A project budget endorsed by the community development commission Tuesday would earmark $15.4 million for public works improvements, $13.3 million to rehab some of the 109 buildings in the 69.7-acre area and $7.2 million for construction, which could include affordable housing units. However, $7.2 million would build about 55 units, according to Francis X. Tobin of the Rogers Park Community Action Network.

The alternative is none, suggests 49th Ward Alderman Joe Moore. "[Tax increment financing] is one of the few tools left now that the federal government has abdicated its responsibility to provide affordable housing," says Moore, whose ward is arguably the most economic and ethnically diverse among the city's 50. "TIFs have been able to improve the Rogers Park community while retaining its ethnic and economic diversity."

Establishing tax increment financing for the area was endorsed by a number of community and business groups, who painted a gloomier storefront picture than the Rogers Park Community Action Network's own study, which found a vacancy rate of 7.2% along the retail corridors.

"The one area that we're lacking is our business district," says real estate broker Helen Wagner, who operates out of the Edgewater neighborhood that begins just south of Devon Avenue. "If we revitalize that area, we'd have it all here."

Although the community development commission's recommendation was only to endorse using tax increment financing for the area, no specific project is on the table. However, it is an open secret in the community that the university, which already is building a $40-million science education building and a 425-bed dormitory, has expansion plans beyond those two projects. The university serves a student body of 13,000 with a 1,600-member faculty."We want to be a good neighbor in Rogers Park and Edgewater," says Cheryl Towers, a university trustee as well as chairman of its facilities and assets committee.

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$69M TIF Plan Endorsed for Loyola Area

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