Highlights

Lightfoot expands year-old program aimed at bridging digital divide

• Fran Spielman and Nader Issa
• Chicago Sun Times

Chicago Public high school graduates would be guaranteed three more months of free, high-speed internet service — and those going on to City Colleges would get the perk for up to three years — thanks to an extension of a groundbreaking program bankrolled in part by Illinois’ richest man.

“True inclusion requires providing equitable tools, resources, and pathways to all Chicagoans. Chicago Connected does just that by providing the opportunity for our fellow citizens to have access to the tools, skills and know-how to thrive in the 21st Century,” said Penny Pritzker, Trustee of Pritzker Traubert Foundation and former U.S. Secretary of Commerce.

Carlos Nelson will forever be associated with QB Justin Fields. Here’s how the Auburn Gresham community leader got to the NFL stage weeks after losing his father, an avid Chicago Bears fan.

• Colleen Kane
• Chicago Tribune

Carlos Nelson, director of Greater Auburn Gresham Development Corporation and a Chicago Prize 2020 recipient, is featured in today’s Chicago Tribune. Read the inspirational story behind his lifelong love for the Chicago Bears and how it brought him to the historic NFL 2021 draft.

Penny Pritzker on how Chicago is enticing top tier tech talent amid labor crunch

• Yahoo Finance

Penny Pritzker, Former Commerce Secretary joins the Yahoo Finance live panel to discuss P33’s kick-off of the ‘Come Back to Move Forward’ campaign to recruit and retain 10,000 diverse tech professionals to Chicago over the next two years.

A New Housing Complex Could Be Coming To Auburn Gresham. Here’s How To Weigh In With Feedback

• Jamie Nesbitt Golden
• Block Club Chicago

Developers want to bring 56 units of affordable housing along 79th Street in Auburn Gresham, and city leaders want public input.

Auburn Gardens is a $20 million, retail and residential development planned for city-owned vacant land at 838-58 W. 79th St. It would be across the street from a healthy living center currently under construction. That project won the $10 million Chicago Prize last year.

An online survey is available now through Jan. 29 to allow residents to vote on aspects of the proposal and share feedback.

U of I Board of Trustees approves Mile Square lease

• University of Illinois System

The University of Illinois Board of Trustees approved a lease on Thursday for a new Mile Square health clinic in Auburn Gresham that will bring vital healthcare access to the underserved community on Chicago’s far south side.

The UI Health Mile Square Health Center will be the sole healthcare provider in the newly renovated Auburn Gresham Healthy Lifestyle Hub located at 79th Street and Halsted Avenue in Chicago. Mile Square will have more than 11,700 square feet of space in the building, including 12 patient rooms, six dental suites, a procedure room and an on-site phlebotomy lab.

The new center is part of the Greater Auburn Gresham Development Corporation’s (GAGDC) “Always Growing, Auburn Gresham” project. Last August, the project was awarded the first Chicago Prize, a $10 million grant competition sponsored by the Pritzker Traubert Foundation to invest in collaborative community-based initiatives that stimulate economic activity, strengthen civic infrastructure, and improve the safety, well-being, and economic mobility of residents on the city’s south and/or west sides. In addition, the city of Chicago committed $4 million in federal CARES Act funding to the Healthy Lifestyle Hub in July, as part of the city’s “Invest South/West” initiative.

South Chicago’s Long-Planned Affordable Housing, Retail Development On 92nd Street Set To Open In 2 Years

• Maxwell Evans
• Block Club Chicago

A development at 92nd Street and Burley Avenue, in the works for more than a decade, is set to bring dozens of affordable housing units and more retail to South Chicago by 2023.

The S.A.C.R.E.D project will redevelop the mostly vacant properties at 3211–3229 E. 92nd St.. In the planning stages since 2010, the $30 million project is being spearheaded by nonprofit Claretian Associates in partnership with Interfaith Housing Development Corporation.

The two projects were part of the neighborhood’s submission for last year’s $10 million Chicago Prize, which was awarded to a planned health center, urban farm and renewable energy campus in Auburn Gresham.

However, as a Chicago Prize finalist, South Chicago is eligible for a $500,000 matching grant from the Pritzker Traubert Foundation.

Auburn Gresham Health Hub Lands TIF Assistance

• Connect Chicago

A vacant, four-story building in the South Side’s Auburn Gresham neighborhood will be redeveloped as a healthy living hub through Tax Increment Financing (TIF) assistance approved recently by the Chicago City Council. The $15.9-million project at 839-45 W. 79th St. will include medical offices for anchor tenant UI Health.

TIF assistance up to $2.1 million will support the 51,000-square-foot project by the Greater Auburn-Gresham Development Corp., which will move its headquarters into the building. Other funding sources will include $4 million from the Community Development Block Grant program, a $3-million Chicago Prize grant from the Pritzker Traubert Foundation, $2.8 million in New Markets Tax Credit equity, and a private loan.

With The Competition For The Chicago Prize Behind Them, South And West Side Community Organizations Keep Doing The Work

• Jonathan Dale, South Side Weekly
• Patch

In August, the Pritzker Traubert Foundation’s inaugural Chicago Prize awarded $10 million to an Auburn Gresham community development project. The Prize competition, seeking to fund a project “using physical development to spur economic activity,” was a citywide spectacle, as the judges whittled down an initial eighty entrants to six finalists before choosing the sole winner. The five other finalists continue to do essential neighborhood work, often where the city fails. These projects, like the one from Auburn Gresham that took the purse, are the visions of self-determined Black and brown communities. All six also still face a significant funding gap.

The Greater Auburn Gresham Development Corporation, in partnership with Urban Growers Collective and Green ERA, won the Chicago Prize with “Always Growing Auburn Gresham,” a multi-site plan that includes a “healthy lifestyle hub” at 79th and Halsted and an urban farming campus at 83rd and Halsted. This will bring jobs, food, healthcare, and money into the neighborhood, while also creating an anchor of growth in an area that has withstood decades of racist city policy, redlining, and other forms of systemic disinvestment.

Chicago’s Auburn Gresham Neighborhood Begins Multi-Million Dollar Urban Agriculture Plan

• Steve Bynum
• WBEZ - Reset

Reset gets an update from the leaders behind Chicago’s “Always Growing Auburn Gresham” project. The team recently won the $10 million Chicago Prize, a grant sponsored by the Pritzker Traubert Foundation.

GUESTS: Karen Weigert, executive vice president at Slipstream, a clean energy innovation non-profit; former chief sustainability officer at the city of Chicago

Carlos Nelson, executive director of Greater Auburn-Gresham Development Corporation

Erika Allen, co-founder and CEO of Urban Growers Collective

Letter to the Editor: Historic Pullman and generous donors

• Will Shafroth and Robert Rivkin, NPF
• Chicago Sun Times

When Pullman National Monument was designated in 2015, the core feature of the site, the historic Clock Tower, and the surrounding grounds required significant and costly restoration. The National Park Foundation and philanthropists stepped up, contributing generously, and committed to raise additional funds needed to launch the project and to assure its success…

To date, private donors have contributed $10.5 million, including the generous support of the Pritzker Traubert Foundation, the Union Pacific Foundation and the Fund II Foundation.