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Story by Jeffrey Steele • Photos by Joeff Davis Tell
fellow Chicagoans from Lincoln Park to South Shore that you live in Jefferson
Park, and the response is the same. “Jefferson
Park. Yeah, that rib place. Gale something. Gale Street, right?”
The room
is all dark wood, subdued lighting, flat-screen TVs and elegant glassware,
and over in the corner, a young pianist is serving up strains of “The
Girl from Ipanema” on a keyboard.
The food
is topnotch and the atmosphere might be described as pleasant or comfortable,
but few would call it pretentious. Gale Street’s philosophy revolves
around ribs that, well, stick to your ribs. No one’s losing sleep
over trendy décor ideas or extravagant presentation. George
Karzas, like his father before him, runs the place, but only because the
previous owner made a mistake he came to regret. “The guy who sold
this place to my father in 1984 thought the city would get worse before
it got better,” Karzas says. “That guy walked up to me 10 years
ago and said, ‘If I’d known the neighborhood was going to hang
on like it did, I never would have sold it.’ The neighborhood has
not only hung on, but in infrastructure and in the quality of who lives
here, has been made better.” The Northwest
Side neighborhood of Jefferson Park, bordered roughly by Devon, Montrose
and Nagle avenues and the CMSP&P railroad tracks, is nobody’s
idea of glamorous. But it’s friendly, affordable, convenient and
according to some residents, safer than nearby suburbs.
At the
corner of Lawrence and Central avenues, long-time Jefferson Park resident
Ordie Kuchar, a familiar sight walking her tiny, feisty dog, Buttons,
says she has everything she needs right here in Jefferson Park. “I
love it,” she says, out for a walk with Buttons. “You know why?
Everything’s close: doctors, restaurants, the grocery store, the
dollar store. And I love the park. I’m always going around there.
There are [only] a few stores on Milwaukee Avenue, but I still go up there.
The elderly people are so nice. They always want to talk, and I spend
my time talking with them all the time. When I go to Jewel, to Osco, just
around the block, they’re so nice.” In some ways, a walk through Jefferson Park feels like a trip back in time, to a solid 1950s Chicago neighborhood, and not just because that’s the last time many store facades were touched. Small, independently owned businesses still dominate here in an age of corporate chains. Many residents still walk to do their shopping, visit the dentist or eat out. Side streets are lined with sturdy brick bungalows, cottages and two- and three-flats, most with small manicured lawns. And prices, though rising rapidly, are still affordable. A
port of entry
“I like the old-timers,
the old Germans and Polish who live in the neighborhood,” Bill says.
“Most people are friendly. It’s changed, but it’s still
good in terms of transportation and shopping.” The neighborhood is
still a port of entry for eastern Europeans, particularly Polish immigrants.
For these newcomers, Jefferson Park’s Copernicus Foundation and its
Copernicus Center, 5216 W. Lawrence Ave., is an anchor. It’s here
that the Polish Film Festival in America – the world’s largest
– is held each November, and the Taste of Polonia festival every
Labor Day weekend. Jefferson Park, says
Copernicus Foundation Executive Director Wanda Majcher, “is like
a bridge between the suburbs and downtown of Chicago. It’s very convenient
to the train station and the expressway . . . There’s a lot of Polish
stores, a lot of Polish businesses, Polish delis and Polish restaurants
with bilingual staffs. It feels like home for many [immigrants], especially
newcomers who might have difficulties with the language.”
His fond memories
of his early years in Jefferson Park include shopping for back-to-school
clothes at a couple of dearly-departed stores: Anne’s and Wolke &
Kotler, which sat across the street from each other on Milwaukee Avenue,
just north of Lawrence. Resnick’s stood nearby, selling clothes and
shoes and offering a barber shop and beauty salon on the second floor. Those stores are long
gone, and a CVS Pharmacy replaced the Snack Shop at Milwaukee and Lawrence
avenues, home of the best burgers in the neighborhood, according to Hodl.
Like many neighborhoods, Jefferson Park never fully recovered from the
rise of the automobile, the mall and more recently, big box retailers
like Target and Wal-Mart. Milwaukee and Lawrence avenues are still colorful
streets with a variety of mom-and-pop shops and ethnic fare, but many
storefronts are vacant, underutilized or poorly maintained. The days of
bustling business within the neighborhood have faded, and most residents
do their major shopping elsewhere. But Hodl says, Jefferson
Park is “still a very nice, safe neighborhood,” and he loves
taking long walks around the community. Some of the best strolls are in
the fall, when maples add beautiful colors to the streetscape, he says. One of the biggest
changes he has noted is the evolution of Jefferson Park’s housing
stock. In his formative years, he recalls empty lots peppering what is
now a fully built-out community. Those lots existed amid three-flats and
bungalows built during the 1920s and early 1930s.
Hodl has also watched
a huge escalation in Jefferson Park home prices, one that would have left
residents he knew in his youth dumbfounded, he says. In 1970, when he
graduated from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale and moved back
to the old neighborhood, bungalows near his parents’ home were $40,000.
“I was surprised to learn recently that one of the bungalows in my
area, when it was sold, they got $280,000,” he reports. “It’s
kind of hard to believe that the homes are worth more than a quarter million.” Among many factors
fueling rising prices have been a citywide real estate boom and a shift
in the buyers moving to Jefferson Park. In the early 1980s, the community
attracted many eastern European immigrants who were buying their first
homes in America, Hodl says. “But for the past 10 years, I’ve noticed that when an older couple moves out of a home, you’re usually getting a family that just had its first kid,” he adds. “They formerly lived in more trendy neighborhoods like Wicker Park or Lincoln Park. The former family was blue collar, and the new families are young professionals.” Teardowns
Generating Concern “Some of the
old frame homes are disappearing,” Hodl says. “They’re
tearing them down and putting up condos . . . They used to cap everything
at three stories, and now you have some four-story buildings. That would
have been unthinkable in this area several years ago.”
“It’s gotten
more difficult for an older single person to survive,” she laments.
“Rents have gone from $535 to $750, and that’s just in the last
two years.” But new development
and rising rents are also indications that Jefferson Park is becoming
more appealing to home buyers, says Jan Robertson, a real estate agent
with Century 21 McMullen, 6400 N. Harlem Ave., in the neighboring community
of Norwood Park. Robertson, who lives just south of Jefferson Park, has
been selling homes in the community for 21 years. She believes Jefferson
Park is being discovered by increasing numbers of home buyers who couldn’t
have found it on a map 10 years ago. However, “it’s still a
little bit of a secret to many people,” she adds. “Jefferson
Park is a small community that doesn’t have the big bucks of Old
Irving. But it has a lot of what Old Irving has to offer: convenience
to both trains – Blue Line and Metra. And we’ve got decent shopping,
walk-to shopping, a post office and library right in our neck of the woods
. . . It’s all within walking distance.”
Those prices for condominiums and townhomes are at least $100,000 less than similar product in many neighborhoods farther east and south. But even at these prices, they’re not selling quickly. “I think they’re struggling,” Robertson says of developers. “They’re not selling as fast as they thought.” Concord’s
major development When completed, the
six-acre infill project at Lamon and Lawrence avenues will feature 57
three-story rowhomes, 29 single-family homes and a 19,500-square-foot
park. Palatine-based Concord
Homes reports Concord at Jefferson Park is one of the only developments
on Chicago’s North Side offering large new single-family homes priced
from the low $600s. The houses have at least four bedrooms, 3.5 baths,
finished lower levels, two-car garages and base prices in the low $600,000
range. Single-family homes offer 3,267 square feet and are base priced
from $603,490, while rowhomes are 2,200 square feet and start in the $420s.
Concord Homes sees
the development as appealing to an emerging population of buyers attracted
to living on the outer edges of the city. “For people who don’t
want to live downtown, they can live in close proximity to downtown, a
10-minute drive or 15 minutes by public transportation,” Vanderploeg
says. “We’ve seen buyers specifically wanting to go to the city
area, where they can enhance their cultural lifestyles, and be closer
to downtown amenities, without having to buy a condo in a highrise building.
(Another) buyer we’ve seen gravitating to those areas is the suburban
empty nester coming from the outer edges of suburbia, not wanting to go
to the condominium marketplace but wanting a little bit of a yard.” The first buyers to
arrive at Concord at Jefferson Park were Dr. Tom Albert and his wife Dora,
who moved into their new rowhome on Nov. 1, 2004. Dr. Albert says that
he and his wife were lured by prices $100,000 lower than those for townhomes
half a mile east, as well as the proximity to both the Kennedy and Edens
expressways. “Out my front door, I can be on either the Kennedy or
Edens in about a minute,” Albert says. “We came from Ukrainian Village, which is an up-and-coming neighborhood,” Albert says. “But we wanted a more established community. We’re close enough to the expressway that we can jump on it and go downtown, and we still do that a lot.” Lawrence
a Key Artery
Despite the new burst
of development and rapidly rising prices, however, Jefferson Park is still
a quintessential Chicago neighborhood, or what used to be considered quintessential
Chicago – a community with color, variety and a certain down-to-earth
quality that’s becoming hard to find in much of the city. Back at the Gale Street
Inn, owner George Karzas says this neighborhood spirit is alive and well
at his establishment. “I have a business where everyone comes to my restaurant,” Karzas is saying back at the Gale Street Inn. “I have old people and young people, doctors and laborers, yuppies and politicians. You’ll see a copper next to a suit, and a lady with a stroller next to a senior citizen. That’s a tribute to the restaurant – the food is good – and it’s a metaphor for the neighborhood. It’s just real.”
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It’s
fitting then, that this story begins at the Gale Street Inn, 4914 N. Milwaukee
Ave., an institution as inseparable from Jefferson Park as Milwaukee Avenue
itself. It’s a Saturday night, and beyond the bar’s frosted
glass divider, the main dining room is wall-to-wall with folks feasting
on barbecued ribs. The bar is crowded too, with patrons and a small army
of black-vested waiters and bartenders fetching drinks and platters of
glistening meat.
Of
course, there’s convenience and then there’s convenience. You
might have trouble finding a decaf mocha latte with skim in Jeff Park,
but on Milwaukee Avenue, the zimne piwo flows freely. That’s “cold
beer” for the uninitiated, and you’ll see signs created circa
1950 advertising it throughout the neighborhood, along with pierogi, golabki,
kielbasa and other Polish delicacies. This is the heart of Polonia in
Chicago, perhaps the most Polish city outside of Poland, and the delis,
bakeries, shops and bars on Milwaukee and other streets draw Polish customers
not only from the neighborhood but also from the suburbs and beyond.
Ordie
Kuchar and her husband, Bill, have been married for 40 years, all of them
in Jefferson Park, where Bill says the key advantages remain the same.
Few
residents are more eloquent spokesmen for Jefferson Park than James J.
Hodl, who has lived all his 55-plus years there. His youth and early teen
years were spent in an apartment on Sunnyside Avenue. At 16, his family
moved to a single-family home just four blocks away on the same street.
He and his brother inherited the house after their mother passed away
in 1998.
But
starting in about 1954, builders arrived to fill in those lots with smart
ranch houses and brick two-flats. “There wasn’t too much building
after 1960, because they’d filled the lots,” he said. “Now
you see them tearing down stuff to put up new stuff.”
As
condos become more prevalent, it seems renters are getting squeezed out,
says a Kenny’s Grill waitress named Joanna, who does not want to
give her last name. She tells of a couple of women friends her own age
who recently moved into apartments with men. No hanky-panky, she stresses.
They simply needed roommates to make rent.
The
new construction in Jefferson Park is mostly condominiums and, to a lesser
extent, townhomes. And while the prices are stratospheric by historic
Jefferson Park standards, they’re a “good value for the money”
compared with citywide prices, Robertson says. Large new condominiums
with minimal upgrades are fetching $300,000 and higher, while townhomes
are selling in the mid-$300,000 range, she estimates.
As
of early July, 17 of the rowhomes and 12 of the single-family homes remained
to be sold. “It’s right on track,” says Jim Vanderploeg,
division president of Concord Homes. Convenient transportation was a primary
factor in selecting the site, Vanderploeg says. Concord at Jefferson Park
is a 10-minute walk to two Metra stations and the Jefferson Park Blue
Line station, and it’s mere feet from both the Kennedy and Edens
expressways.
Scheduled
to break ground this summer and be completed in June 2006, the six-story
Kennedy Estates will feature 20 two-bedroom condos and two penthouse units
above ground-floor retail. The building will feature a rooftop deck, an
exercise room and a heated garage. Prices start at $339,000 for the two-bedrooms
and go up to $500,000 for the penthouses.