RAHM CUTS RIBBON ON ENGLEWOOD ‘CATALYTIC CONVERTER’

Mayor Rahm Emanuel cut the ribbon Thursday on a $28 million project he called the “catalytic converter” driving continued rebirth of Chicago’s impoverished-but-rebounding Englewood community.

The city’s fleet maintenance facility — located for years on prime riverfront land in the North Branch Industrial corridor — has reopened on a 12.5-acre site at 210 W. 69th St. that once housed Kennedy-King College.

There, snowplows, streetsweepers, police cars and fire trucks will be repaired and maintained by roughly 300 employees moving from the North Side.

The influx of employees not only will add activity and security to a long-challenged community but also drive new restaurants and retail to a neighborhood that already has a new Whole Foods, a new Starbucks and Chipotle and will soon have a new state-of-theart high school to replace several shuttered high schools.

“All jobs that didn’t exist . . . today, exist in Englewood. And each one has its own ripple effect,” Emanuel said.

“Which is why they’re now calling the alderman saying, ‘How do I put a housing project up there? . . . How do I get a new shop?’ And then, it has its own kind of catalytic converter and starts adding up on its own. But it needs the government to give it a push and a shove.”

Ald. Roderick Sawyer (6th), whose ward includes the project, acknowledged the fleet facility will merely “relocate” jobs from the North Side to the South Side.

“Quite honestly, it was roundly criticized. A lot of people said it was just moving one problem to another area that was challenged. I said just the opposite . . . . These are the cornerstones that help us build our neighborhood,” Sawyer said.