Posted on 08/28/2002 8:34:50 PM PDT by Kaiwen
Chicago -- After escaping the Killing Fields, Cambodian refugees who settled in Chicago were determined to have their own Buddhist temple in the Uptown community.
They contributed $10, $20--whatever they could afford from their minimum-wage factory jobs--and bought a house at 1258 W. Argyle.
They converted the house into a temple and made a vacant lot they owned next door into a meditation garden with fruits, vegetables and flowers. The garden was a place of prayer and healing from the Khmer Rouge genocide that killed more than 1 million Cambodians during the late 1970s. Many of the refugees had lost family members to executions, starvation, disease and forced labor.
"This prayer ground means so much," said Sokhuom Khek, president of the Cambodian Buddhist Association. "It does not belong to any one person or even any organization. It belongs to the whole Cambodian community."
But last September, a bulldozer showed up and destroyed the garden.
Through a series of mixups, the temple hadn't paid property taxes on the garden. A tax scavenger bought the lot for the back taxes and sold it to a developer who planned to put up an apartment building.
The Cambodians sought help from a community group, Organization of the NorthEast, or ONE. Representatives of ONE told them to raise a ruckus: Schedule a rally, hold a march, call a press conference, pressure the politicians.
At first, the Cambodians were afraid to follow this practical advice. "If we would do that in our country," Khek said, "we would disappear."
But this is Chicago. People don't disappear, they cut deals. And on Sunday, temple leaders, community groups and politicians announced a deal that will save the garden.
The developer, Tom Stevens, has agreed he won't build on the lot. Instead, he will spend at least $50,000 to rebuild the garden, with lion-head water fountains, benches, bushes and trees, surrounded by an iron fence.
"We'll try to make it maintenance-free because these guys have no money," Stevens said.
In return, Stevens will get a zoning change to build a nine-unit apartment building behind the garden. That's two more units than would be allowed under current zoning.
Nearly everyone is delighted.
Khek said it's a "positive solution." Ald. Mary Ann Smith (48th) went further, calling it a "wonderful solution." It just shows, said Cook County Commissioner Mike Quigley, that "when people keep talking and keep their minds open, we have a happy ending."
But Roberta Stadler, president of the Argyle-Magnolia-Glenwood Block Club, is not at all happy. She will live next door to the nine-unit apartment building.
"It destroys the quality of life," she said. "It limits privacy and creates a density that is unnecessary."
After the Cambodians bought the property in 1985, they applied for and received tax-exempt status as a religious organization. However, the tax exemption did not apply to the garden, which, unbeknownst to the temple, had a separate tax identification number. Moreover, the temple never received the tax bills because the county sent them to another address. It was those unpaid bills that enabled a tax scavenger to buy the garden.
"The whole tax-buying system," Smith said, "is a disgrace."
Where is Al Gore when they need him?
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