census Bureau estimates.

The bureau did not break down the data by municipality, so it's impossible to tell for sure if the Cook County decline was in Chicago proper, suburban areas, or both.
Somewhat related

Thursday, March 23, 2017

Curbed Chicago: Plan to renovate Pullman’s historic 1880 factory building is moving forward

Plans are being made to turn the historic Pullman factory and clock tower - located at 111th Street and Cottage Grove Avenue - to become a visitor center. In addition there will be a interpretive center and HQ for National Park Service operations. This is an initiative of the National Park Service and Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives.

Saturday, March 11, 2017

Re-entry education summit at Olive-Harvey College

Thursday, March 16, 2017
11:00 AM to 2:00 PM

Olive-Harvey College
10001 S. Woodlawn Ave
Chicago, IL

Refer to flyer below for more details on this event.

Friday, March 10, 2017

9th Ward Community Meeting

With 9th Ward Ald. Anthony Beale& city department representatives

Tuesday, March 28, 2017
6:30 PM to 7:30 PM

Pullman Presbyterian Church
550 E. 103rd Street
Chicago, IL 60628

For more information call the 9th Ward Service Office
34 East 112th Place
Chicago, Illinois 60628
773.785.1100


Thursday, March 9, 2017

Studio Movie Grill launches remodeled Chatham theater

Early concept of SMG Chatham
The concept you see above have come slowly, but has finally become reality according to this press release from Studio Movie Grill regarding our local movie house. And also this ig post we shared around Oscar time.


Wednesday, February 8, 2017

Capitol Fax: Yet another failure

10001 South Woodlawn Ave
This "failure" is located at the south side's Olive Harvey College located east of the Bishop Ford - formerly Calumet Expressway - on 103rd Street. OHC was supposed to be home to a "Transportation, Distribution and Logistics Center". Another job training program provided by the City Colleges of Chicago.

Unfortunately we've learned - especially if you've read this recent post over at CapFax or indeed the Tribune article linked within the post - the program has stalled. The City of Chicago, City Colleges, and also State of Illinois aren't able to come up with funds to finish this project.

Plus when this project was started it was before the transition from Governor Pat Quinn to Governor Bruce Rauner. And if you've been reading CapFax for the past two years we know there has been something of a serious budget stalemate.

Monday, February 6, 2017

Crain's: Seaway Bank buyer rolls dice on African-American acceptance

Seaway Bank which has a branch located near 111th/Michigan failed on January 27, 2017. The assets of the bank were purchased by the Indian-American owned State Bank of Texas. Most of anything written about this shocking development was posted to sixthward.us. The below post is crossposted to sixthward.us!
www.seawaybank.us
It's almost been two weeks since the formerly Black-owned Seaway Bank was purchased by the Dallas, TX based State Bank of Texas which is owned by an Indian-American family. We already know that the Seaway name will be retained primarily in an effort to maintain some of the predominantly Black customers.
What does the "bank black" movement stand for? The Indian-American family that just took ownership of Chicago's largest African-American-owned bank is about to find out.

Dallas-based State Bank of Texas, a lender mainly known for making loans to Indian-American operators of hotels around the U.S., was tapped Jan. 27 by federal bank regulators to assume the deposits and most of the assets of Seaway Bank & Trust, based on Chicago's South Side.

A large percentage of Seaway's depositors are drawn at least in part by its status as African-American-owned. Seaway's "bank black" campaign last year brought in at least $8 million, with new customers depositing their money at the bank on the basis of its ownership even though its financial condition was rapidly deteriorating.

How many of those depositors will want to stay with a Seaway Bank under Indian-American ownership?

Sushil Patel, president of State Bank of Texas, acknowledges the potential issue.

"I'm not a black bank," he says in an interview. "I'm not a white bank, but I'm definitely not a black bank."

The most important consideration for depositors, he says, is whether their money is safe.

"Banking is still banking," Patel says. "I respect the idea of depositors wanting to put money into a bank that will put money back into that community."
We learn for the first time one of the other bidders of Seaway:
There was competition in the bidding the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. held for Seaway's assets and deposits. The three other bidders included another black-owned bank, Liberty Bank & Trust of New Orleans, according to an FDIC disclosure.

The agency didn't say how much Liberty bid or even whether its bid met the FDIC's specifications. Other bidders were Republic Bank of Chicago, owned by Greek Americans, and Raleigh, N.C.-based First-Citizens Bank & Trust, a publicly traded, $31 billion-asset lender.

Usually, regulators take pains to try to find a buyer for a failed minority-owned bank with the same ethnicity. That was the case in 2014 when State Bank of Texas took over failed National Republic Bank of Chicago, also an Indian-American-owned lender. Likewise, Seaway was the chosen buyer for Milwaukee's black-owned Legacy Bank in 2011.

In its deal with State Bank of Texas, the FDIC effectively paid the bank more than $40 million to take ownership of most of Seaway, according to the purchase agreement (see the PDF).

That will incentivize State Bank of Texas to work out Seaway's bad loans as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible.

The FDIC contacted 350 banks, including 102 owned by minorities, to bid on Seaway, a spokesman says. The Texas bank's was the lowest cost for the agency, which by law had to accept it, he says.

As with many Indian-American-owned banks, State Bank of Texas' lending expertise is chiefly in the hotel industry, accounting for about 60 percent of its loan portfolio.

Otherwise, it mainly makes commercial real estate loans, so it has little experience in Seaway's bread-and-butter business loans and mortgages.

"At the end of the day, it's still lending," Patel says.

Once Seaway's bad loans are charged off, sold or worked out, the bank will continue making the same kinds of loans it used to, he says. The Patels won't install a new bank president for Seaway. Instead, the three family members—Sushil, his father, Chan Patel, who is chairman and CEO, and his brother Rajan Patel, chief lending officer—will take turns being in Chicago and running the operations, he says.
Liberty Bank has a branch on the west side where the former Community Bank of Lawndale/Covenant Bank was headquartered. Seaway won't have their own management team for the time being as you saw in the excerpt.

In recognition that this is a business we're talking about my hope is that in the next few years State Bank could possibly set up Seaway for a sale to a Black-ownership group. This is their business for now as you see in the screencap above so it's ultimately up to them whether or not they want to eventually sell.

In the meanwhile, we see that in this article Illinois Service Federal is setting themselves up as the only locally Black-owned bank here in Chicago. Also we see in this article actions taken by the community whenever a Black-owned financial institution is taken over by someone outside of the community - for example the former Community Bank of Lawndale.

What many of us should be concerned about particularly customers are the status of the many jobs that could be at stake during the course of this transition. State Bank doesn't have as many branches as Seaway so it's possible there will be some layoffs.

I suggest you read the whole thing.