WEST ENGLEWOOD — City Council approved more than $4.6 million Wednesday to help developers transform a long-vacant West Englewood school into affordable housing and social services offices.
Developers at Wisconsin-based Gorman & Company were approved for up to $4.2 million in tax-increment financing and up to $462,658 in Multi-Family TIF to repurpose Charles Warrington Earle School into affordable housing. The project first received City Council approval in September.
Former Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed Earle along with 49 other schools more than a decade ago.
Earle School Family Residences, 6121 S. Hermitage Ave., will have 50 affordable apartments, a computer lab, fitness center, community room, laundry room, bike storage and 50 parking spaces, developers previously shared at a Plan Commission meeting.
All 50 apartments — 30 one-bedroom apartments and 20 two-bedroom units — will qualify for neighbors earning between 15-60 percent of the average median income. Englewood’s median income is about $24,429, according to a July 2023 report from the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning.
The development will also have wraparound services for individuals and families at risk of homelessness provided by the Phoenix Foundation.
The total cost to build the affordable housing development is about $33 million, Ron Clewer, Illinois Market President at Gorman & Company, told Block Club.
In addition to TIF dollars, the project has been approved for about $17.5 million in funding from the Illinois Housing Authority and received support from other sources, including ComEd, Clewer said.
Gorman & Company, operating under Earle School, LLC, has set a closing date of May 1 and anticipates construction to take 18 months, Clewer said.
If all goes as planned, Earle School Family Residences will welcome its first families by winter 2025, Clewer said.
“Housing is needed within the Englewood community, and what better way to accomplish that than to repurpose a vacant and blighted building and bring a vibrant necessity,” Clewer said. “We’re excited to get it under construction and have it serve a great purpose to the people of Englewood.”
The Earle School Family Residences has been seven years in the making, Clewer said.
Developers first met with Ald. Raymond Lopez (15th), whose ward includes the school, in 2017 to discuss the project, Clewer said. Gorman & Company bought the building in 2017 for $200,000.
Gorman & Company joined community organizations Teamwork Englewood, Resident Association of Greater Englewood and E.G. Woode to form an Earle School outreach team. Developers wanted to connect directly with the community to prioritize their visions for the project, Clewer said.
At the time, neighbors wanted the vacant school to be repurposed, not torn down, Clewer said. They also wanted housing and a gathering space.
The affordable housing project checks neighbors’ boxes while not pricing people out of the community, Clewer said.
Earle School Family Residences is an adaptive historic reuse project — a strategy often used by the city to redress historic disinvestment by preserving vacant buildings on the South and West sides. Earle School was built in 1897 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2021.
At a meeting at Lindblom High School, students emphasized how important the arts were to the former school, Clewer said. The school once had vibrant murals adorning its walls.
Developers preserved some of those murals painted in the late ‘90s and early 2000s and will have them printed on vinyl and put back on the walls, Clewer said.
Repurposing Earle School is the first phase of the West Englewood project, Clewer said.
Phase two of the development will bring more housing to a vacant lot next to the former school, Clewer said. The townhome-like structure could have more than 100 apartments, depending on the final design, he said.
In phase three of the project, developers will transform “blighted and vacant buildings” near the school into single-family homes, he said.
The hope is to encourage other investors to believe in and help the community as it goes through a “renaissance,” Clewer said.
“My hope for the future is to prove to those who doubted the school could be saved that it could be repurposed into something productive,” Clewer said. “Englewood residents are amongst the most hopeful, engaged and caring residents. The people who live here deserve this.”
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