Chicago, Housing, and Community Development
Early Work
Philip Klutznick's early work as a lawyer overseeing slum clearance in Omaha and as a wartime federal housing official sparked a lifelong dedication to urban economic development as a civic, political and commercial issue. As regional director of the National Housing Agency, Klutznick coordinated housing affairs for defense workers in the Midwest, ensuring that local and federal government and private enterprise worked to meet the lodging and transportation needs of workers at the new military production plants established on the edge of Chicago. His visits attracted media attention and, along with his 1940 election as head of B'nai B'rith's District 6, began to establish Klutznick as a public figure in the Chicago region.
Klutznick's federal service introduced him to Ferd Kramer, who would remain both an ally and a rival in private and civic ventures over the following decades. In 1942, Klutznick was sent to Chicago to coordinate a regional defense housing program that would be a model for other enterprises nationwide. This project first brought him into contact with banker Carroll Sweet, Jr. and builder Nathan Manilow, with whom he joined after the war to form Chicago-based American Community Builders. (ACB)
Real Estate Development and Public Policy
With Klutznick as President, ACB built the visionary community of Park Forest, thirty miles south of Chicago. Park Forest was the nation's first "G.I. town," a privately-funded, planned development intended to provide a complete community for returning soldiers and their growing families. Park Forest has been widely studied and both noted and critiqued for its role in the increased suburbanization of the United States. Klutznick believed that the demographic, political and economic realities of the post-war years created a need for affordable and thoughtfully developed family housing outside of urban centers, just as the conditions of later decades called for public and private groups to join forces for urban redevelopment.
As his success as a developer of suburban housing and shopping centers grew, Klutznick remained convinced that issues of housing and economic development required coordinated applications of public policy and private enterprise. He was named vice-chair of the Illinois Housing Authority in 1940s and worked internationally on a survey of Brazilian housing issues for the Johnson administration. Klutznick served as both an advisor and investor in Israeli development, most notably in the planning and building of the port city of Ashdod. He was a prominent member of the Committee for Economic Development (CED), a cooperative group of academics and business leaders focused on questions of public policy, and served as head of its research and policy committee in the 1960s. In 1965, he wrote to President Lyndon Johnson:
By earlier governmental experience and through private business activity I have maintained a long-term interest in the complex problems of urban life and especially the physical inadequacies present and potential.
The historic civil rights legislation in your administration cannot be fully realized without the success of the economic opportunity effort.
Your farsighted vision in urging the adoption of anti-poverty measures has laid the foundation for the greatest and most equitable society of man since the birth of civilization.
Urban Development
In the early 1970s, Klutznick joined with other Chicago business and civic leaders in an effort to rejuvenate the city's economically depressed and underdeveloped South Loop. The group incorporated as Chicago 21, a limited dividend development corporation, in 1974, and named Klutznick as head of its executive committee.
Klutznick and the other Chicago 21 leaders conceived of a South Loop "New Town," which would attract an economically and racially diverse population, dominated by middle class families, by providing transportation, schools, shopping and other amenities along with affordable and desirable center-city housing. Klutznick in particular advocated the solicitation of support from all levels of government, ranging from federal housing grants to promises of school and utility construction from the city. He believed that city government recognition in particular was essential to any project success. In a 1973 letter to Mayor Richard J. Daley, he wrote:
I am convinced that the whole of the commercial and economic rental housing for downtown can be provided through official encouragement and the utilization of city rights and powers under the new State Constitution.
It has been my view that the business interests of Chicago should collaborate in the same manner as the Renaissance Center in Detroit. I believe that our local leaders are prepared to do so, but that what they need, above all, is a signal from your administration.
Challenges
The South Loop project was challenged by leaders of the poor and working-class neighborhoods in and around the area proposed for redevelopment. Many feared that city resources would be diverted from their communities to meet the demands of new residents, and that their own members would be excluded from the benefits the new building would bring to the area. Others criticized the plans on aesthetic and commercial grounds, arguing that the proposed community both transplanted suburban-style development to the city and created and urban density that would not appeal to middle-class families.
Construction on the first phase of the Dearborn Park community began in 1977. While the development did not display the full array of diversity and commercial and civic vitality for which Klutznick had advocated and hoped, it did spur continued development and revitalization of Chicago's South Loop.
The South Loop project was challenged by leaders of the poor and working-class neighborhoods in and around the area proposed for redevelopment. Many feared that city resources would be diverted from their communities to meet the demands of new residents, and that their own members would be excluded from the benefits the new building would bring to the area. Others criticized the plans on aesthetic and commercial grounds, arguing that the proposed community both transplanted suburban-style development to the city and created and urban density that would not appeal to middle-class families.
Construction on the first phase of the Dearborn Park community began in 1977. While the development did not display the full array of diversity and commercial and civic vitality for which Klutznick had advocated and hoped, it did spur continued development and revitalization of Chicago's South Loop.
The 1980s
In the 1980s, Klutznick actively applied his commercial and civic expertise to Chicago's economic development, serving on several public boards, including Task Forces on the city's steel industry and the Chicago Housing Authority and a transition committee for Mayor Harold Washington.
Memorandum (April 28, 1982)
Memorandum (June 28, 1983)
Letter from PMK to Sara Jean Lindholm (March 14, 1986)
Letter from PMK to Reverend B. Herbert Martin, Sr. (February 2, 1988)
Letter from PMK to Tom McDade (February 3, 1988)
Letter from PMK to Richard M. Daley (January 10, 1989)
Letter from PMK to Richard M. Daley (March 3, 1989)
Letter from PMK to Richard M. Daley (January 12, 1990)
