![]() īronzeville community members gather (pre-pandemic) at the Boxville weekly outdoor market.īoxville is a neighborhood marketplace consisting of bright, colorful repurposed shipping containers where small businesses can ply their wares. ![]() But each new restaurant moving into the area has access to a wide variety of seasonal produce from a rooftop farm and nearby community garden, as do residents during market day in Boxville-another of Urban Juncture’s initiatives. Although the neighborhood is 15–20 minutes from downtown Chicago, Bronzeville has few large grocery stores stocked with abundant fresh produce. That translates to local jobs,” says Loyd. “Good food is the heart of any community, and from a business point of view, restaurants are labor intensive. One of these, Bronzeville Cookin’, is an emerging dining destination celebrating the cuisines and cultures of the African diaspora (with one restaurant and an incubator space in operation so far). With its Build Bronzeville project, he and his team have identified initiatives that build on local culture and community and encourage the development of small businesses, with the aim of a holistic and long-term community renaissance. Loyd is now founder and president of Urban Juncture, a social enterprise he started in 2003 to develop commercial real estate and related enterprises that concentrate on the needs of underserved communities in Chicago. “As a consultant at McKinsey and Company, I worked hard for my clients, as well as on numerous company-sponsored initiatives,” he says, “but after over a dozen years with the firm, I decided to focus on the challenges in my own backyard.” In a neighborhood which has been subjected to redlining and racism, disregard by political leaders, and decades of neglect and disinvestment of capital, community revitalization is as complex a problem as you’ll ever find.Īfter earning undergraduate and graduate degrees from MIT in aeronautics and astronautics, he returned for a master’s degree from the MIT Sloan School of Management before moving into management consulting. In a neighborhood which has been subjected to redlining and racism, disregard by political leaders, and decades of neglect and disinvestment of capital, community revitalization is as complex a problem as you’ll ever find.” ![]() Solving complex problems is what I was trained to do in my decade-long tenure as an MIT student. “I’ve always been interested in community development. Of course,” he adds, “all the light was due in part to the fact that, after being vacant and vandalized for years, an entire back wall of the property was missing.”Īs Loyd restored his own home, he decided to work to revitalize his community as well. In the home I bought, there was this abundance of natural light. As an engineer, I was impressed by the architectural details and efficient use of space and marveled at the craftsmanship. “I appreciated the history of the neighborhood,” Loyd says, “and I loved the beautiful brownstones. Author Richard Wright, playwright Lorraine Hansberry, and poet Gwendolyn Brooks penned their works in apartments on streets near Bronzeville’s Washington Park. Daniel Hale Williams performed the first successful open-heart surgery. Jesse Owens, Ralph Metcalfe, and Joe Louis called Bronzeville home. Bronzeville was Chicago’s Harlem, home to the Regal and Savoy theaters, where Nat “King” Cole, Sam Cooke, and Dinah Washington got their starts. During the Great Migration, when, after World War I, nearly half of the African American population in the American South left for jobs in steel mills and automobile factories in the North, Chicago was one of the end points on the central route along the Mississippi River. Bernard Loyd ’83, SM ’85, PhD ’89, SM ’90 is beginning with his own neighborhood of Bronzeville on the South Side of Chicago.īronzeville has a storied history. How does one build a better world? One community at a time.
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