Roseland Heights Community Association

After scouting dozens of locations throughout the U.S., the company Method, the environmentally-friendly cleaning products manufacturer, decided to locate in the Pullman Park commercial development. A project spearheaded by Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives (CNI), a local development group, Pullman Park is home to a Wal-Mart, Ross, and Planet Fitness, and has created hundreds of permanent jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in economic activity, helping to lift Chicago’s Far South Side as it recovers from years of disinvestment. In addition to the soap facility, the factory will be home to the world’s largest rooftop farm, to be built atop the building by the Brooklyn-based Gotham Green. The farm will provide fresh produce year-round.

As recently as a decade ago, Pullman was a community written off by many. The Pullman works had been long shuttered, the restoration of the Florence Hotel had failed to spark revival, and many of the iconic homes built by George Pullman for his workers were abandoned. Thousands of jobs once supplied by the steel mills and rail industry had disappeared. Yet today, all that has changed. Where others saw despair, Alderman Beale, CNI President David Doig, and local community groups saw opportunity: a place with ‘good bones’, ample land, and committed residents. Method’s factory, the first new manufacturing facility on the South Side in decades, is validation of that vision.

Good job, the area is wonderful and could use some development.