The Neighborhood Opportunity Fund was created with a bold mission: to reinvest wealth from downtown development into the neighborhoods that need it most. At its core, the program promises to

• Invest in under-resourced communities across Chicago
• Strengthen neighborhood commercial corridors with shops, restaurants, and gathering spaces
• Prioritize community driven businesses that spark local growth
• Build long term sustainability
• And most importantly, build community based wealth by supporting entrepreneurs of color
• On paper, this is a transformative idea. But in practice, the spirit of the program is too often eroded not by City Council, not by aldermen, but by the very developers entrusted with carrying it out.

The Developer’s Playbook

Here is how it works.

Grand promises up front. Developers pitch projects with all the right language. They talk about vibrant corridors, new small businesses, and jobs for local residents. The city buys in, allocates millions in NOF funding, and the community starts to believe change is coming.

Tweaks after the commitments. Once the money is committed, developers return to city staff and request “minor” amendments. Words are changed, clauses are deleted, obligations are softened. These changes never go back before the elected officials who voted for the program, nor do they face public scrutiny.

Small changes, huge consequences. What looks like a technical tweak on paper deleting a single word like “leasable” opens the door for developers to fill retail with affiliates instead of local businesses. Removing a hiring provision means jobs go to outside contractors instead of neighborhood residents. And the penalties, if any, are token amounts barely a dent in multimillion dollar budgets.

Who Really Loses

The consequences fall squarely on the communities the NOF was designed to serve.

• Entrepreneurs of color are shut out of retail space in their own neighborhoods
• Residents lose access to jobs that should have been created locally
• Wealth bypasses the community and flows back to developers who often do not live anywhere near the neighborhoods they are profiting from

This matters because small businesses are the real catalysts for stronger communities. When a neighborhood entrepreneur gets space in a development, they hire people from the community. They mentor young people. They spend their profits locally. They reinvest in schools, churches, and block clubs. They are tied to the community because they are the community.

By contrast, asking a large developer to “hire from the community” is like throwing raw meat to a wolf and asking him to save some for the sheep. What do we really expect? At best, you might get a few temporary construction jobs or short-term contracts. But when the project is done, the developer packs up and moves on. They are not here to stay. They are not here to build.

Why This Matters

When these quiet amendments go unchecked, the Neighborhood Opportunity Fund risks becoming a Developer Opportunity Fund. That undermines not only the communities but also the credibility of the program itself. Critics already argue against funding initiatives like the NOF, and every time a developer guts its mission, they hand those critics more ammunition.

If we want these programs to survive and grow, we need to police the execution. That means watchdogging the amendments, demanding transparency when agreements are changed, and holding developers accountable for living up to their commitments.

And it also means asking hard questions about whether this tool is right for developers who have no intention of serving the community. If the heart is not in the work, then the tool will never create the impact it was meant to deliver.

The Bigger Picture

The NOF is still one of the most innovative tools Chicago has to spark community based development. But its success depends on whether it truly fulfills its mission: to build community based wealth by supporting entrepreneurs of color.

Developers may see small tweaks as just part of doing business. But for our neighborhoods, those tweaks mean the difference between empowerment and exploitation.

It is time we insist that opportunity is not deleted and that the fund lives up to its name.