CHICAGO — Division Street between Western and California, the heart of the Puerto Rican community in Chicago, has experienced an economic burst the last couple of months with the opening a handful of new Latino-owned businesses.

It’s a welcomed development in a neighborhood that has been fighting total gentrification for decades.

Thirty years ago, giant steel flags were hoisted in Humboldt Park, not only to frame the most Puerto Rican street in Chicago, but to make sure that it wouldn’t loose its identity as such when gentrification kept coming west on division street.

Back in 2016 former alderman and current CEO of the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture Billy Ocasio told WGN News that the flags were actually working.

But it hasn't been an easy three decades with rent and

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