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Chicago Tourism Reaches Out to Neighborhoods

By Carl Vogel on Friday, June 11, 2010

Jens Jensen would have approved.

On May 26, in the courtyard of the 1896 building that once housed the office of the famed landscape architect and parks supervisor, Mayor Richard M. Daley and a host of other officials announced “Explore Chicago: Eat, Play, Love Our Neighborhoods,” a new tourism program by the City of Chicago.

With events throughout the city, including more than a half-dozen neighborhoods in LISC/Chicago’s New Communities Program, Chicago is focusing on bringing attention and visitors beyond the typical Loop and River North destinations.

“We have to keep taking the steps that make Chicago a top destination for business and leisure travelers,” Mayor Daley said. “We’re investing in projects that have a beneficial, long-term impact on every Chicago neighborhood.”

The site of the press conference itself demonstrated the sights and stories that can be found in Chicago’s communities. Originally Humboldt Park’s stables and receptor, the brick, stone and half-timbered building is nearly finished with a beautiful $23 million renovation.

As the Humboldt Park community has changed over the years from primarily German and Scandinavian to Puerto Rican and African-American, the building has kept pace as the home of the Institute of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture.

What were once horse stalls and offices are now art galleries, a gift shop and a workroom, where nearly completed papier-mache masks and tile work show that a new generation of local residents is learning about the culture of the island.

Visiting the Neighborhood
Through its Chicago Community Showcase program, LISC/Chicago has worked with the City the last two years to support community-designed tours of neighborhoods across the city like Humboldt Park.

Last year, working with architectural historians from the Art Institute and LISC scribes, community members in Albany Park, Auburn Gresham, Pilsen, Quad Communities, West Ridge, and South Chicago created tours that celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Burnham Plan for Chicago.

This year, the Showcase has added new tours for Humboldt Park, Chicago Lawn, East Garfield Park, North Lawndale and Logan Square, which highlights the parks and boulevards system on the city’s West Side.

The tours have been sponsored over the last two years by The 2016 Fund for Chicago Neighborhoods, with support from the Burnham Plan Centennial, the Chicago Office of Tourism and the Boeing Company.

Each tour mixes information about the neighborhood’s history, architecture, culture, residents and community planning. Participants see where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. lived for a summer in North Lawndale, for example, as well as the new mixed-use development being built on the site.

In South Chicago, the tours show the industrial history of the community and the new green technologies that residents are promoting. The Pilsen tour highlights the local institutions built by working-class community and labor organizing efforts – in addition to showing off the community’s great set of restaurants and local art galleries.

In his remarks, Mayor Daley pointed out that tourism is a crucial economic engine for Chicago – he cited the recent National Restaurant Association Show, which brought an estimated $87 million to the city – and Andrew J. Mooney, LISC/Chicago’s executive director, echoed the point for the communities themselves.

“Neighborhood tours serve a number of purposes. Not only do they highlight the wonderful nature of the neighborhoods to visitors and tourists, and give a sense pride and unity to neighborhood residents themselves, at the end of the day, they are also a powerful economic development tool,” Mooney said.

2010 Tours and Virtual Tools
To sign up for a 2010 Community Showcase summer tour, download a request form and email (lisc-chicago@lisc.org) or fax (312-360-0183) it by August 4th. Also: Several of the 2009 tours will be available this year as well through the Chicago Office of Tourism, including Albany Park, South Chicago and Bronzeville. Visit the Community Tours page of the Explore Chicago website to learn more.

To provide tours any day of the year for the first round of tours, the Chicago Community Showcase program has also worked with lead agencies in each of the five LISC-affiliated communities to create online resources at showcase.lisc-chicago.org.

Each neighborhood has an interactive map and a web-based audio slideshow for armchair tourists. The site also offers a preview of the 2010 Community Showcase tours with an interactive map and photo gallery.

And, at the very cutting edge of current technology, in May the program released the LISC Chicago Mobile Neighborhood Tours, a custom-made smart phone application that takes visitors on self-guided tours of five Chicago neighborhoods. Collectively, the five tours include more than 50 audio tracks, 45 tour stops, nearly 300 photos, hundreds of neighborhood site descriptions and dozens of links.

Introducing the program on May 26, Dorothy Coyle, the director of the Chicago Office of Tourism, noted that of all Chicago’s nicknames, her favorite is “City of Neighborhoods.” With the new generation of community tours, residents and visitors can see in detail why the real strength of the city lies in its neighborhoods.