Park Boulevard development receives negative reviews from some Bronzeville residents.

The new Park Boulevard development on 35th and State promises a “welcoming mix” of homes “at price ranges for all budgets”-- but some area residents say that it won’t meet their needs.

“I make $50,000 a year, how am I going to afford a $200,000 condominium to stay in a neighborhood that I’ve lived in all my life?” Debra Daniel, 56 said. “These people need to get real.”

Daniel, who lives with her grandson in a two-bedroom apartment on the 3300 block of Cottage Grove Ave. is looking for a new place to live because her home of 17 years is being converted to condominiums. Although she admits that her situation is better than many of her friends and neighbors, she still faces tough choices. If she can’t find someplace affordable within the city limits, she will have to move in with her son, who lives in the far south suburbs—a two-hour commute from her job at the Merchandise Mart.

“Gentrification is great unless you’re one of the people being gentrified,” she said.

Park Boulevard replaces the drab high-rise complexes of Stateway Gardens, where low-income residents were siloed together. The new development calls for an integrated community of low-rise townhouses, pedestrian-friendly streets and green spaces.

As the model for future Chicago Housing Authority projects, one-third of the 1,300 new units will be sold at market rate, one-third will be rented to those with CHA vouchers and the rest sold at affordable rates. Under the guidelines set out by the developers, a two-person household earning less than $72,350 could purchase a two-bedroom affordable unit for $232,000; a comparable unit at market rate would start at $290,000.

Even those who can afford market-rate apartments, however, were surprised at the prices of the Park Boulevard units.

Lanre Kalejaiye, 25, who wants to move to Chicago from Bloomington, Ill., was turned off by the cost relative to the lack of amenities in the area.

“They’re too expensive for being so close to the highway and across the street from the McDonald’s,” Kalejaiye said.

While ground level retail space will create a new commercial corridor along the currently underdeveloped stretch of 35th and State, Kalejaiye said he was unwilling to wait for the community to transform.

Nearby, at the last remaining Stateway Gardens building, residents and former tenants seemed resigned to the changes.

“It’s building back up, but they don’t want us back down here,” James Wilcot, 24, said. “They want all of us moved away from here.”

Others seemed skeptical that those who were displaced from the housing projects would be able to move back. Under the Plan for Transformation, CHA residents who meet certain criteria will be re-located into rental housing on the site of the new development.

“They look alright,” Sean Watson, 28, said, “but to have people think that they will be moved back in […] They’re just selling them the dream.”

James Morgan, an area resident, who grew up in the Robert Taylor Homes, said a lot of blacks won’t be able to afford the condos, but he was taking a wait-and-see attitude on the new project.

“They’re beautifying it and it looks great, but I don’t know if it’s going to work,” he said. “There are a lot of rich people who might not want to live with poor people.”

If the mixed-income model did work, Morgan said, it could benefit lower-income residents by making them “strive to do better.”

“I hope it happens,” he added, “but I just don’t know.”