When a municipality attempts to reindustrialize, especially without creating housing to accommodate it, it\u2019s probably lost the plot for current and potential residents, if you ask Emiliano Aguilar.<\/p>\n
No greater evidence of that is the former West Calumet Housing Complex in East Chicago, on which a spec warehouse now sits, Aguilar explained Saturday afternoon during the Industrial Heritage bus tour hosted by activist group Just Transition Northwest Indiana.<\/p>\n
What once was home to some 1,000 residents before the city shut it down because of the catastrophic lead levels in the soil was rezoned as M-1 Light Industrial land in 2020, presumably to attempt to revitalize a city decimated by big industry\u2019s continued contraction.<\/p>\n
![\"Julio](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/PTB-L-EC-TOUR-0723-02.jpg\")
Julio Ibarra, left, translates Notre Dame Professor Emiliano Aguilar’s talk for Alicia Mayo, center, while her son Salvador Mayo listens during the Just Transitions Northwest Indiana Industrial Heritage Bus tour Saturday, July 19, 2025. (Michelle L. Quinn\/for Post-Tribune)<\/p>\n
The city in 2022 put up a spec warehouse on the old Edward Valve site on 143rd Street, where Midwest Historian and assistant History Professor for Notre Dame Aguilar\u2019s grandfather worked, too. As of a few months ago, it was still advertising its availability.<\/p>\n
\u201cReindustrialization is neglect,\u201d Aguilar said to the 20 or so people who hopped on the bus. \u201cEast Chicago\u00a0is zoned\u00a075% industrial, but\u00a019%\u00a0residential\u00a0and 5%\u00a0for\u00a0small businesses.\u201d<\/p>\n
East Chicago, and really the entire Calumet Region, became the place where Chicago shoved all its heavy industry in the mid-1800s while it rebranded itself into a place of leisure, with the Illinois Central, Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana Railroads setting down tracks in 1850. When the federal government switched the Grand Calumet\u2019s flow from west to east in the 1870s, the Hammond Packing Company, which pioneered refrigeration, and myriad other heavy industries rapidly set down roots after that, Aguilar said.<\/p>\n
But industry and its need for workers far outpaced residential building \u2014 Holy Trinity Croatian Church Rev. Clement Mlinanovich at one point pleaded with the Diocese of South Bend that he had a church, but his flock was living in tents around it \u2013 and attempts to rectify it were only so successful, Aguilar said. There was Marktown, the 190-acre industrial community with all early 20th century amenities designed by Chicago architecht Howard Van Doren Shaw at the behest of Howard Mark, but through a bunch of transactions that ended with the property getting sold to a real estate company that turned around and sold properties in it to individual landlords, it lost nearly all of its glory, he said.<\/p>\n
Marktown residents endured racial criticism and staved off two more takeover attempts \u2013 when Youngstown Sheet and Tin tried to get the community rezoned for a tin mill in the 1950s and again when Indiana Gov. Edwin Whitcomb wanted to raze a third of the neighborhood for the Cline Avenue expansion \u2013 but the community, now a Historic Landmark but worse for the wear, faces a new enemy in BP, which has been buying up and razing properties from individual lanlords since 1998, Aguilar said. He doesn\u2019t hold out much hope that Marktown will survive much longer.<\/p>\n
\u201cKim Rodriguez, a third-generation resident of Marktown, has said, \u2018The community has always stood strong and fought for what was good,\u2019\u201d Aguilar said. \u201cBut with reindustrialization, I can see Marktown ending up no more than two blocks when it\u2019s all said and done. Look at what happened with the First National Bank building: It was a Historic Landmark, but Walgreens came in and demolished it anyway, and now the Walgreens is closed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile preservation looks nice,\u00a0there\u2019s\u00a0no teeth to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Any money the city received for \u201curban renewal,\u201d such as the $20 million it received in 1959 for the Block and Pennsy project and the $13.4 million U.S. Housing and Urban Development gave it to build the housing complex at West Calumet in the 1970s, was largely given to friends of various mayors, who established \u201cconcrete barriers\u201d within East Chicago, Aguilar said.<\/p>\n
And with the Anaconda Copper Plant and U.S. Steel Lead Plant having been located on or near what became the West Calumet Housing Complex and former Carrie Gosch Elementary School, if the last five mayors didn\u2019t know the extent of the contamination, they at least had to have had an idea it was there, he maintained.<\/p>\n
Akeeshea\u00a0Daniels, who became the face of the West Calumet\u00a0Housing Complex\u00a0when Mayor Anthony Copeland\u00a0vacated\u00a0it in 2016,\u00a0would\u2019ve\u00a0attended the bus tour but sent her regrets with Lisa Vallee,\u00a0organizing director with JTNWI. Going anywhere near that place\u00a0triggers her deeply, Vallee said.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe did everything she was supposed to do, and everyone still ignored her. If she weren\u2019t a Black woman, it might\u2019ve been different,\u201d Vallee said of Daniels, whose family suffered lead poisoning. \u201cIn white communities, you have to disclose lead. No one cared here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kieran Walsh, of Chicago,\u00a0grew up in a small town outside Pittsburgh.\u00a0East Chicago\u2019s story resonated\u00a0with him.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt looks like where I\u2019m from,\u201d Walsh said. \u201cIt makes me think about the impact of industry\u00a0and what happened in my town.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGreed is the same everywhere,\u201d added Daniel\u00a0Feldstin, also of Chicago.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When a municipality attempts to reindustrialize, especially without creating housing to accommodate it, it\u2019s probably lost the plot…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":83977,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,56951,33131,30214,56952,38106,56953,5386,1818,2862,4010,728,56954,56955,56956,56957,56950,56958],"class_list":{"0":"post-83976","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago","8":"tag-chicago","9":"tag-crown-point","10":"tag-east-chicago","11":"tag-gary","12":"tag-griffith","13":"tag-hammond","14":"tag-highland","15":"tag-il","16":"tag-illinois","17":"tag-indiana","18":"tag-lake-county","19":"tag-local-news","20":"tag-merrillville","21":"tag-munster","22":"tag-portage","23":"tag-porter-county","24":"tag-post-tribune","25":"tag-valparaiso"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114898553005843163","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83976\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}