Three months have passed—though it seems in some ways ages ago—since Chicago failed in its bid to host the 2016 Olympic Games. Perhaps no other Chicago neighborhood has been affected as much as greater Bronzeville on Chicago’s South Side.
As reporter Rachel Cromidas tells us, the wrecking ball may be swinging at the Michael Reese Hospital site, but little else is moving in Bronzeville. Developers are waiting for a master plan from the city, and home owners are stuck with properties that have lost as much as half their value. A handful of developers may forge ahead, but Cromidas’ street-level report describes Bronzeville as a neighborhood seemingly forever rich in potential, a mixed blessing at best.
Just a few stops south of Bronzeville on the No. 3 King Drive bus lies one of the city’s great universities and, as columnist Jim Warren tells us, perhaps the country’s greatest academic community: the University of Chicago.
Jonathan Cole, author of “The Great American University: Its Rise to Preeminence, Its Indispensible National Role, Why It Must Be Protected,” catches his breath after that mouthful of a title and tells Warren that U. of C. is “our closest approximation to the idea of a great university.” The economic crisis that began in 2007 has cast some disfavor on the “Chicago School” of economics, and the university’s expansion may rile some neighbors, but U. of C. is unexcelled in its mixture of rich scholarly environment, research innovations, and its engagement in the world.
Last week, the Chicago News Cooperative went to Pro Football Hall of Fame writer Don Pierson to describe the inner workings of Halas Hall as the McCaskey family weighed coach Lovie Smith’s future. This Sunday, we publish the first CNC byline by another lion of Chicago journalism: Neil Tesser. For more than 35 years, Tesser’s writing about jazz in the Chicago Reader and Playboy magazine has set a standard few can match, and this article is more of that delightful same.
Taking the measure of Chicago’s Jazz scene, Tesser finds a story as cool as the music that plays here. Through the example of Club Blujazz, Tesser describes a resurgent “do-it-yourself” Chicago jazz scene. Jazz musicians are taking matters into their own hands, starting their own clubs, in an effort to protect the quality of one of the nation’s greatest jazz communities.
Good reading to you.