One sure sign of a thriving business? It spawns entrepreneurs.
Willie Montgomery sits outside the Food 4 Less store in the rough Englewood neighborhood, waiting for customers to ask him to take them and their groceries home after walking or taking the bus through dangerous streets to shop there.
Few thought building a big grocery store in a so-called food desert on the South Side would make it. It banked on low-income residents traveling miles without a car through sometimes dangerous stretches. Four years after it was built, the 63,000-square-foot store is one the chain’s biggest revenue producers in the Chicago area. And it’s giving Willie Montgomery a nice little side business.
Chicago News Cooperative reporter Rachel Cromidas takes us there and reveals that the “If you build it, they will come” approach is offering new clues to city officials and retailers about how to serve the under-served in Chicago’s inner city. Spend some time with photographer Jose More’s photo gallery to see images of Willie and other terrific photographs that put you in the story.
Columnist Jim Warren tells us, in his most cheeky way, that the upcoming Rod Blagojevich corruption trial is a teachable moment for us voters, with plenty of characters to learn from on both sides of the courtroom.
On the opposite end of the corruption spectrum, Dirk Johnson remembers a time when governors weren’t getting grilled by prosecutors at the Dirksen Federal Building. He sits down with former Gov. Jim Edgar, who these days worries less about the recent corruption scandals and more about the health of the Republican Party in Illinois. Edgar, whose clean gubernatorial record is amazing compared with the two governors who followed, warns that without a return to more moderate positions, Illinois Republicans will keep losing the crucial Chicago-area vote.
And finally, some of the best gems are in the shortest of stories. Daniel Libit, who covers the Blagojevich trial starting this week, and Katie Fretland, who is covering the Jon Burge trial, give us a couple of good nuggets outside of the respective courtroom dramas. In The Pulse, Daniel notes that even before the Blagojevich trial starts, the former governor’s defense fund is starting to run low. And Katie discovers there is another Burge in court, though this one is not related to the former police commander who stands accused of lying about acts of police torture. Dorothy Burge sits at the courtroom every day. She lived on the South Side in a neighborhood that was terrorized by police searching for Andrew Wilson, an accused cop killer who testified that he was tortured by Jon Burge. Dorothy Burge says she feels she needs to be there to “represent the other part of the Burge name.”
Daniel and Katie will file fine nuggets like these as well as gripping reports from their respective perches. They’ll be in print and on our web site. You can also follow Daniel’s dispatches about the Blagojevich trial on Twitter. It’s just the beginning of the CNC’s effort to deliver news when and where you want it.
Thanks for reading.