Video Gaming in Chicago's 45th Ward — bars, licensing, status

History

Farmers, mostly English, had settled around Jefferson Park by 1836, and after 1849 they moved their goods on plank roads, one of them the North West Plank Road, later Milwaukee Avenue. The state formed Jefferson Township in 1850, the town of Jefferson was incorporated in 1872, and Chicago annexed it in 1889. Polish and German immigrants followed, and by 1990 nearly half of Jefferson Park's residents were of Polish descent. To the south, Portage Park took its name from an old portage along Irving Park Road, and the Milwaukee streetcar line opened in 1907. By 1990 that area's main shopping center was Six Corners, where Irving Park Road, Milwaukee Avenue and Cicero Avenue meet. To the north, commuter rail stops drew settlers to the Forest Glen area by the 1880s. The Jefferson Park District, established in 1920, bought land for Gladstone Park in 1924 and 1925. The Kennedy Expressway, completed in 1959, sliced diagonally through Jefferson Park, and in 1970 the CTA built a terminal there that joined buses, commuter rail and the el.

The area today

Ald. James M. Gardiner represents the 45th Ward from a ward office at 5460 N. Milwaukee Ave. Gardiner was first elected in 2019 and won a runoff in April 2023. The ward follows Milwaukee Avenue, roughly, from Six Corners northwest through Jefferson Park and Gladstone Park, with parts of Portage Park, Old Irving Park, Forest Glen and Norwood Park. The CTA Blue Line and Metra's Union Pacific Northwest line both stop at Jefferson Park on Milwaukee Avenue. Copernicus Center, on Lawrence Avenue in Jefferson Park, hosts concerts and theater, plus the four-day Taste of Polonia festival over Labor Day weekend, with live bands and a craft beer tent.

Bars and restaurants here

On Milwaukee Avenue in Jefferson Park, Block Club Chicago has described a neighborhood tavern with thin-crust pizza, wings, a heated back patio and a Sunday-morning crowd for Bears games. On Lawrence Avenue west of Central, a neighborhood rock and roll bar has run trivia and karaoke nights and planned live music and comedy nights. Farther northwest, Block Club called Gladstone Park's stretch of Milwaukee a growing business corridor, where a newer bar and grill has live music on weekends and a pool league.