Dear President Preckwinkle, Commissioner Michael Scott and Alderman Burnett,

We are writing this letter as a neighborhood of united small business and property owners to voice our strong and resolute opposition to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s (CCME) proposal to move their headquarters to 325 N. Ashland Avenue. 

Moving the CCME to the proposed Ashland location would stifle the growth of the Kinzie Industrial Corridor, which you have thoughtfully curated and empowered through your recent rezoning of the neighborhood. 

Currently, the Kinzie Industrial Corridor is a hot-bed for small businesses that are creating hundreds of jobs for Chicago residents, with more to come, and furthering the reputation of your ward as one of the most creative and pro-small-business wards in the city and nationwide. Comprised of restaurants, architecture firms, art studios, breweries, printers galleries, gyms, and schools, we are all committed to making our chosen neighborhood and the surrounding area a better place. The blocks that surround the proposed site are teeming with potential energy.  Small businesses are looking at real estate options on a daily, if not hourly, basis. 

We strongly believe that bringing the CCME to the proposed location will completely redirect the ascent of the neighborhood and see it remain a largely vacant, overlooked sector of aging warehouses and other buildings in need of repair. Simply put, our customers, guests, and clients will not come and visit a neighborhood next to the City's morgue, which would be sandwiched between the only two restaurants in the area. 

Why bring the CCME to a neighborhood that is rapidly developing when it could stay near or where it presently sits—in a medical development without a nearby developing business district.

Your ward is one of the most vibrant in the city and the country. It is under your vision that the ward has blossomed. We look to your vision now to help us stop what would be a move immeasurably harmful to the Kinzie Industrial Corridor and those of us who work, sustain, and care for it.

We understand and appreciate that we can’t choose every neighbor, but we are compelled to speak in one unified voice and state that this development feels like a step backward for a community still rebounding from the pandemic.

Thank you for your time and consideration.