At the intersection of 51st and Kedzie, a 275,000-square-foot building with a large, corporate Coldwell Banker banner stares into a blocked off parking lot. Before the Kmart shut down, there was a thrift store, a buffet, and street vendors selling outside on this buzzing corner. That’s all gone. Now, even cars can’t get through the old Kmart parking lot, and the corner remains completely isolated. Kmart’s bankruptcy and the subsequent corporate real estate hogging of empty space reflects Jesus’s concerns for Gage Park as an overlooked and oversold neighborhood. 

“It’d be better to renovate that space and make it a library or even a community center,” said Jesus. “It’s something that would benefit the community because it’s so big. It’s literally an empty lot, and it’s been like that for a while. I’d rather see it be something that gives back to the community instead of being another big corporation or another big factory… I think adding a library there will help people see that we deserve better.”

In addition to economic exploitation, Gage Park faces academic and social inequities with its current library and lack of youth spaces. Gage Park youth represented 33.5 percent of the neighborhood’s total residents from 2015-2019, yet their social and emotional development is left to them to build with minimal resources. Gage Park has been historically denied community centers and public gathering spaces, such as adequate parks, community-wide youth programming, and cultural centers.

“We deserve better things than just things [that] are damaging our neighborhood,” said Jesus. He emphasized that Gage Park residents do not deserve to be exploited in heavy labor or warehouses, like Amazon’s recent neighborhood warehouse opening, just to have access to jobs. He encourages more local businesses and supporting community members to expand their own opportunities instead. 

They advocate for a community center to exist at the heart of a major intersection and commercial district. Gage Park youth are currently surrounded by several, gigantic processing centers, but not much for them to process their personal development on that scale. The under-resourced Gage Park library and corporate ownership of Kmart’s ghost hold promise for Gage Park’s youth. Until it is truly owned by the community, this corner will symbolize the community’s own intersection between disenfranchisement and the potential for its young people to belong in their own community. 

Jesus said, “Whoever has been living in Gage Park for a while just know[s] that Kmart used to be [a] spot [where] everyone would link up… When the Kmart was empty, I would go in there with my friend sometimes to just go explore too…[and] it also goes to show that we went there because there was nowhere else to go in the neighborhood.” (Jocelyn Vega)

W. 51st St. and S. Kedzie Ave.