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Originally Posted by Kumdogmillionaire
I don't think that was why he linked that specific page... Read the comments
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The comments were interesting and sad to me for numerous reasons. On one hand, I understand that culture and whatever needs to be preserved and I totally agree with that but at the same time if all you are doing is going on Facebook and complaining, and nothing else then it's weird. Form community groups to try and set some standards and who knows whatever else. Maybe it's a lost cause, but it's not like nobody's ever done this even in Chicago. Also, Joe (who may be LVDW) is not a big entity - some people were complaining about him coming in and doing this stuff. He's a small player and although they'd like to believe it, there's not a ton of stuff happening in LV if you look at it from a whole as far as I can see. There are pockets here and there, but LV is a big community - still 70K to 80K people. Someone rehabbing a few buildings and making them market rent isn't going to magically change the community. You need way, way, way more developers for this to happen as well as larger buildings too, but not just that. You need people to start opening up businesses outside of that culture all over the place.
Also, some people are very much against segregation (for good reason obviously) and will give the city crap for it, yet the minute someone else comes into their neighborhood they seem shun it. I can understand not wanting to take away culture and agree, but if you are worried that even 50 people moving into your neighborhood is going to magically take away the culture of a very, very cultural area of 70K to 80K people then you're either stupid or crazy. In my opinion, if you are against this you have to take a ground somewhere in the middle. You can't be against segregation and then take action to further segregation - it's contradictory.
At the same time, Joe here has done a service to small areas of the community by doing things like saving that one building from being torn down. It turned out to be a great renovation and a beautiful building. Why would anybody want an empty lot? That is completely beyond me. The renovations look nice and yeah maybe the eastern parts of LV may see this stuff happening due to being next to Pilsen, but it's such a big area that anybody who is thinking gentrification is about to come to some big area around 26th and Pulaski is quite insane to be honest.
I am on both sides of the fence here, but there's a lot better ways to preserve a neighborhood's culture than merely complaining on Facebook but at the same time being able to have a little bit more diversity than is currently there.