Auburn Gresham’s Healthy Lifestyle Hub Will Open This Month On 79th Street, Bringing New Life To A Long-Vacant Building

AUBURN GRESHAM — A South Side healthy living center will before long open up on 79th Avenue, bringing neighborhood essentials to the local community, just about two decades just after winning a $10 million citywide prize.

The Healthy Way of life Hub, 839 W. 79th St., will open July 29, claimed Carlos Nelson, director of the Higher Auburn Gresham Enhancement Corporation. 

The progress corporation, which spearheaded the hub, will celebrate the grand opening with a ribbon-reducing ceremony, Nelson said. A time has nonetheless to be determined. 

Credit score: Furnished

The four-story Healthy Way of life Hub will house a myriad of tenants, which include Mikkey’s Retro Grill, Bank of The united states, UI Health, Huge Brothers Major Sisters of Illinois and a UIC Neighborhood Heart. The Illinois Tollway will train Black and Brown group users at the hub for careers with the corporation, Nelson explained. 

A UI Health Clinic and Urgent Care Middle will occupy the full 2nd floor and a part of the 3rd. The clinic will supply medical, dental and mental health products and services. It’s envisioned to provide much more than 30,000 patients for every calendar year, Nelson reported. 

A higher-tech kitchen and schooling heart sponsored by the Chicago Bears will open up on the initial ground, offering neighborhood cooks, neighbors and pupils a spot to master healthy cooking. A cafe has by now been created to property a regional coffee store. The hub will also present cost-free wifi all over the constructing.

Nelson mentioned the finest allure of all will be the 18-by-18-foot home windows on the to start with ground. The oversized home windows will “bring in gentle and light up 79th Street and Auburn Gresham, figuratively and actually,” Nelson reported. 

“We did not style this based mostly on dread,” Nelson explained. “We want ground-to-ceiling windows. We want windows all in excess of the damn put. We want people to know that this is a group just like Downtown, West Loop or any other local community that is on the increase and has a substantial quality of existence.”

Credit score: Offered

The website of the hub was once residence to the Rusnak Bros. Furniture Shop and Showroom, which opened in 1925. The setting up experienced bricked-in home windows on pretty much every floor with ground-flooring retail, Nelson said.

In the 1970s, the constructing became a dim public support office with no home windows, Nelson explained.

For several years, the setting up stood vacant. But after the improvement corporation bought to perform, they applied “a lot of dollars and a good deal of time” to restore it and add anything new, Nelson stated.

They took “painstaking actions to protect the terra cotta of this building” and “cored out” the heart of the making to insert an elevator, Nelson reported. They also “blasted out windows” on each individual flooring, he claimed.

Credit rating: Offered

Vital funding and donations helped the progress corporation reconstruct and protect the approximately 100-yr-aged creating, Nelson explained.

In 2020, the Healthy Lifestyle Hub was the winner of the Pritzker Traubert Foundation’s $10 million Chicago Prize. The hub also acquired $4 million from the city’s Devote South/West system. 

The Bears donated more than $600,000 to energy the high-tech kitchen, Nelson reported. Organizations like Whirlpool and Kohler donated appliances and fixtures for the bathrooms and places of work, as effectively.

The hub will shift the narrative for neighbors who have only observed a looming, vacant developing in their community, Nelson stated.

“Almost 30 graduating lessons at Leo Substantial University have walked earlier this bricked-up vacant creating, and it turned a backdrop of their existence,” Nelson said. “For me, it was significant for us to style this from a standpoint that says, ‘Hey, young ones, we dwell in a spot that is just like the West Loop.’”

Credit history: Presented

The Healthy Hub is a single of quite a few tasks the Greater Auburn Gresham Improvement Company has up its sleeve, Nelson explained. 

Of the $10 million awarded by the Pritzker Traubert Foundation, about $5 million went to the Eco-friendly Period Campus, a renewable vitality and city farm development at 650 W. 83rd St. conceived by the Auburn Gresham team and nonprofits Urban Growers Collective and Environmentally friendly Era Partners, Nelson claimed. 

And $1 million will go toward reworking the vacant 300,000-sq.-foot Calumet Substantial College, 8131 S. Could St., into “something that rewards the local community, and the group has ownership of,” Nelson said. 

The team will also attempt to repurpose vacant storefronts in the neighborhood.

In the latest decades, a Preserve A Good deal grocery retail store, a CVS, a Bank of The usa branch and a BJ’s Sector & Bakery have shut. Most not too long ago, a local Aldi unexpectedly shuttered, stunning neighbors.

The Healthy Lifestyle Hub will deliver a pharmacy and lender again to the local community. The corporation is working to “address the foods insecurity piece,” Nelson reported.

And if all goes nicely, vacant outlets like the CVS and Lender of The united states will turn out to be health and wellness campuses operated by the company, Nelson mentioned. 

“If there was a regional entity or owner that experienced possession in the community, we most likely would not have woken up to a vacant 13,000-square-foot making,” Nelson explained. “We’re genuinely advertising local community ownership. Developing community wealth is at the forefront of our attempts.”

Credit history: Colin Boyle/Block Club Chicago

Throughout the avenue from the hub, Auburn Gardens, a $40 million reasonably priced housing progress, will spring to lifetime. Down the street, a $35 million Metra station is set for 2024. 

Before long, neighbors will have all their desires just techniques from their houses.  Auburn Gresham is on the transfer, Nelson explained. 

“My intention is that by homeownership and constructing wealth in the group, we can display other people that you can afford to pay for one of the households, one particular of the bungalows, and obtain your first dwelling in Auburn Gresham,” Nelson said. 

Subscribe to Block Club Chicago, an impartial, 501(c)(3), journalist-run newsroom. Each and every dime we make funds reporting from Chicago’s neighborhoods.

Click here to guidance Block Club with a tax-deductible donation. 

Thanks for subscribing to Block Club Chicago, an independent, 501(c)(3), journalist-run newsroom. Every dime we make funds reporting from Chicago’s neighborhoods. Click right here to help Block Club with a tax-deductible donation.

Listen to “It’s All Great: A Block Club Chicago Podcast”: