When you stand at the intersection of West Belmont Avenue and North Pulaski Road in Avondale it feels like the calm before the storm. On one side of Belmont on Pulaski sits a rusty old shoe factory, on the other side is a faded old art deco building that has served as everything from a school to a warehouse.
It’s a neighborhood of coin laundries, fast food joints and scrap yards, but that will soon change. The yuppies are coming. The old Florsheim shoe factory will soon become Shoemaker Lofts and the warehouse will be Belmont Lofts (see picture). The working-class Polish and Hispanic neighborhood of Avondale will never be the same. And the locals are a bit worried, they tell us.
YoChicago had a chat with the very friendly Margaret Oledzka, who runs a Polish American video store near the intersection of Belmont and Pulaski. She tells us that she’s worried that the influx of two new loft developments will drive up rents and force many local Polish people to head for the suburbs, which could cost her a lot of customers.
Oledzka, who stocks mostly foreign films and American films dubbed over in Polish, thinks she may have to diversify to stay afloat. “Maybe we’ll be buying more American movies,” she says.
Already, Oledzka says, the average rental price for a one-bedroom has risen from the $500 – $600 range to $700 – 800 and she knows a couple of people who have left the neighborhood as a result.
On the upside, Oledzka says she’s noticed that with the spotlight on Avondale there seems to have been a slight decrease in crime in the neighborhood, which isn’t a bad area, just a bit rough around the edges.
She’s trying to stay positive, and says she may even check out the units at Shoemaker Lofts for herself and her husband.
What kind of people does she expect will start arriving to call Avondale home?
“Probably – how do you call them? Yuppies probably,” she tells us.