Chicago City Wire

Le Piano, a jazz club in Rogers Park, has been fined $5,000 by the City of Chicago after officials ordered the removal of a grand piano placed outside the venue on a pedestrian-only street. The piano was part of the club’s outdoor live music programming on Glenwood Avenue, a block closed to vehicle traffic since 2021 under the city’s Chicago Alfresco program.

Le Piano owner Chad Willetts reportedly received the citation after city officials deemed the piano’s placement improper. 

Willetts, who helped lead the application to turn the block into a pedestrian area, said the piano had been used regularly for public performances and cultural events. He expressed dismay at the city’s actions. 

Chad Willetts, owner of Le Piano | Facebook / Chad Willetts

“A lost opportunity to bring cultural nutrition through art and music to Rogers Park and the city writ large,” Willetts told Chicago City Wire.

The citation, Willetts said, reflects broader frustrations with how the city has handled support for small businesses and cultural spaces.

“I'm terribly disappointed and saddened by the non-leadership,” Willetts said.

Willetts, a musician with a 30-year career performing in downtown Chicago and the Gold Coast, is the leader of the Chad Willetts Quartet. 

He opened Le Piano, located at 6970 N. Glenwood Ave., in late 2018, and the venue has since become a neighborhood institution.

The venue, which features live music seven nights a week, has been called a “one of a kind experience.” 

Willetts’ efforts to activate the street outside the club include not just the piano but outdoor furniture, decorative lighting, murals and a planned Frank Sinatra-themed fountain. Other businesses on the same block have large barrels on the street that have not drawn citations, despite occupying more space than the piano.

The incident comes as Glenwood Avenue continues to grow as a community destination, with the Glenwood Alfresco program contributing to expanded outdoor seating, performances and seasonal events like the Glenwood Avenue Arts Festival and Glenwood Sunday Market. 

The cobblestone roadway and surrounding murals have become part of the area’s cultural identity, helping to attract both residents and visitors.

49th Ward Alderwoman Maria Hadden has been heavily involved in policy involving Glenwood Avenue. In October 2024 she presented redesign options for the roadway to the community with reconstruction to begin in 2025. 

Some have feared this will mean upheaval in the pedestrian throughway where Le Piano and other community enriching businesses are located. 

Hadden–who was once fired from a local eatery where she was a server–has recently faced significant community criticism, with some residents accusing her of favoring businesses she is personally affiliated with. 

One critic alleged she gives preferential treatment to restaurants that provide her with “free dinners.”

“My friends, they're all small businesses, they're not only afraid of the city, but really afraid of her,” an anonymous business owner previously told Chicago City Wire.

In another instance, Hadden was the subject of an ethics complaint for allegedly receiving numerous political donations from family members of the owner of two liquor stores. 

The donations, described as a “corrupt scheme” by the attorney who filed the complaint, came shortly after Hadden reportedly arranged to lift a moratorium on liquor licenses—clearing the way for two new stores at 1420 West Morse and 2033 West Howard Street.

Other critics have accused Hadden of allowing hostile online attacks on her official alderman Facebook page, including the doxxing of political opponents and direct harassment—sometimes involving property damage—of individuals and their families who speak out against her policies. 

Since becoming alderman in 2019, Hadden—a native of Columbus, Ohio, who moved to Chicago after attending Ohio State University—has faced criticism over the neighborhood’s decline during her tenure. 

Longtime residents have pointed to a rise in shootings on major thoroughfares, drug dealing, frequent muggings, rampant shoplifting resulting in the loss of businesses and numerous homeless individuals drinking and engaging in drug use in public spaces throughout the 49th Ward.

“I've just never seen criminal activity accepted so much in any place I've lived,” Brent McCollum-Ottinger, a mugging victim whose husband was mugged in a separate incident, previously told Chicago City Wire.

Another resident who has lived in the 49th Ward for decades said the retaliation on behalf of Hadden is real.

“People are coming out of the woodwork to talk but feel that they have to do it anonymously because they fear retaliation from her and her staff,” the anonymous resident previously told Chicago City Wire. “Whether it be the building department getting called on you, or you get a phone call, or whatever. If you’re a restaurant, you’re threatened with the health department being called. And don’t put a sign in your window for anyone but Maria or you will be hassled.”