As part of the City of Chicago’s INVEST South/​West ini­tia­tive to help off­set decades’ worth of dis­in­vest­ment on the south and west sides of Chica­go, the south­ern neigh­bor­hood of Auburn-Gre­sham was select­ed among ten dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties to receive improvements.

The orig­i­nal pro­pos­al con­sist­ed of 60 res­i­den­tial units rang­ing from one to three-bed­room apart­ments and includ­ed retail oppor­tu­ni­ties at street lev­el with the aim of spurring devel­op­ment along a his­tor­i­cal­ly active but cur­rent­ly unin­hab­it­ed retail corridor. 

The process began with two lis­ten­ing ses­sions held at pub­lic venues with­in the neigh­bor­hood: a local high school and a field house. At these two ses­sions, res­i­dents were asked to per­form var­i­ous map­ping exer­cis­es that includ­ed pin­point­ing where the res­i­dent lived, worked, shopped, or played, and anoth­er exer­cise involv­ing mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty to fill in the blank for, ​“I want Auburn-Gre­sham to…”. These sim­ple exer­cis­es allowed the design team to review not only the wants of the com­mu­ni­ty but also the gaps that cur­rent­ly exist­ed with­in the neighborhood.

As the city saw the suc­cess of the mul­ti­ple-site option, they allowed the design team to gain anoth­er site along the cor­ri­dor. This mul­ti-site ini­tia­tive was what final­ly spurred com­mu­ni­ty accep­tance and excite­ment for the project.

What was once 60 units on one site was re-imag­ined onto two sites along the 79^th Street cor­ri­dor. The act of de-den­si­fy­ing the orig­i­nal pro­pos­al met the con­cerns that the com­mu­ni­ty voiced dur­ing the out­reach ses­sions. The orig­i­nal pro­pos­al site con­sists of 28 units atop ground-lev­el retail. A sus­pend­ed bridge con­nects the res­i­den­tial units on the upper floors while also float­ing above the ground plane to allow the pub­lic to be drawn into a plaza and park at the rear. The addi­tion­al site, which is two blocks away, con­sists of 30 units with ground-floor retail and a rooftop deck that wel­comes views of the Chica­go sky­line, some­thing promi­nent in north side neigh­bor­hoods, but not usu­al­ly found on the south side. Retail spaces in both build­ings are to be occu­pied by store-own­ers and ten­ants that rep­re­sent the community.

Client: Ever­green Real Estate Group & Imag­ine Devel­op­ment Group
Pro­gram: City of Chica­go INVEST South/​West Ini­tia­tive (Mixed-use Res­i­den­tial)
Size: Site 1: 40,655 sqft (30 units) – Site 2: 45,139 sqft (28 units with retail)
Cost: N/A

Col­lab­o­ra­tive Part­ners:
Nia Archi­tects (Asso­ciate Archi­tects)
IMEG Corp. (Mechan­i­cal, Elec­tri­cal, Plumb­ing, and Fire Pro­tec­tion Engi­neer)
Engage Civ­il Incor­po­rat­ed (Civ­il Engi­neer)
Stearn-Joglekar, Ltd. (Struc­tur­al Engi­neer)