SSA Funds Public Art at Damen Blue Line Station

Members of the Wicker Park-Bucktown Special Service Area Commission gathered at the Wicker Park Field House, 1425 N. Damen Ave., for their final meeting of the year on Dec. 19.

The commission agreed in a unanimous vote to extend funding for Johalla Projects' "Adopt-a-Station" art installation at the Damen Blue Line station. The extension, which was proposed by the SSA's Arts Committee, takes $10,000 in leftover funds that were allocated for public art in the SSA's 2012 budget and uses that money to fund two more rotations of artwork at the station.

"This literally finishes out the Art Committee's budget for this year," said committee co-chair Sam Marts.

The artwork at the station is changed quarterly, and Marts said the committee wanted to make sure the funding was in place before the current artwork needed to be replaced in January.

"This is literally the last 'Adopt a Station' in the city, and when this project is over it will evaporate and never happen again," Marts said. "So we were also cognizant of  not dropping the ball because we would not be getting it back."

Two more rotations would extend the program through June of 2013.

The commission also discussed the SSA's sponsorship of the Open Streets program, but ultimately delayed official action until a later date in order to explore further options for funding the event.

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Open Streets is a program that closes down sections of streets to vehicle traffic so that members of the community can use the space for activities such as walking, jogging, bicycling and skateboarding.

The meeting agenda originally listed a motion to approve $45,000 to sponsor next year's Open Streets event out of the SSA's 2013 special events fund, but treasurer and Transportation Committee co-chair Joe Hall noted that the SSA's entire special events budget for 2013 was $45,000. He suggested that the commission look into other areas of the budget that could be redirected to Open Streets to avoid monopolizing the entire special events fund for one program.

"It has historically been funded out of special events," Hall said. "That doesn't mean we can't fund it from different things and that we wouldn't necessarily want the $45,000. We just want to think about it in a little different terms and not try to monopolize, at this point, the entire special events budget."

Other orders of business included the approval of two motions from the Clean, Green and Safe Committee regarding garbage cans in the area. The first motion approved the reallocation of $900 from the "streetscape elements" budget line item to pay Cleanslate to pull and replace 50 garbage can liners throughout the SSA. The second motion approved $5,000 to install 10 garbage cans throughout the area.

According to Program Manager Jessica Wobbekind, the SSA already owns the cans in question.

"We have 10 that we were using for recycling cans that we have replaced with new ones," she said. "Just as a quick fix we want to get them out as fast as possible because there's a need for garbage cans."

Wobbekind said the $5,000 that was voted upon was needed to pay for city permits as well as installation, lining and weekly trash collection by Cleanslate.

While the specific locations for the new trash cans have not yet been determined, Wobbekind said the SSA was looking into a few areas.

"We're looking at a lot of locations on Western Avenue, because there's really no garbage cans there right now, and then a couple on the northern end of Milwaukee," she said. "We're actually asking for requests right now."

The commission also announced that 26 trees had been planted in tree pits throughout the SSA at a cost of $25,000. Commission Secretary Wayne Janik mentioned parts of Western and Ashland Avenues and the Polish Triangle as specific areas where new trees had been planted, although he said the effort was distributed throughout the SSA.

According to Janik, the City of Chicago stops issuing permits for tree planting on Nov. 30, so the approximately 15 trees that the SSA still plans to plant throughout the community will have to wait until spring. The trees were funded entirely by the SSA and planted by Christy Webber Landscaping, independent of the city's tree planting efforts.