"It was the Gold Coast of the South Side," said Shirley Newsome, chairman of the North Kenwood-Oakland Conservation Community Council. "It's obvious in the housing stock. You had mansions with ballrooms. The construction and ornamentation tells you they were owned by people of means."

In the 1980s, residents decided to start taking stock of their "gem by the lake" and enlisted the city's help to turn things around, Newsome said.

They did an inventory of existing houses to identify those that were worth saving for rehab and those that should be tagged for demolition. As a result, more than 200 buildings in the area gained landmark status from the city, while a lot of land was cleared for new construction, Newsome said.

Meanwhile, the Chicago Housing Authority began tearing down its high-rise public housing projects and approved three mixed-income developments as replacements in North Kenwood and Oakland. These will offer market-rate, affordable and public housing for rental and purchase.

Draper and Kramer Inc. recently broke ground on the first phase of its 490-unit Lake Park Crescent development on Lake Park Avenue between 40th Street and 42nd Place. Later this year, developers are expected to break ground on the first phases of the 137-unit Jazz on the Boulevard project on Drexel Boulevard between 41st Street and Bowen Avenue; and the Madden-Wells project that promises up to 3,000 units over the next decade on a 94-acre site bounded by 35th Street, Pershing Road, Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and the Illinois Central Railroad.

For-sale market-rate homes in these developments will include condos, duplexes, townhouses and row houses ranging from under $200,000 to nearly $500,000.

So-called affordable units generally are indistinguishable from comparable market-rate products, but sold at discounted prices, according to David Chase, president of Thrush Drexel Inc., co-developer of Jazz on the Boulevard. They are set aside for buyers earning up to 120 percent of median Chicago income, according to a spokeswoman at the sales office of Jazz on the Boulevard. Buyers do not have to already reside in the neighborhood, she said. "It's not for the very low income," Chase said. "It's designed for working people, people who want to live in the city but are getting priced out."

Alongside these large-scale projects, smaller developers are buying vacant land to tap into growing demand for higher-end housing. "I remember a time when they didn't want us to build homes over a certain price point," said developer Jerome Wade, owner of Century 21 Enterprise and president of Wade Enterprise and Associates. "Now, when we do infill and small developments, the community is saying they want a better product."

Quality of life issues are also coming to the forefront. In the surrounding neighborhoods, commercial development is being studied along Cottage Grove Avenue, and a "cultural corner" is taking root at Greenwood Avenue and 47th Street in North Kenwood, where new venues are being developed for the African/African-American Muntu Dance Theater of Chicago and the Little Black Pearl Workshop, an educational and cultural center for inner-city youth interested in the visual arts.

The University of Chicago helped improve educational services by establishing the North Kenwood-Oakland Charter School, at 1119 E. 46th St., and the university agreed recently to extend the patrol of its campus police into North Kenwood and Oakland.

Gladyse Taylor likes the changes in Oakland and believes the mixed-income community that is developing on the footprint of the old housing projects can serve as a model for the rest of the city.

"It should be an example of how we should live all across the city," Taylor said.

By Dean Geroulis
Special to the Chicago Tribune
Published August 10, 2003