Lightfoot slow to act on promises to use old industrial sites to build new, green economy

Protests have erupted over a proposed car-shredding operation to the Southeast Side for almost three years of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s first term. | Pat Nabong/Sun-Times

A year and a half ago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said she planned to repurpose hundreds of abandoned, polluted industrial sites left over from Chicago’s manufacturing heyday.

Lightfoot said she would be announcing plans to use those sites to help build a cleaner, greener economy that would create jobs, especially in low-income communities of color suffering from the air pollution that industry had brought.