CHICAGO | U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill., plans to sponsor a resolution that could someday result in the remains of the old Pullman rail car factory and surrounding neighborhood being turned into a national park located in the Chicago area.

Jackson said Tuesday that his resolution, which he plans to introduce before the House of Representatives later this week, calls for a feasibility study into the development of the area to attract tourists to Chicago's far South Side by emphasizing the historic significance of the old Pullman factory.

That study, if approved by Congress, could take between one and three years to complete. If the study determines that a national park around 111th Street and Cottage Grove Avenue could work, then Congress would be asked to pass a measure that would designate the area as a park.

"We could become the Grand Canyon of the South Side," Jackson quipped, in making his announcement outside the existing visitors center at 11141 Cottage Grove Ave.

Marty Sterkel, an associate regional director with the National Park Service, said that turning the Pullman area into a national park would be easier than most because local groups already have built a visitors center, and there has already been significant work done to structurally restore homes and buildings in the area.

He said that getting those groups to work together with the National Park Service would be the key to developing the area as a park meant to encourage international tourists to visit the area. "It's not a matter of what needs to be done, but how can we work together to do it," Sterkel said.

As Jackson sees it, an area of several blocks around the 111th Street intersection would become the national park. It would include the factory and clock tower north of the street, and the market square, the former Hotel Florence, the Green Stone Church on 112th Street and several mansions and row houses in the immediate area.

Jackson said he sees the Pullman site as significant both in terms of labor history and in terms of race relations, since many of the porters who worked on Pullman rail cars were black men.

"This was a place where white and black, native and immigrant, worked together to produce the finest (rail) cars of their time," Jackson said, while adding that the area was also used as locations for films such as "The Untouchables" and "Road to Perdition."

If the Pullman site ultimately becomes a national park, it would be only the second one in Illinois — the one-time home of Abraham Lincoln in Springfield is the other. But officials cited the Lowell National Historical Park in Lowell, Mass., as a comparable site to Pullman.

That park preserves the remains of the 19th century textile factories and incorporates the nearby Merrimack River, while displaying the cultural connections of that era to the present day.

But Jackson said he could see one other benefit to local residents — the fact that turning the area into a national park would mean it would be patrolled by park rangers and the federal government would get jurisdiction over the area.

"Crimes here would become federal crimes," said Jackson, while also scolding a nearby motorist who speeded by so quickly that his tires squealed loudly. "There would be no more of that in the streets of Pullman."