On the Westside, Leaders Tout a Model for ‘Inclusive Community Development’

The last time the Democratic National Convention (DNC) was held in Chicago before this year was in 1996 when the Democratic Party’s platform touted the creation of the Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund a few years earlier. 

Through its New Markets Tax Credit program, the CDFI Fund provided tax credits to community development entities like nonprofits, helping them attract private capital for economic development projects in blighted areas. 

This year, the Democratic Party is pledging to invest more in CDFI’s and make the New Markets Tax Credit permanent. 

“Together, these efforts are unleashing billions of dollars in new private sector lending and investment for housing and economic development in our inner cities and poorest rural areas,” the Democrats’ 2024 platform explains. 

Nearly two decades after the CDFI Fund was established, millions of dollars in tax credits are going to major economic development projects across the Westside. However, the leaders spearheading this wave of Westside development don’t point to reduced tax credits as its catalyst. 

The real catalyst, they say, is deep and sustained community collaboration, particularly collaboration centered on grassroots community councils that have completed actionable roadmaps for social development. 

“No significant economic development has happened in this riot-ridden area since 1968 — until now,” said Ayesha Jaco, the executive director of West Side United. “That was a pivotal Democratic National Convention year, and here we are 50 years later reactivating this space.” 

Jaco referenced the $50 million Sankofa Wellness Village, a series of development projects along the Madison-Pulaski commercial corridor. The Village’s anchor development is the Sankofa Village Wellness Center, a $35 million, 50,000-square-foot facility that will be built on an empty lot at 4301 W. Madison St. in West Garfield Park. 

The Sankofa Village Wellness Center and the surrounding Sankofa Wellness Village are the result of a partnership between The Leaders Network, New Mt. Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church, the MAAFA Redemption Project, West Side United, the YMCA, the Institute for Nonviolence Chicago, Erie Family Health Centers, and Rush Medical Center.

In 2019, those organizations joined forces to form the Garfield Park Rite to Wellness Collaborative, an effort to improve Garfield Park residents’ health and quality of life. The Sankofa projects, in particular, are part of a joint effort among those community partners to eliminate the roughly 13-year life expectancy gap between residents in areas like West Garfield Park, Austin, and North Lawndale, and those in communities like the Loop. 

“This is the community saying, ‘This is what we want,’” said Dr. David Ansell, the senior vice president for community health equity for Rush University Medical Center and associate provost for community affairs for Rush University. 

Ansell, who helped shed light on Chicago’s life expectancy gap in his 2017 book, “The Death Gap: How Inequality Kills,” said the Sankofa Wellness Center is a community initiative built from the ground up. 

“This isn’t occurring because someone found an opportunity to exploit a policy,” he said. “This is the community saying, ‘We need assets, we need medical care,’ and it all came out of the community’s desire to build themselves up.” 

When it opens sometime in 2025, the Center will house a community health clinic, gym and exercise facility, a community-owned credit union, and an early learning center, among other critical resources. 

Community leaders plan to host a groundbreaking ceremony for the Sankofa Village Wellness Center on Monday, Sept. 16, 10 a.m., at 4305 W. Madison St. 

Jaco and Ansell believe development projects like the Wellness Center are part of what could be a national model being built on the Westside that starts with local community councils that can gauge what everyday community members want in their neighborhoods and connect those neighbors with churches, nonprofits, and other civic and social entities. 

“Councils are integral because they are the heartbeat of the community,” she said. “They are the verified source.” 

She pointed to groups like the North Lawndale Community Coordinating Council, Austin Coming Together, the Garfield Park Rite to Wellness Collaborative, the Garfield Park Community Council, and Enlace Chicago in South Lawndale. 

“These places are often curators of the quality-of-life plan, which is the one-stop shop across education, workforce, public safety, housing, etc.,” she said. “The community plan is often generated by those different voices who accurately reflect what people feel they need.” 

Ansell said large entities like Rush only come along later in the community-building process “to help support it.” 

West United is also shaping the revitalization of the nearly 170,000-square-foot Fillmore Center at 4100 W. Fillmore St., a 111-year-old vacant building that once housed the Calumet Baking Powder Co. 

Earlier this summer, West Side United, Rush, and other community partners gathered to open the Fillmore Linen Service, a company that washes, dries, and presses laundry from local hospitals, including Rush and Lurie Children’s Hospital. 

The company, which seeks to hire up to 175 staffers—with priority given to Westside residents—will be one of several tenants in the Fillmore Center once it’s fully renovated. 

“Seven years after renovations are completed, the building will be placed into a community benefit trust that allows residents to share and manage profits from the building — making it one of the few examples in the country,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported in June. 

Like the Fillmore Center, the Garfield Park Rite to Wellness Collaborative and MAAFA Redemption Project will co-own the Sankofa Wellness Village. The Steans Family Foundation bought the property in November 2022 for $3.3 million, the Sun-Times reported. 

The same unique equation behind the Fillmore Center and the Wellness Village development—a mixture of public and private funds, a robust community council, a quality-of-life-plan, and community ownership — is driving the $41 million Aspire Center for Workforce Innovation at 5500 W. Madison St. 

Once built, the roughly 77,000-square-foot facility will house manufacturing skills training programs, a cafe, a community plaza, a BMO bank branch, offices, event space, and a rooftop terrace, among other features. Austin Coming Together and the nonprofit Westside Health Authority (WHA) are co-developing the project on the site of the former Robert Emmet Elementary School. The nonprofits will also co-own the completed development. 

Aspire is also funded by New Market Tax Credits (within a mixture of other public and private funding sources), but the community powers it, said Darnell Shields, ACT’s executive director. 

“No one person, no one organization, and no one entity can move this community forward alone,” Shields said at a groundbreaking ceremony for the project last year. “We have so much support on this project and let it represent what collaboration looks like.” 

Last year, Morris Reed, WHA’s CEO, told Crain’s Chicago Business the city of Chicago should “be more aggressive in working with community leaders and community developers to repurpose” assets like shuttered school buildings. 

In the days leading up to the Democratic National Convention, Jaco and Ansell looked beyond the city. They said what’s happening on the Westside should be a national model for urban development in blighted inner-city neighborhoods across the country. 

“We think this is a national model for inclusive community development,” Ansell said. “The coalition is quite board and highly representative, and this is very hopeful.” 

Jaco said West Side United has had conversations with leaders from countries like England and Singapore seeking to learn about what’s happening in North Lawndale, West Garfield Park, and Austin. 

During a DNC kickoff event at New Mt. Pilgrim on Aug. 18, the church’s pastor, Rev. Marshall Hatch, said that national leaders should shine a light on what’s happening inside the convention and in the communities, too. 

“We’re not just interested in what’s going on in the United Center, but what is happening in these neighborhoods,” Hatch said. “The issues important to us must be important to all those seeking our support.”