Not long after Chet Jackson arrived in West Humboldt Park in 2011, he thought he’d found a way to get the drug dealers off the corners. He’d open a restaurant.
“I was dealing with a potential investor here yesterday,” Jackson told me one morning recently. “They want to open a retail operation but they’re concerned with people stealing. And I said, ‘If you’re scared of it, don’t come here.’ I’m not going to sit here and sell you a dream. It’s a challenge. But you can be part of something good.”
“There were several times I thought about packing up and leaving,” admits Jimmy Simmons, one of the council’s founding board members. A native south-sider, Simmons had been committed to West Humboldt Park since moving there in the 1980s—he was president of his block club, sponsor of a Little League team, and a community policing facilitator. But he was getting worn out. “I just thought, ‘It’s the people in the neighborhood. It’s not going to change.’”
Jackson says he had a good thing going in Kansas City, but West Humboldt Park spoke to him in ways he can’t fully explain. “People have tried all this before,” he says, “but my gut tells me something different this time.”
Jackson and Love worked out an arrangement under which the development council would buy and renovate the space. Love, along with his business partner, Goldie Fleming, would commit to opening a sit-down restaurant named Turkey Chop; should they decide to franchise it in the future, the council would have the option of joining as an investor.
Turkey Chop opened quietly earlier this month. It’s a simple space, painted olive green and well lit by a picture window overlooking Chicago Avenue. Though it’s barely been promoted beyond word of mouth, it already has steady business.
