CUED

A Report of The City of Chicago Strategic Neighborhood Action Program

Based on the City's written materials on the SNAP CUED identified the following three goals of the program:

1. to develop a system for coordinating city departments' activities to accomplish visible public improvement in a targeted area of the city;
2. to attract private investment to the targeted area for both housing, and business development;
3. to build working relationships among city departments and local community-based organizations to improve targeted areas.

CUED used these goals to design its work plan for the evaluation. This report summarizes the results of our SNAP evaluation work over the past year. It is meant to assist the City in its continuing evaluation of the SNAP program. In order to do this, we are providing the City with the following information.

Part One: A comparison of the City of Chicago SNAP to three case studies of programs in other cities. CUED did background research to identify programs in other cities similar to SNAP. CUED identified three other programs and did research and telephone interviews with officials in these cities to determine the effectiveness and outcomes of these similar programs and what could be learned to improve the SNAP in Chicago.

Part Two: An assessment of the internal process the City has developed to implement the SNAP program. In this section the internal SNAP process is described. CUED staff observed SNAP meetings and interviewed City staff involved in the SNAP to determine how well the process was working and make suggestions on ways it can be improved. The community groups that are the designated SNAP developers were also interviewed on their opinion and suggestions related to the implementation of the SNAP by City departments. The actions that the City has taken as part of the SNAP are outlined.

Part Three: Baseline profiles of the first two selected SNAP areas. This section includes a baseline profile for two SNAP areas. One of the SNAP areas is on the Near West Side with the boundaries of Damen (east) to Western, Van Buren (south) to Madison (north). The other is on the Southeast Side, an area bounded by 87th Street, Illinois Central Railroad, 90th Street, Mackinaw, 92nd Street, South Chicago Avenue and Muskegon Street. This section includes information on the demographics of each area, a description of businesses and jobs in the area, housing information, and a series of indicators to show investment and disinvestment. This profile was developed to be used as benchmark to document the conditions of these two selected areas before the SNAP. Once the SNAP activities are completed, it would be useful to collect and examine this same information to see if there are any improvements and investments on the two areas which can be described as spin-offs or impacts of the SNAP.

Part Four: A summary of interviews with community residents, businesses, and key actors and investors. CUED staff randomly selected residents and businesses located on the blocks where SNAP improvements are completed or planned. Key actors and investors were identified and also interviewed. This section discusses the SNAP in relation to people's perceptions of the area and their views on present and future investments in the two areas.

Part Five: Visual documentation of the two area conditions before major SNAP projects were implemented. A video was taken of the two SNAP areas. Commercial Avenue in the Southeast SNAP was documented with slides. This pre-SNAP visual documentation is meant to be used as a benchmark and compared to another videotape of the two areas which should be done once the SNAP improvements have been completed to see if other non-SNAP improvements are made in the area.

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UIC-Center for Urban Economic Development