CHICAGO — Growing up around the city’s Bronzeville neighborhood, Jade Taylor remembered when much of the area was derisively referred to as “the Low End,” a stretch of the city's South Side with a concentration of notorious housing projects plagued by drug dealing and gang violence.
Tuesday, she’ll help open a 74,800-square-foot grocery store on the former site of the Ida B. Wells housing project — once the epicenter of drug wars and deprivation — that will feature an oyster bar, gelateria and a produce section that will offer dozens of varieties of apples and greens.
“It used to be you did not want to be here at night,” said Taylor, an events manager for the growing Midwest supermarket chain Mariano’s that is set to open in Bronzeville. “But the neighborhood, it’s coming back. I want to stay on the South Side of Chicago, and businesses coming in and bringing jobs, that means something.”
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