BLACK TO GREEN, WITH A FIGHT IN BETWEEN

摘要

Almost seven years ago, Chicago's Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO) and other grassroots activists succeeded in getting the Fisk and Crawford coal-fired power plants in its predominantiy Latinx neighborhood of Little Village closed down for good. LVEJO envisioned a new future for the 70-acre site: urban agriculture and green jobs training. Crawford's current owner, Hilco Redevelopment Partners, however, has been approved to demolish the Crawford power plant and install an industrial truck shipping hub, slated to be one of the largest warehouses in the city. LVEJO's leaders fear that another industrial use (in a neighborhood filled with them) will fill the air with more noxious diesel fumes as hundreds of trucks service the hub daily. Preservation Chicago has taken up LVEJO's cause, placing the early 20th-century power plants on its 2014 Most Endangered List and advocating for their adaptive reuse. The Crawford power plant was designed by Graham, Anderson, Probst, and White (the successor firm to D. H. Burnham and Company), the Fisk plant by Shepley, Rutan, and Coolidge, successors to H. H. Richardson. Crawford was "the most powerful plant of its age" and a monumental feat of technical engineering, says Ward Miller, Preservation Chicago's executive director. Kim Wasserman-Nieto, the executive director of LVEJO, says the preservation of these buildings goes "hand in hand" with the organization's mission.