NOTABLES: Meet our roster of the area’s Gex X Leaders in Sports. PAGE 22
RESTAURANTS: Servers feel inflation’s pinch as tips shrink. PAGE 3
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Inflation and worker shortages become a drain on finances at Chicago hospitals—and could hamper progress on achieving equitable care I PAGE 13
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INVEST SOUTH/WEST REMAINS MOSTLY A VISION After three years, Mayor Lightfoot’s plan to lavish massive amounts of attention and public funds on blighted neighborhood corridors still has a lot to prove BY DANNY ECKER When developer A.J. Patton surveys the empty storefronts, vacant lots and crumbling facades lining a 3-mile stretch of Chicago Avenue between Humboldt Park and Austin, where nearly a third of residents live below the poverty line, he sees a nascent
showcase for Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s signature initiative to spur investment in blighted South and West Side neighborhoods. It starts with a proposed $27.1 million mixed-use complex with 44 apartments at Chicago and Central Park avenues, one of several projects induced—and heavily subsidized—by Invest South/
Mayor Lori Lightfoot and city planning officials last month held a ceremonial groundbreaking for a $43 million pair of affordable housing projects in Auburn Gresham, though actual construction has yet to begin.
West. Then there’s the $39 million, 60-unit apartment building with a grocery store Patton seeks to build five blocks west of there. Farther west, a prominent Austin developer plans a 20-unit condo project with a vegan restaurant on the ground floor, while other See INVEST SOUTH/WEST on Page 26
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High-octane SAFE-T rhetoric overshadows real flaws. PAGE 2
Chicago Reader names Enrique Limón as editorin-chief. PAGE 6
9/23/22 3:30 PM