Local Energy to Renew the Calumet Region

There is now a great deal of interest in renewal of the Calumet region, both in Southeast Chicago and Northwest Indiana. There are many big problems in the region, but there is also enormous energy to turn things around among the 20 people who were inter viewed for this project and many other stakeholders whose names and affiliations are summarized in Appendix A.

The key proponents of the Calumet region who were interviewed for this report share a common core goal:

Make the Calumet region a desirable place to work, live, and do business for current residents and future ones/ Enable people who live in the region to build a healthy and prosperous future.

Often what the interviewees see as key levers is different, but complimentary:

    Create a strong regional economy
  • Improve the business climate
  • Retain businesses
  • Attract new business and jobs
  • Facilitate redevelopment of brownfields sites
  • Improve internal infrastructure
  • Attract environmentally sensitive jobs
  • Create large industrial parks with many pre-existing infrastructure improvements
  • Demonstrate that ecological restoration and eco-industrial activity are complimentary
    Enhance the region's natural assets
  • Clean up and beautify rivers and lakes
  • Preserve and protect wetlands, upland habitat, greenway corridors and open space
  • Manage remaining natural resources to maintain diversity
  • Reclaim degraded areas for open space
    Allow residents a safe, healthy, and economically successful future
  • Enable equal access to environmental justice
  • Clean up contaminated sites, especially near residential areas
  • Improve education and training opportunities for children and adults and placement in local jobs
    Stop the use of the region as a waste site
  • Prevent new landfill development
  • Prevent new sources of pollution
  • Achieve rapid clean up of existing sites
    Build a Positive Self-Image and External Image
  • Change perceptions about the region both by residents and outsiders
  • Draw positive attention and resources to the region
    Build a sense of place and commitment to the Calumet region
  • Encourage regional cooperation
  • Organize residents
  • Exchange information
  • Get more people involved in improving the region
  • Enable community-based solutions guided by residents
Some people see these goals as in conflict. This is true for a few people who work on environment and a few on job creation. It is also true for some groups who confront existing authorities and others who try to work within the system. However, most see the line between these actions as much more fuzzy. A few see strong connections and mutual dependence.

Even among the small group of people interviewed and listed for this report, there is a broad range of skills and assets, including strong desire to improve the quality of life in the region, local knowledge about the region and its history, contacts and credibility, convening, coalition-building, and organizing skills, negotiations skills, community bases, research skills, advocacy skills, interns, seed money, and the technical skills needed "In the Room" to revitalize a region.

If anything is missing, it is the big bucks needed for wholesale clean up, business leadership for community renewal (especially on the Illinois side), leadership for community renewal on the part of quasi-public land owners, strong buy-in from educational institutions in education and training transformation, coordination and open information flow across projects, communication and understanding that crosses the economic, ecological, and social dimensions of the region, and trust.

As described earlier in this paper, there are many on-going efforts to bring stakeholders together to share information and strategies. More are planned for the next year. These efforts are described in Appendix A.

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