WHY ARE WE PAYING TO OPEN A GROCERY STORE IN THE GHETTO???
Once again.... The Lazy ass welfare Negroes are costing us $$$$$!
When Sophelia Baptiste helps open Englewood's first Starbucks Wednesday, the new barista will be thinking of her brother — a caramel macchiato fan who she said also dreamed of working at the coffee chain.
"I know he's proud of me right now," Baptiste, 30, said Tuesday as she donned her green apron to ready the store for its grand opening, three months after her 25-year-old brother was fatally shot in a nearby neighborhood.
To Baptiste, who lives in Englewood, the unveiling of Starbucks, Whole Foods and several other retailers in the new Englewood Square shopping complex at 63rd and Halsted streets is a source of considerable pride during a bloody year in one of the city's poorest communities. With 200 new jobs, workforce training programs and an image boost from the upscale retailers, Englewood residents have high hopes the neighborhood is at a turning point.
"We are up for the challenge," Baptiste said. "We are going to show a lot of people with how busy we will be."
Chicago is often cast as two cities, one wealthy and one poverty-stricken, but some say there also are two Englewoods — one whose rampant gun violence leaves mothers crying in front of news cameras and one with enough disposable income to buy $4.50 pumpkin spice lattes.
Englewood Square, a $20 million project financed with a combination of city land subsidies, crowdfunding and federal tax credits, aims to show that people in the community desire and deserve high-quality goods and services, said Leon Walker, managing partner of DL3 Realty, the developer of the shopping complex. By making Englewood a more desirable place to live, the hope is to attract more working class families and more businesses.
"We hope that it's the rock in the pond that creates the ripple effect," said Walker, who remembers when the intersection was the South Side's commercial hub. The shopping center, which sits on 5.5 acres across the street from the new Kennedy-King College campus, has 90 percent of its 50,000 square feet of retail space leased to tenants including Villa Shoes, Oak Street Health Center and, soon, Chipotle.
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