This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Community Corner

Potential Plaza Sale Presents Opportunity to Get it Right

The pending sale of The Plaza shopping center represents the best opportunity we may get in our lifetimes to rid the village of this albatross of a development

So it looks like . This opens a whole spectrum of possibilities for the site, many of them exciting but some of them potentially stomach-turning.

Among the exciting possibilities is the chance to turn the old Plaza property into a true downtown-type village center serving Evergreen Park and nearby suburbs, and the Chicago communities to the east. The possibility that makes me queasy is the likelihood that will merely be given a facelift and remain the dead weight of old-style development it has become.

But let's not let ourselves be dragged down by reality quite yet. The mere rumor that there is a pending sale of The Plaza property on the southwest corner of 95th St. and Western Ave. was enough to stir the imagination. Already, Evergreen Park residents are weighing in with ideas for the kinds of stores they would like to see come to a redeveloped Plaza: Trader Joe's, Nordstrom, ethnic restaurants, Gloria Jean's Coffee, Whole Foods, Old Navy, Gap, Kohl's, JCPenney, Bloomingdales. Most people writing on the Evergreen Park Patch seem to agree that upscale, eclectic stores are what the community needs, and it's hard to argue with that.

Find out what's happening in Evergreen Parkwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Before we get to what stores will go there, though, we need to figure out what whatever is going to go there should look like. First, I have a good idea what it should not look like. It should not look anything like the current Plaza, or any historical version of The Plaza. Gone should be the parking fields and the inward-focused retail core. Banished from our sight should be the stand-alone outlots. Erased from our minds, and the zoning code, should be the concept of a single-use site. Raze it, grind what's there off the face of the Earth and when the dust settles we will have a blank page—truly a rarity and a gift for an inner ring suburb like ours.

Now is the time—before the sale is final—to proclaim loudly that Evergreen Park does not want another auto-centric, isolated mall in the sense that we traditionally think of malls. Here we have a chance to reclaim acres of mis-developed land and re-integrate it into the fabric of the community by restoring the street grid. Granted, there are challenges because of the railroad tracks just west of the site, but at the very least we can rid the landscape of the blighted structures on the Plaza site now and turn it into something recognizable as a true civic center, with streets that intersect Western and sidewalks and businesses that face those streets, rather than the introverted, defensive, parking moat-surrounded hulk to which we've all grown accustomed. We can demand that any new development include office space and residences, so that the property isn't 100 percent dependent on retail rental income. We can voice our preference for a development that strengthens links with public transit, and serves as a true focal point for the Southwest Side of Chicago and the close-in Southwest suburbs.

Find out what's happening in Evergreen Parkwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Take a look at these links from the Congress for the New Urbanism. This first link is to a study of so-called greyfield regional malls. In the executive summary, the authors discuss redevelopment of old malls much like The Plaza. Admittedly the results have been mixed in the 10 years since these papers came out. We will take a look at some of the examples in future weeks. The second link is to a newer study of how to turn old malls into main street communities.

There's a lot of good stuff in just these two pieces from CNU, stuff that is directly relevant to The Plaza and that provides a template for taking The Plaza and turning it into something we can point to years from now—decades from now—and proudly proclaim "we did that." Let's not be revisiting how to redevelop another sad, old mall 50 years hence. The mall concept is dead. It was always doomed because the auto-centric world it was designed to serve is just a blip on history's long timeline. Let's take this chance to turn The Plaza into a regional downtown, a sustainable civic center for the region.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?

More from Evergreen Park