7/19: The votes are in and have been counted, and the neighbors have gone in favor of Haymarket. See the update at the end of this post.
Per the city code, a notice was sent out to all neighborhood residents living within 250 feet of the property on Buena to alert them about the permit, and a meeting was scheduled for June 14 for neighbors to ask questions and raise concerns. The notice listed the applicant not as Haymarket, but as the publisher’s umbrella organization, the Center for Economic Research and Social Change (CERSC), which also runs, among other things, an annual socialism conference and a website called Mondoweiss that describes itself as “devoted to covering American foreign policy in the Middle East, chiefly from a progressive Jewish perspective.”
“A tone was established that allowed someone to say that,” Raghian says. “Anytime somebody had a question either perceived as neutral or positive, the people opposed shouted over them, spoke over them, or spoke out of turn. One woman reiterated five times, ‘We don’t want you here.’ I said, ‘I don’t think everyone agrees.'”
He’s also concerned that Haymarket will make renovations to the building that will destroy its historic character.
The Haymarket contingent has said they would be amenable to looking into getting the building listed as a historic landmark and also to signing a good neighbor agreement, a written document with information about who neighbors can contact if they have a problem with noise or parking. Other property owners in the neighborhood have done this, Feher says, and nothing has ever escalated to the point of requiring mediation from the alderman’s office.
