"In development work, there is no such thing as a cookie cutter," says Trinette Britt-Reid, former vice president for real estate' development, now consultant at Bethel New Life, a faith-based community development corporation (CDC) in Garfield Park on Chicago's West Side. Garfield Park is an older urban community within the Chicago Empowerment Zone, an area torn by riots in the 1960s and weakened for decades by declining population, abandoned homes and stores, poverty, crime, and drugs.

For more than 20 years, Bethel has executed a variety of community development projects: affordable housing, commercial industrial development, and employment services. It has also brought health services, daycare, and other human services to the neighborhood. Since the mid-1990s, acting with several partners in the public and private sectors, the CDC has been taking a transit-oriented development approach. Bethel is building on a neighborhood asset: an elevated train stop (or "the El," as Chicagoans call their venerable rail transit system). Bethel wants to make the El station an anchor for area revitalization efforts.

In the early 1990s the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) threatened to close the rail line that linked West Chicago to the Loop. Without the El, however, Garfield Park residents would have had a more difficult time getting to jobs downtown and throughout the city. Bethel joined the Lake Street Coalition—a group of churches and neighborhood organizations that successfully fought to keep the station at Pulaski and Lake Streets open. In 1995 CTA committed $380 million to rebuild both the Lake Street line and the Jackson Street line on the south side. Having saved the Lake Street station, Bethel and its coalition partners turned to making the most of this now-assured neighborhood asset.

With more than 2,000 people passing through each day, community leaders reasoned, the station was a natural magnet for development. Drawing on public and private resources, Bethel and its community partners are clustering supportive services, affordable housing, and places to shop and work around the El station.

"It's a slow process. It's a long process. But it's exciting," says Britt-Reid, who manages all aspects of the transit-oriented development. "You have to have patience, endurance, faith, and vision. If you can hang on to it, it works. It happens."

Restoring the "ruined houses." Bethel New Life began in 1979, when Mary Nelson and her brother David, minister at Bethel Lutheran Church in West Garfield Park, decided to interpret literally a line from the Bible's Book of Isaiah to address the disinvestment and distress in the neighborhood of their church. The line reads, "You will be known as the people who rebuilt the walls, who restored the ruined houses."

By raising $9,600 from the congregation, borrowing on their credit cards, and purchasing a nearby HUD-foreclosed, three-unit apartment building, the Nelsons and their church began the first of many physical redevelopment projects near the church. Since then, Bethel has built or rehabilitated more than 1,000 units of housing and brought more than $99 million in investments to the neighborhood. Yet, the focus of community development for Bethel is not bricks and mortar but the people of Garfield Park. Over the years the CDC has graduated 4,250 people from job training programs, placed 1,500 people in jobs, and founded a network of 25 daycare homes. It is also an important source of jobs in the area, employing more than 350 people in 2000. Today, Bethel has an operating income of more than $8 million.

Bethel has long tackled ambitious undertakings in the Garfield Park community. In 1989 St. Anne's, a century-old neighborhood hospital facility, closed. Wanting to preserve this neighborhood landmark, Bethel rehabilitated the 9.2-acre campus into the Beth-Anne Community Center. Completed in 1999, the center includes 125 one-bedroom apartments for low-income elderly, a child development center, a small business center, a professional center, and other enterprises. (See FieldWorks, September/October 1998.)

Businesses and services at the station. This spring, job trainees working with Bethel are disassembling an old brick building that was formerly a restaurant on the northwest corner of Lake and Pulaski, across from the El station. By fall, construction should begin on a state-of-the-art, energy-efficient commercial building designed by Farr and Associates. With its photovoltaic cells, recycled materials, and living rooftop garden that will be visible to riders on the El, the building is sure to become a landmark in this architecturally conscious city. The new building will house a daycare center, a medical clinic, a pharmacy, office space, and an employment and training center. Commuting parents will drop their children off at the daycare center and then get on the El by covered walkway.

Bethel's goal is "to develop at least 10 businesses with opportunities for at least 10-percent local ownership, to increase ridership on the Green Line, to create more than 100 new jobs in the area, and to contribute to building an attractive commercial area." These efforts will enhance Bethel's earlier revitalization work on Pulaski Street. In 1999 Bethel rehabilitated a commercial building on Pulaski, one block away from the El stop. That building now houses a drug store, a taxi company, and Bethel's employment center. Since 1995, Bethel has been working to assemble and broker land around the El station.

Affordable housing. With the assistance of the Center for Neighborhood Technology, a national technical assistance organization that had helped organize the Lake Street Coalition, Bethel initiated a neighborhood planning process. The neighborhood vision called for attractive housing within walking distance of the Lake Street station. A critical mass of houses is needed to turn a neighborhood around, Britt-Reid says, not a rehabilitated house here and there.

Doug Farr attended the community meetings and came up with a plan for 200 energy-efficient, affordable single-family homes. The housing will be in four clusters, each with a school or active church as a neighborhood anchor. The clusters include play areas for children, small parks, and traffic-slowing circles. Bethel Lutheran, which anchors one of the clusters, is promoting the new single-family homes to its parishioners.

Working with local alderman Ed Smith, Bethel engaged the help of the city by presenting the new housing as part of Chicago's commitment to rapid transit. By the end of 2000, 22 homes had been built. The homes were made affordable by HUD's Nehemiah Opportunity Grants; the city's New Homes for Chicago program; subsidies from the Federal Home Loan Bank's Affordable Housing Program; mortgage subsidies through the Neighborhood Lending Program, a revolving fund for upfront costs supported by a grant from Amoco; and, in some cases, the sweat equity of future owners.

For more information, contact: Marcia Turner, Director of Marketing and Public Relations, or Trinette Britt-Reid, Consultant, Real Estate Development, Bethel New Life, 4950 West Thomas, Chicago, IL 60651, (773) 473–7870, www.bethelnewlife.org.

Or see: "Transit-Oriented and Focused Area Development: Bethel New Life, Chicago, Illinois," in Smart Growth, Better Neighborhoods, Communities Leading the Way, National Neighborhood Coalition, 2000.