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New Industrial Park Opens in Chicago
Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and community and business leaders have broken
ground for Gateway Park, a 63-acre industrial park on land that is being reclaimed
from the site of an illegal dump on the Southwest Side.
The Mayor welcomed the first occupant of the park, StyleMaster, a Chicago-based
plastics manufacturer which, according to City Hall, will add approximately
400 new jobs when it completes its 1.5 million-square-foot factory and distribution
center.
Daley said the new industrial park, at 77th Street and Columbus Avenue, "is
a great example of the economic revival that has been taking place in Garfield
Ridge, Clearing, West Lawn and Ashburn over the last several years.
For more than a decade, the site was covered with thousands of tons of asphalt,
concrete, shingles and auto parts. It was the largest dumpsite in "Operation
Silver Shovel," the federal sting operation that prosecuted several public
officials for taking bribes to allow illegal dumping.
The City Department of Environment is overseeing the removal of 460,000 cubic
yards of debris ? with minority-owned firms doing 100 percent of the general
construction work.
The clean-up, financed through a $6.6 million federal loan, should be completed
by the end of the year.
"We believe the federal government should pay for the clean-up costs, but
we're not going to wait around until they decide how much they'll
pay," Daley said. "We want the work done now."
As an incentive to move to the new industrial park, the City Department of Planning
and Development is providing StyleMaster with $14 million in tax increment financing
(TIF) assistance and $13 million in low-interest loans.
StyleMaster will relocate 150 employees from its current facility in the Stockyards
industrial park and hire approximately 400 new ones. It expects to complete
the first phase of its building by the end of 2002
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