Editorial: Columbia, a place of comfort

More than 150 years ago, the area that would become home to Columbia's urban campus was hardly a place for the faint of heart.

Known as the Levee district, the blocks inside Harrison, State and Polk streets just south of Chicago's Loop was a sea of vagrants, criminals and prostitutes all housed in the neighborhood's saloons and houses of ill repute.

One tavern owner, Mickey Finn, came to fame for his drugging of unsuspecting conventioneers.

The Chicago Tribune described the plot now occupied by the River City condominiums as the scene of "the most beastly sensuality and the darkest crimes."

And although much of what made the district infamous has been long demolished-sans the Pacific Garden Mission-crime and urban grittiness remain an unwanted moniker of the present day South Loop.

That's why crime reports released last week by the Chicago Police Department are all the more impressive.

The Chicago Police Department's Beat 132-the small slice of land that includes the former Levee, today's South Loop and Columbia's campus-saw significant drops in murder, robbery, assaults, burglaries and thefts.

In fact, the area saw major reductions in all of the crimes the city monitors, spelling a more than 8 percent drop in total.

It is a welcome decrease in a city known as the home of the most murders per capita in the United States.

During the first eight months of 2003 Chicago experienced the fewest homicides in 10 years, and homicides are down more than seven percent across the city.

Meanwhile, Columbia's police district has the lowest murder rate in the entire city. In fact, it doesn't have a murder rate at all-no one was killed during 2003 in the South Loop.

And Columbia is to thank, according to the police.

Sgt. Bill O'Reilly, the police department's First District business liaison, told The Chronicle that Martha Meegan, the college's director of campus security, deserved some of the credit.

Last year, Meegan spearheaded the creation of Security Counsel of Professional Educators, a partnership among the police department, Columbia and Roosevelt and DePaul universities, to combat crime in the South Loop.

"The South Loop schools share many of the same criminal activity and offenders," Meegan told The Chronicle in December. "If we can get photos or descriptions of our offenders, and then pass them along to community members, we will hopefully shut these types of activities and offenders out of our area."

It's all part of Meegan's continued effort to inform students about keeping safe around campus, explaining what criminals are after and urging the police department to focus on the areas bordering Columbia's urban campus.

And therein lies the benefit of bodies like Columbia-it not only provides nurturing educational grounds for young adults, its development as a viable institution advances the community as a whole.

An influx of pedestrians stems crime and forces the police to step up patrols, especially to combat high-profile problems like the South Loop's homeless population.

What was once a sea of warehouses has now been gobbled up and rehabbed by Columbia. Old storefronts are art galleries; old offices are classrooms.

It's nothing short of an urban renaissance right before our eyes.

And while Columbia shouldn't take all of the credit for the success of our neighborhood, the educational and arts corridor we helped build surely played a big part. After all, the college is the largest landowner in the South Loop.

It's no secret.

Colleges bring much needed revenue downtown, even if it's spent on quickly disappearing parking. Colleges create excitement and energy. Colleges build theaters, venues and festivals. Colleges spawn coffeehouses and even liquor stores.

Colleges are one piece of the puzzle. Columbia is one piece of the South Loop. The South Loop is just one piece of Chicago.

We'd like to think we helped.