I was locked into a less than ideal housing situation - years of a revolving door of roommates amidst rumors that my entire block was for sale for condo development. The rent was cheap, but a month-to-month rent policy was thrown into the mix and I knew it was time to jump ship before it sank. The Ukrainian Village is being grossly overdeveloped and in a few years will be just another Lincoln Park spinoff. In the four years I lived there, it slowly started losing its charm as ugly steel and glass behemoths started popping up everywhere.
Onto greener pastures.
Onto a neighborhood of people who work for their money, relish their community, and coexist in relative peace.
As I write this, Hotel Renard is a Pilsen storefront littered by trash and the leftovers of businesses past. In the coming months, I am moving in with two or three roommates to clean it up, rehab it entirely, and run our respective projects. I expect splinters, papercuts, unexpected wildlife, sweat, maybe a couple of parties. We expect it to be a constant hub of activity from the print shop in the basement to the gallery space in the front to the vegetable garden on the patio. All will be documented here.
We are artists, writers, builders, entrepreneurs, designers and laborers with a common goal - a live/work space that we can be proud of years from now in the event that Pilsen gets eaten up by mindless overdevelopment, too. Only we're going to do it right.
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