As one walks down Paseo Boricua, there is a tangible excitement in the air: colorful businesses are filling up the gray spaces, cultural institutions such as the Puerto Rican Cultural Center including the Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos Puerto Rican High School are relocating, and finding homes on Division Street. Youth are being recruited by Vida/SIDA, an AIDS health clinic involved in peer outreach and education, or they are drawn in by the DSBDA and Café Teatro Batey Urbano to clean the streets, and help organize local festivals.
One example, the annual Fiesta Boricua, is the largest one-day festival in the Midwest. The festival fills the streets of Paseo Boricua with over 200,000 people and has accumulated over 124 booth displays representing the arts, food, and dance of the Puerto Rican culture. Another festival, Dia De Los Reyes, occurs during the winter holidays. This year, Three Kings Day attracted about 3,000 participants. These celebrations, including the annual “Parranda & gift giving celebration”, provides an important time for residents to celebrate Puerto Rican culture and traditions. The success of events such as these has shown us that there is interest and support in the cultivation and continuation of Puerto Rican culture in the area, evident by the steadfast growth of support for Paseo Boricua.
The DSBDA’s strategy has helped to establish Paseo Boricua as a developing vital ethnic district that has enhanced the cultural identity and livelihood of the community as well as economic advances to circulate more jobs and money to/within the community. The development of Paseo Boricua by the DSBDA has been chronicled in major newspapers and magazines such as Chicago Ahora, the Chicago Sun-Times, The Chicago Tribune, Exito, Hispanic Business, and Hispanic Magazine.
Through monthly community business meetings with residents and business owners, the DSBDA has been able to bring larger social issues into focus, helping expand understandings about the full social effects of investment, gentrification, and residential displacement.