The shuttered terra cotta furniture showroom near 79th and Halsted streets had sat vacant for decades. Twenty-five graduating classes at Leo High School next door came and went. The building sat almost unnoticed, a persistent sign of disinvestment in the South Side neighborhood.

But Carlos Nelson, CEO of the Greater Auburn-Gresham Development Corp., or GAGDC, got the keys to the building in 2017 after tracking down the owner in Hyde Park and arranging some “creative financing” to spur redevelopment. This month Nelson and his team will cut the ribbon on the $20 million Healthy Lifestyle Hub that includes a clinic and pharmacy and will create an estimated 150 jobs.

Across the street, developer Torrey Barrett is preparing to build the first of two apartment buildings, part of the city’s Invest South/West initiative. Less than a mile south, entrepreneur Erika Allen and her partners are launching an anaerobic digester that will convert food waste to renewable energy and compost for farming. And Metra is starting construction of a $30 million station at 79th Street on the Rock Island Line. Overall more than $130 million is being invested in the beleaguered community.

Local leaders hope the activity will attract private capital and ultimately revitalize Auburn Gresham with updated housing, jobs and amenities. “What if people could walk to work, walk to a coffee shop?” Nelson says. “Maybe they’re making good money working at the health center or the digester that will enable them to buy a home.”

Even with the kind of money the neighborhood hasn’t seen in decades, it will be an uphill climb. Auburn Gresham suffers from population loss, crime and neglect. The commercial corridors are half-vacant. The 79th and Halsted intersection is saddled with shuttered stores—a onetime CVS, Bank of America and Sav A Lot. The neighborhood was dealt a discouraging setback last month with the closing of the Aldi supermarket on Ashland Avenue south of 76th Street.

Just because buildings are going up doesn’t mean Chicagoans will choose Auburn Gresham over other neighborhoods such as South Shore or Bronzeville.

“Is there a clear vision of what we’re trying to achieve?” asks Victoria Lakes-Battle, Chicago executive director of nonprofit lender IFF, which helped fund the digester project. Community development is like spreading peanut butter, she says, adding, “If it gets spread too thin, folks don’t get enough of what they need to be made whole.”

And while leaders share a vision on what success could look like, they don’t always agree on the best tactics of getting there. Residents objected to the city-sponsored housing plan at rancorous meetings last year, with worries about density and a lack of parking, shops and other amenities.

But there’s no question that things are happening. “Investors can see cranes and scaffolding,” says Maurice Cox, the city’s commissioner of planning and development. “We’ve gotten the private sector interested in an area they simply had no interest in a year or two ago.”

RESIDENTS PUSH BACK

Nine miles south of downtown, Auburn Gresham prospered in the first half of the 20th century. It was an Irish Catholic and Dutch neighborhood marked by sturdy Arts and Crafts-inspired bungalows and two-flats. The mostly Catholic population was served by five parishes, including St. Leo and St. Sabina.

Like other South and West Side neighborhoods, Auburn Gresham saw an exodus of white residents. It flipped from 95% Irish to 95% African American today. The closing of industrial sites and outsourcing of jobs devastated the neighborhood. It and other South and West Side communities languished as the city and private investors lavished attention downtown and in the West Loop.

The population fell nearly 20% to 44,878 between 2000 and 2020, while the city’s population fell by 5% and the region gained 5%, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Median income is only $34,296, compared with $58,247 for the city, and a quarter of the population is under the federal poverty level, according to the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning.

For the five years preceding the pandemic, unemployment of 16% was double the citywide rate of 8%.

But Auburn Gresham has assets: About 40% of its housing units are single family and almost 30% are small buildings with two to four units. The Rev. Michael Pfleger put St. Sabina on the map with his fiery social justice advocacy. And lush Auburn Park boasts three lagoons, bridges and walking trails.

When Mayor Lori Lightfoot launched the Invest South/West program in 2019 to repair the city’s most disenfranchised communities, Auburn Gresham was among the first of three neighborhoods to win projects, along with Austin and Englewood. The Healthy Lifestyle Hub and renewable energy project already were underway.

Allen and Nelson had teamed as the Always Growing, Auburn Gresham partners to win the first $10 million Chicago Prize from the Pritzker Traubert Foundation in 2020. Those funds helped complete the hub and enabled GAGDC to provide venture capital to Allen’s Green Era environmental digester. About $2 million is being reserved to develop a community education center at the campus.

The progress of the health center encouraged the city to issue a request for proposals to develop a city-owned vacant lot directly across 79th Street. While other Invest South/West communities have attracted three to six proposals, only one surfaced for Auburn Gresham. The $19.4 million plan from a venture of the Imagine Group and Evergreen Real Estate, along with Ross Barney and Nia architects, was a five-story mixed-use building. It included 62 affordable apartments, ground-floor retail space and gardens.

Imagine Group’s Barrett in 2019 developed the Kleo Art Residences in Washington Park, named for his late sister, who was a victim of domestic violence. He plans to bring to Auburn Gresham a version of his supper club in the Kleo Residences.

Despite the restaurant, private gardens and other amenities, the community pushed back hard. A lot of the seniors who live on Peoria, Green and Sangamon don’t like the project because they worry about congestion and parking, says 25-year resident Lillie Howell. “Where are the new residents going to shop? All the stores have closed.”

Imagine Evergreen subsequently split the project into two parts: a three-story, 28-unit building at the original site, and a five-story, 30-unit building on a vacant city-owned lot two blocks to the east. That nearly doubled the cost of the project to almost $40 million, including the city’s contribution of TIF dollars and tax credits—resources that won’t be available for other city projects. “If this is what it took for the community to believe in it, it’s a success story,” Cox says.

Nelson says, “I tip my cap to the city for listening and making adjustments.”

Not that the project solves all needs. GAGDC would have liked to have seen condos or townhomes to boost homeownership and a push to upgrade vacant or run-down homes to attract buyers. Development of the housing complex on a site that might have been used for clinic parking means the hub has to find a creative solution for parking, possibly shuttling customers to and from their cars.

Howell says she’s OK with the project going ahead, “because we need new things in the community and financial stability. But, she adds, “I want it to be good. I hope and pray there are good residents and they screen and monitor them.”

Adds Lakes-Battle: “Community engagement is hard, and it’s messy. Sometimes there are time pressures. You have to build trust.”

A FUTURE IN CLEAN ENERGY?

Auburn Gresham needs jobs, updated housing and amenities. But how does that get done, and in what order?

The neighborhood must stem its population decline in order to attract substantial retailers, Cox says. Grocers won’t open if people are leaving, and adding apartments is a robust way to grow the population as compared to filling vacant single-family homes, he says. But the city envisions “infill” housing and plans to issue a request for proposals to develop row houses on vacant city land near one of the lagoons. “We can expand housing options for folks who want to live by a body of water,” Cox adds.

Citing the loss of national retailers, Ald. David Moore, 17th, says the city needs to invest in people to run their own stores, adding, “We don’t have to beg people to come to our communities.” The city has allocated $1.5 million in Neighborhood Opportunity Fund grants to fund eight new and established businesses, including a dentist plus hardware, beauty and coffee shops. And $11.2 million will be used to widen streets and add lighting and benches.

The question remains: What is special about Auburn Gresham that would attract singles and young families? Lakes-Battle points to the distinctive Puerto Rican community in Humboldt Park that’s anchored by a six-block stretch known as Paseo Boricua, or Puerto Rican Promenade. The entrances are marked by distinctive metal Puerto Rican flags, and the restaurants and grocers offer food from the island.

“You know you’re entering a place informed by Puerto Rican culture,” she says. “The small businesses are complementary.”

Government can help direct industry to particular neighborhoods that can evolve into industrial or business hubs. The city intentionally recruited business to the West Loop, Lakes-Battle says. The enhanced transit and pedestrian-friendly streetscape complemented the business environment. Similarly, south suburban communities are fashioning themselves as hubs for food and metals manufacturing. Can Auburn Gresham take on an identity as a food-to-energy hub?

Erika Allen would like to see that happen. Her career has focused on urban agriculture, and her nonprofit Urban Growers Collective operates eight farms on 11 acres of land, mostly on the South Side.

More than 10 years ago, Allen and partner Jason Feldman envisioned a business that would recycle food waste—diverting it from landfills and capturing the methane that contributes to global warming. Digester tanks could convert the waste into gas, and compost could be channeled to urban gardening where soils are depleted. Profits from the business could be used to rebuild the community.

The pair found a 9-acre brownfield site in Auburn Gresham that could be purchased from the city for $1 but required a $1.6 million cleanup. It had been owned by International Harvester and its successor company Navistar and later became a city lot for impounded cars.

Raising $34 million was a trial. “I had never talked to so many bankers,” Allen says. “That’s not part of my experience. If I don’t have collateral, I can’t get this capital. That puts me so far behind.”

While it was hardly a conventional project, Lakes-Battle saw the appeal. “With sustainability at the top of everyone’s list, we thought it was pretty interesting,” she says. “We needed to learn how does it throw off cash to pay us back, create jobs and deliver on its promises?”

By 2020 Allen and her team were able to assemble a $34 million capital stack that included loans from IFF and three other community development financial institutions, New Market Tax Credits and funding through the Chicago Prize. A $2 million state grant was the first under Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s Shovel Ready Infrastructure Capital program. State and federal grants supplied funds for the cleanup.

Revenue will be generated by acquiring food waste from companies and municipalities—Allen expects McCormick Place to be a customer. The end product, renewable natural gas, will be injected to the Peoples Gas pipeline and traded by BP.

Allen also plans other activities for the Green Era campus, including an urban farm, green grocer and education center providing culinary training.

Back at the Healthy Lifestyle Hub, workers are adding finishing touches, building out exam rooms for the UI Health clinic. There’s office space for Heartland Alliance and Big Brothers Big Sisters. GAGDC is preparing to relocate its headquarters to the fourth floor, offering a panoramic view of the community.

The coming years will test whether Auburn Gresham can rise from the ashes. Will these first investments serve as catalysts for additional projects with private capital? Will properties change hands and merchants find a market on 79th Street? Cox says, “We want to grab people’s attention and get them to take a leap of faith with us.”

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