The unpaved alley behind Draper Street is eight feet wide, less than one block long, and cluttered with weeds, dog turds, and clumps of brown grass. And yet it’s been the booty in a bizarre and bitter yearlong struggle waged by the neighbors on its north and south sides.
Perhaps the clash was inevitable. The neighborhood around Draper Street, in western Lincoln Park, has been a working-class community, but it’s changing. Chodos, a successful developer, moved in last year. His home–which he had gutted and rebuilt–is the fanciest house on the block. He drives a red sports car. It’s pretty obvious to anyone who thinks about these things that Chodos probably makes more money than most of his neighbors.
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“What does he expect I should do?” says Schuller, a housewife who has lived, with her husband and children, on Draper Street for 17 years. “He threw that snow against my back fence. And when he shovels, he just doesn’t shovel snow; he shovels mud and dirt. He was throwing mud, dirt, and snow against my fence. It was blocking my exit to the alley. What if there was a fire in the front, how could I get out? It was dangerous.
The next showdown was over Schuller’s drain spouts.
With no resolution in sight, Chodos called in the city. To be more exact, he brought Schuller’s illegal drain spout to the attention of city building inspectors.
“I told them it’s a win-win situation,” says Chodos. “They would have a sewer to drain their water into, and I wouldn’t have to drive my car through a swamp every time it rained.” Chodos also pointed out that there are five other garages in the alley (although Schuller does not own one), so he’s not the only resident who drives his car through.
There’s no saying how much that mix-up set back the cause of neighborhood peace. To this date, no city official has been able to convince Schuller that the hearing (which happened last summer) resulted from a misunderstanding and not some insidious plot to pave the Draper Street alley. “We were deceived,” says Schuller. “All we wanted was to have our alley surveyed. And instead they suddenly had plans to pave it.”
