An Eastern European neighborhood since the 1800s and a predominately Mexican area since the 1960s, Pilsen has been a port of entry for immigrants for most of its history. But the area’s new development is bringing more expensive realty to this near South Side hub of culture for the first time. Several factors, including tax increment financing (TIF) districts, the demise of some nearby Chicago industry, and the rise of the “Chicago Arts District” in east Pilsen, are also contributing to the area’s growth.

“There’s a unique character to Pilsen,” said Ryan Kelsey, director of resource development at the Resurrection Project, a nonprofit organization that provides affordable housing and resources to residents in Pilsen, Little Village and the Back of the Yards neighborhoods.

Kelsey said Pilsen is a popular choice among college students even if they are not from Chicago, particularly because of its unique personality.

“I think we only see maybe three franchise restaurants in all of Pilsen,” said Kelsey. “Everything else is pretty much a mom and pop family offering. It really gives you a sense of, ‘Wow, this is a neighborhood with character.’ And it is only three El stops from the Loop.”

According to Nacho Gonzalez, assistant director of UIC’s Neighborhoods Initiative, proximity to the Loop is a big factor in which neighborhoods become gentrified.

Other major factors include zoning laws, aldermen’s actions, property taxes and the use of old industrial spaces – as old factories are often turned into upscale residential lofts. In Pilsen, another major factor is UIC’s expansion.

Gonzalez said that Pilsen became predominately Mexican after UIC built its campus around Roosevelt Road and Halsted Street, a previously Mexican neighborhood, in the 1960s. Italian neighborhoods were also displaced by UIC. More recently, UIC expanded even farther south to 16th and Halsted streets.

“It brought a lot of people to the area,” said Frank Cappocia, the owner of Pilsen Realty, about the UIC south campus expansion. “It also gave the area residents something to do. There’s places to eat over there now, places to go. It’s not neglected any more as it was. It’s affected the area quite a bit.”

Pilsen is also one of Chicago’s most active art hubs. The neighborhood is home to the nation’s largest Latino arts institution, the National Museum of Mexican Art, according to the museum’s Web site. The neighborhood is peppered with small independent art galleries, and on Halsted Street just south of UIC’s campus sits the Chicago Arts District.

The art development on Halsted Street was created by the Podmajersky family, a third-generation Pilsen family that began to develop East Pilsen as an area for artists to live and work in the early 1960s, according to the Chicago Arts District’s Web site. The area is now home to “art walks” the second Friday of each month.

“Mr. Podmajersky took a bet. He really invested in [East Pilsen] when a lot of people thought it was just going to crumble,” said Kelsey. He said Podmajersky began cultivating the neighborhood during the expansion of the Dan Ryan Expressway that runs right over East Pilsen.

“[Podmajersky] wanted to develop this into the art district, like the SoHo of Chicago,” said Kelsey. “I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I think the important thing is that there’s an opportunity for a balance and a mix there, because people that are in the arts district will come into neighborhoods like this and will go to the local businesses.”

Kelsey argues that gentrification is not as black and white as some characterize it.

“It’s very easy to polarize the gentrification issue; it’s a good issue, it’s a bad issue,” he said. “In the long run, property values have to increase. If property values don’t increase, the neighborhood starts to fall into decay.”

The key to healthy development, advocates say, is using policies and subsidies to help existing residents stay in their homes even as property values — and, along with them, property taxes — rise. For example, the Resurrection Project works to provide affordable housing for Pilsen residents with buildings like the recently completed Casa Morelos, which features affordable housing at a variety of income ranges as well as market rate housing.

Maria Torres, a community organizer for the Pilsen Alliance community group, which has organized against gentrification in the past, said that development can hurt residents who can’t afford to pay higher property taxes.

“Once they do development it starts raising the value of homes, it starts raising property taxes,” she said. “It’s making your home worth more, but you’re pushing out those folks that were there before, because their income level is staying the same.”

Torres also said that TIF funding plays a major role in Pilsen’s gentrification. As condominiums are built, she said, property taxes rise. New condominiums generate additional property tax for the TIF, which are often then reinvested in bringing more development to the area.

“Instead of [property tax money] going back to the schools, libraries and parks, it goes into a special account (the TIF),” she said. “And they use that money to lend to developers. There’s no accountability.”

Abigail Carbajal, a Pilsen resident for 35 years, said she’s seen property taxes rise dramatically.

“It’s affected us a lot,” said Carbajal. “The taxes have gone up a lot. Many of the people I know [have left].” Carbajal also said that violence has decreased since the neighborhood began to develop.

Chicago’s industrial past also plays a large role in gentrification, especially for once industrial neighborhoods like Pilsen, according to Gonzalez.

“What Chicago is stuck in is that it lost all its manufacturing,” said Gonzalez. “So it’s got to raise property taxes in order to keep the streets paved and pick up garbage. The easy way out is just to abandon the factories and make lofts, so it’s a constant fight between the developers and the manufacturing districts.”

Gonzalez said that Pilsen is at higher risk for gentrification because developers may be able to make huge condominium complexes out of abandoned factories, thus changing the face of the neighborhood much faster than single house-by-house gentrification.

“I’ve interviewed factory owners, and when developers want to come in and take over their factory, they start harassing them,” said Gonzalez. Gonzalez charged that developers pay off city officials to persuade them to harass building owners whose property they want to buy, including with fines for often minor building violations.

“So it [becomes] easier for them to just sell and move out to the suburbs,” Gonzalez said.

Changes in zoning laws to allow residential development in a previously industrial zone may be introduced by an alderman. However, to get a zoning amendment passed, it must be approved by the mayor, the city council and the Chicago Committee on Zoning, according to Nicole Welhausen, a legislative aide to the committee.

“What’s nasty about gentrification is that it displaces people,” said Gonzalez. “But gentrification is really a complex thing. There are different angles to look at it from, and many times when people study gentrification they just look at one angle.”

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The Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA) investigates complaints filed against officers. Based on the IPRA’s findings, the department may call for disciplinary action against an officer. But calls to fire or suspend an officer are reviewed by the Chicago Police Board, which often reduces or overturns the punishment. Many citizens and advocates say the process is both discriminatory and slow-moving as it channels citizens’ complaints through a time-consuming and often confusing bureaucracy.

The police board is made up of civilians appointed by Mayor Richard Daley, with the City Council’s consent. The mayor also appointed the IPRA’s chief administrator.

According to a report by the Chicago Justice Project, a local nonprofit that aims to increase transparency in the criminal justice system, complaints filed against Chicago police officers between January 1999 and December 2008 took an average of 358 days to complete.

The report, released in 2009 and entitled “Chicago Police Board: A Ten-Year Analysis,” stated that while the minimum time for a decision regarding an officer’s alleged misconduct was 99 days, other cases have taken more than five years to complete.

Pamela Hunt, a Chicago resident, filed an assault complaint against a Chicago police officer in 2007. At a Chicago police board meeting held Feb. 18, Hunt was still looking for answers to her unresolved complaint.

She told police board members she was assaulted outside a Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS) organizational meeting, an initiative started in 1992 by the Chicago Police Department to involve community members in fighting crime.

Hunt said she is generally very supportive of police and involved in community policing efforts. But the assault “changed my life forever,” she said.

Hunt told the board she got a letter in 2009 saying her complaint was not sustained due to lack of evidence. She asked why it took a full two years to process her complaint.

“That was unsatisfactory to me,” she said. She was particularly shocked at the finding because she said witnesses, including a police officer, were present during the alleged assault.

Hunt filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking the IPRA report on her complaint, but was told she would be charged a $40 fee for a copy.

“It seems to me that is almost extortion,” Hunt said. “I initiated the complaint, now I have to pay to get a report. My concern is a lot of police brutality occurs in working class and moderate income areas, and what if you cannot afford to pay for that report?”

“Do you see that could be discriminatory?” she asked the board.

Other citizens at the meeting also charged both the Chicago Police Department and the Chicago Police Board with racism.

Robert Moore said he attended the meeting to push for tougher punishment of police officers who assaulted a friend’s 11-year-old granddaughter in 2001. Moore said the child, who is black, was attacked by three white police officers in her neighborhood. He accused the board of racism.

“If it was a white girl and black officers, they would have gotten fired,” Moore said. Moore said the officers received a 15-day suspension after the incident, but were later reimbursed for their time off. He said he wants to see the officers fired.

Tracy Siska, executive director of the Chicago Justice Project, said lack of accountability has long characterized the Chicago Police Board. The center’s 2009 study found that nearly two-thirds of the time, the Chicago Police Board did not follow the police superintendent’s recommendations to fire police officers, but instead allowed them to keep their jobs.

According to the Chicago Justice Center, police board members were paid between $15,00 and $25,000 in 2008 to administer the monthly meetings, and between 1999 and 2009 several board members did not show up to vote on nearly 30 percent of the board’s decisions.

Siska said that even though the police board is racially diverse, it isn’t economically diverse. “They’re all rich,” he said.

He also said the board members are not impartial, and pointed out that board member Patricia Bobb is a lawyer who defends Chicago police officers.

This perceived lack of accountability often equates to a lack of confidence in the system for citizens like Hunt.

“I’m concerned that I have no other recourse but to accept not sustained,” Hunt said of the ruling on her complaint. “[I’m] always looking over my shoulder… always having to trust that this officer won’t do it again.”