East Chicago invests heavily in parks, roads, downtowns
East Chicago is a city with a long industrial history that is investing heavily in its two downtowns, its parks, its neighborhoods and its residents.
Marino Solorio is the city’s parks director and interim planning director. The city’s proximity to Chicago, just minutes away, is a huge draw.
I’m excited about the trajectory, and I’m excited about the potential, and I’m excited about the city laying out what it needs to be ready for that.”
“This proximity to Chicago and that market makes East Chicago a very strategic location for industry,” with companies crossing the state line to operate in Indiana, he said.
“Taxes have really been one big thing that has allowed a lot of new investment,” he said.
But land is the true draw.
“We are pretty much an industrial city with remnants of the industrial revolution,” Solorio said. “A lot of land that used to be zoned and used as industrial is really primed for the picking at this point.”
Automation and other forces that have affected the nation have had an impact in East Chicago.
The city has seen a decline in employment in those industries since the city was founded in 1893. Population has declined, too, but seems to be stabilizing now, Solorio said.
Solorio was city planner before he was named parks director.
“The city is now open for business,” he said. “Brownfields are being redeveloped in the city.”
Industrial history
East Chicago was founded in 1893, the year Chicago held the World’s Columbian Exposition to celebrate 400 years — 401, technically; the event was delayed a year — since Christopher Columbus opened the Americas to European exploration and settlement.
Back then, steel and the railroads were king in East Chicago. A large rail yard separated the city, with the eastern half known as Indiana Harbor, or “the Harbor,” as many former residents fondly refer to their childhood home. The divided city was known as the Twin Cities, complete with separate downtowns.
With heavy industry waning, light industry is moving in.
“When I used to be the city planner, we kind of strategically looked at all the properties that are brownfields,” Solorio said. “We’ve had good success stories on getting them reestablished and reinvested in.
“We have land that is zoned accordingly for a lot of these light industrial facilities that are looking to move onto a better tax climate.”
Chris Salatas, president and CEO of the Lake County Economic Alliance, knows a thing or two about those brownfields from his time working in U.S. Sen. Todd Young’s office a few years ago.
“The Environmental Protection Agency is stepping up in the city and cleaning up some of those Superfund sites, so that’s a big start,” Salatas said.
Some developers are remediating sites on their own.
“We just got off the phone five minutes ago with a small family-owned business that had purchased a warehouse in East Chicago, and they did some remediation themselves,” he said. “There’s definitely an ongoing process of the market looking at the properties that are well within their price range and the remediation being affordable on top of the property itself.”
But sometimes the cost is prohibitive.
“And then you have the government stepping in on some of the larger properties that may be less affordable for businesses to remediate,” Salatas said.
The site of a former lead plant is one of those problematic areas. Pollution from that plant over the decades led to the closing of Carrie Gosch Elementary School and construction of a new building, as well as cleaning up nearby residential properties.
“I got to experience that firsthand when Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson visited East Chicago,” Salatas said, as well as several EPA meetings focused on the situation. “Some of the stories coming out of that area as far as the effects on the citizens were very heart-wrenching.”
The process is much more difficult when residential properties are involved in remediation.
“Their kids are playing outside in the yards, digging and kicking up dirt, unknowingly picking up those contaminants,” Salatas said. “It is a lot easier when you’re dealing with an industrial property. If you need a parking lot, you can put a parking lot over it, and it becomes a lot more difficult to disturb those contaminants because you’ve got, you know, a nice sheet of asphalt over it.”
Curb appeal
One of East Chicago’s selling points is similar to those of Hammond and Gary.
“I would say there’s probably a little more industrial properties available in East Chicago than some of its neighboring communities,” Salatas said. “That’s not to say that Hammond and Gary do not have their industrial sites. There’s certainly plenty of interest in those locations as well,” he said.
Salatas sees warehousing and distribution facilities as a major growth area in Northwest Indiana, with particular interest in East Chicago because of its proximity to Chicago and the heavy transportation network.
Heather Ennis, president and CEO of the Northwest Indiana Forum, agrees.
“As we’re talking with developers and brokers across the Region, cargo continues to come up as an opportunity,” she said.
Ennis is optimistic about the city’s future.
“They’ve done some really interesting things over the last few years and have cleaned up a lot of things,” she said. “We’re seeing more people excited about investing in East Chicago.”
Powers Health is one of those investors. In 2022, the former Community Healthcare System invested $2.7 millionin St. Catherine Hospital. The renovation included a 36-bed intermediate care unit and updated emergency department.
The city also has invested in quality of place.
“They’ve done some good things as far as housing and driving some peacemaking and economic change in the downtowns,” she said. “It’s fun to see the change that’s happening there.”
It helps that the crime rate has fallen dramatically since 2021 — down 34%, according to City-Data.com
“I think it has helped that crime has been down for 13 years in a row, so the stigma that East Chicago is a crime-ridden city is really kind of dissipating,” Solorio said.
The city has been investing in public safety, said Mayor Anthony Copeland in his annual State of the City address earlier in 2024.
“Between 2012 and 2023, East Chicago police have logged major crime reductions,” he said in a statement. “Last year, overall crime dropped by 3.18 %, and year-over-year homicides were reduced by 50 percent. Thanks to staff and crime-fighting strategies, four of the five homicide cases were solved, well above the national rate for murders.”
East Chicago hired a dozen new officers and doubled the staff of working K-9s in 2023. The department also implemented a paid internship program for college students focusing on criminal justice to work part time in the city jail.
“Businesses nowadays don’t just look at the piece of property where they’re going to move; they look at the community that they’re moving into,” he said.
That sentiment received some criticism from residents who thought that investing in parks and “dilapidated downtowns” is a waste of money, Solorio said.
“The city took on the developer role in investing in these places where normally the market wouldn’t necessarily point that direction,” Solorio said.
He said market studies most likely would say investing in the two downtowns is a waste of money. But city planners are optimistic that their efforts will pay off.
“These investments, which are millions and millions of dollars in roads and sidewalks and facade programs and park innovations and facility renovations, signage, sculptures, just those different things have added a lot,” he said. “We’ve kind of become the catalyst to begin to change the appearance and really the marketability of the city.”
Companies interested in moving to the city want employees to have a good place to live.
“Now when businesses come, they say, ‘OK, there are places to eat, there are nice parts where the workers can gravitate towards or want to live close to home,’” Solorio said. “They’re looking at all these things, and they’re seeing that East Chicago is appealing.”
Infrastructure improvements
The city has invested $8 million in its parks over four years. That wasn’t an easy sell.
“When I came in (as parks director), the parks were in complete disarray,” Solorio said. “The playground equipment was obsolete, playing fields and shelters were in complete disarray. It was just a reimagining.”
The city had won $300,000 from a lawsuit and wanted to do something with it in the parks.
“Back then, the parks were used by hoodlums, by drug dealers. It was very rare that families would be showing up. I mean, it was just it was horrible,” Solorio said, “so I took it upon myself to tell the mayor $300,000 is not going to do what you need in these parks.”
“The locations were good; the bones of it were good; it’s just that they really needed a lot of help,” he said.
That $300,000 turned into a $1 million
“We focused our attention to the big parks where the most people were visiting,” Solorio said. “We redid trails, we painted the signs to give the parks identity, we added shelters. You had new playground equipment. We put in fitness equipment in the major parks.”
Spending that much money on parks came with criticism, especially during the first town hall meeting to discuss the plan. Others thought the money should be spent on roads and infrastructure.
“We were getting a lot of flak,” Solorio said. “The argument we kept making was this is an investment to the future to the neighborhoods’ real estate values. It’s something that is going to affect you immediately. They’re just naysayers.”
But after the first new playground was inaugurated, residents liked what they saw and wanted the same attention to their own neighborhood park.
“I think participation, visitor rates, have shot up,” he said. “I don’t think that 1,000% would be even close to what we get now.”
By the second round of town hall meetings, the mentality changed. People saw the benefits.
“They saw that crime was going down,” Solorio said. “They saw their real estate values were going up, that the kids were having a space to be able to safely recreate and do things. The adults were able to go on trails and bike and walk. This was unheard of.”
The investment paid off.
“Outside of streets, I believe that that was one of the most important investments that the mayor could have made in this city to really make a difference,” Solorio said.
Roads are improving, too.
“If you ask neighboring cities and neighboring residents … they’re always going to ask ‘Why are East Chicago roads this good?’” Solorio said. “People that have visited the city will tell you the city is always under construction,” Solorio said. “It’s putting pressure on neighboring cities to raise their game.”
East Chicago is digging deep during road construction.
“On our end, we’re not just putting makeup on a pig,” he said. “If a road needs full infrastructure improvement, the city is taking the tedious task of going down all the way to the bottom, redoing all the infrastructure, so it is ready for the next 30 years.”
The city uses Redevelopment Commission funds, Ameristar Casino tax revenue and Community Crossing grants to pay for this road work.
The city is also replacing lead water lines in neighborhoods.
Housing issue
Geographically, the city is a small town, about 14 square miles, and 70 percent of it is industrial. That leaves just 30 percent for everything else, including commercial and parks as well as residential. The city is landlocked, so new residential developments are infill.
“The majority of the housing stock here is at least 80 to 100 years old,” Solorio said.
People either love the historic homes or want to tear them down and put up new ones, he said.
“The city got really aggressive and is demolishing all these vacant properties, so that opens up now the real estate markets to be able to build newer homes,” he said.
People’s tastes have changed over the decades. Now they want more than one bathroom along with a two-car garage. That means bigger lots than when the city was platted.
Vacant blocks are being redeveloped with a more 21st century feel. At the same time the city is protecting existing neighborhood’s identity to make sure they don’t lose their authenticity.
Lakeshore Manor is a new $51 million development that offers 206 units for residents 62 and older. The two four-story buildings already have a waitlist.
The development, which is on the corner of 136th and Main streets, is a replacement for the demolished John B. Nicosia senior building.
“Lakeshore Manor is a critical piece of the redevelopment landscape in East Chicago, and we are proud to have partnered on this important housing project for seniors in the community,” said Brian Shelbourne, vice president of originations at Merchants Capital, at the time.
Lasting change
Along with the South Shore Line’s double-track and West Lake Corridor projects, transit development districts are being established around train stations. These districts act like tax increment financing districts but with the incremental increase in income taxes within the district also going toward infrastructure and related improvements.
Ennis said East Chicago’s new transit development district could be transformational.
“It’s an evolving city with static leadership. We’ve seen the mayor be very engaged with economic development and trying to attract industry,” she said. “I think the opportunities around double tracking and what that means and the economic development around the transit development districts, again with continued placemaking and the revitalization that you’ve seen in housing, it’s all added to the positive story that we’re seeing around East Chicago.”
She hopes those improvements will lead to better quality of life.
“We’re hopeful that we can, through these opportunities, continue to drive some change to help bring more of the community members to higher-paying jobs,” she said.
Through its Northwest Indiana Works projects, including one for East Chicago, the Center of Workforce Innovation plans to help employers and residents alike by addressing barriers to employment through public-private partnerships.
That includes addressing issues like housing, wellness, job skills, child care and other needs.
NWI Works identified 58 percent of East Chicago’s population as being in “significant distress” as measured by poverty, median income and labor force participation. Some 40 percent are below the poverty line, and 60 percent have no education beyond high school.
“It is clear that many residents are not prepared for and/or lack access to better-paying jobs within the Region,” the NWI Works report on East Chicago said.
The Foundations of East Chicago, set up with revenue from Ameristar Casino since its opening 27 years ago, supports nonprofits and grants scholarships.
Board of Directors President George Weems said the foundation’s work has helped keep life in the city from getting worse.
“We’ve maintained the people’s quality of life, so, they won’t go any lower than what they already are, and we improve in some areas,” he said.
Since its inception, the foundation has invested $80 million into the community, including $20 million in scholarships. Some of the scholarships go to adults, with parents and their children both receiving scholarships in some cases, Executive Director Rosa Peñ
Among the challenges is getting scholarship recipients to return to East Chicago after they’ve completed their education. The mix of jobs in East Chicago might be a factor, with such a heavy emphasis on industry, but the proximity to Chicago makes for a short commute, Weems said.
Increasing casino competition could impact revenue for the foundation, which collects 1.625 percent of Ameristar’s monthly gaming revenue through a local development agreement approved when the casino began operating. But the foundation has enough money set aside to continue operating another 20 years or more even if the casino eventually closes.
Solorio is optimistic about the city’s future.
“I think the city is heading in a trajectory of more affluency,” he said.
Solorio predicts businesses booming, the city becoming more pedestrian and biker friendly.
“The city is a melting pot; I don’t think that’s ever going to change,” he said. “The city’s never going to lose its identity in terms of being a melting pot of different cultures, different identities, things like that.”
He said he thinks of the city as the diamond in the rough just realizing its potential. He gives it 10 years to become “the gem where people strive to want to go and want to live.”
“I’m excited about the trajectory, and I’m excited about the potential, and I’m excited about the city laying out what it needs to be ready for that,” Solorio said.
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