'Always Growing, Auburn Gresham' awarded $10 million 'Chicago Prize' from Pritzker Traubert Foundation

"Always Growing, Auburn Gresham" was announced as the winner of the Pritzker Traubert Foundation’s $10 million Chicago Prize on August 6. The foundation also had a surprise: that the five other finalists for the prize will share a $2.5 million matching fund, which will infuse $5 million into their South and West Side communities.

The Chicago Prize is dedicated to trying to make life in Chicago better, trustees Bryan Traubert and Penny Pritzker said in the announcement video. “One of the biggest challenges in Chicago is that not everyone has the same opportunities,” said Pritzker, secretary of the U.S. Dept. of Commerce under President Obama. ”Bryan and I have a fundamental belief there is leadership across the city, who know what their communities need.”

Traubert said he listened to dreams and aspirations of people across the city in six years as Chicago Park District president. “There was never a shortage of good people who had good ideas, but of resources to carry out those ideas,” he said.

Always Growing Auburn Gresham is led by Carlos Nelson of the Greater Auburn Gresham Development Corporation, by Erika Allen of Urban Growers Collective and by Jason Feldman of Green Era Partners. The project has three components, which will be conducted in vacant buildings, on vacant land, with no displacement:

• a Healthy Life style Hub in a 1920s terra cotta building – empty for decades – that will house health education, oral and mental health care

• an Urban Farm Campus with year-round production of organic produce to be sold at a low cost that will also be a site for STEM youth education

• Green Era, a self-sustainable anaerobic digester that will produce compost and renewable energy.

Located at the northwest corner of 83rd and Wallace Streets, the nine-acre Green Era Renewable Energy and Urban Farming campus is the $32 million redevelopment of a brownfield in Auburn Gresham. Construction will create an economic boost with an initial 240 construction jobs and 47 permanent ones after completion in spring 2022.

On August 7, Urban Growers Collective and Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced that the state will provide an additional $2 million toward construction of the nine-acre campus.

The seven-acre urban farm will offer nutritional food for residents facing systemic food apartheid on the city’s South and West Sides, it will expand the agricultural nonprofit’s city-wide impact and its mission to diminish systemic racism, and it will heal communities through urban agriculture, Urban Growers Collective officials said in a news release. Compost will be produced for farmers throughout the city. There will be community garden plots, native plant habitats, butterfly gardens and flowers.

The campus will include 13,000 square feet of greenhouse space, expected to grow 14,000 – 26,000+ pounds of organic produce per year. Fresh produce grown on the site, including kale, collard greens, eggplant, tomatoes and more, will be sold at the on-site produce stand or distributed to other “food deserts” via Urban Growers Collective’s Fresh Moves Mobile Market, a bus that will make weekly stops at South and West Side public schools and community and health centers including Howard Brown Health Center, King Health, Heartland Alliance and others.

In partnership with Chicago Public Schools, including Leo High School and Simeon High School, Green Era will offer a STEM curriculum centered on environmentally conscious urban farming, vermicomposting, urban gardening planning, seeding, entrepreneurship, and green engineering. Green Era is partnering with Black Chicago Tomorrow and the City of Chicago to develop workforce training, prioritizing hiring for local residents as well as individuals with barriers to re-entry.

The self-sustainable anaerobic digester housed on the campus will compost food waste to renewable energy and nutrient-rich soil. As an alternative to landfills, Urban Growers Collective will partner with local restaurants and factories so that food waste and other vegetation will be brought into the fully-enclosed processing facility and broken down by natural microorganisms. The process will also produce biogas, which will be collected and utilized for energy. Approximately 85,000 tons of organic waste will be recycled through a natural, biological process, offsetting approximately 42,500 of CO2 per year.

The revenues of the digester will be reinvested into the community – an ongoing benefit, noted Penny Pritzker.

Green Era has committed to hiring locally and from disadvantaged communities at all skill levels for the construction and permanent jobs. In partnership with Heartland Alliance, Urban Growers Collective will expand its READI program for formerly incarcerated men to pursue a career path.

Funding is provided in part from a $2 million Rebuild Illinois grant and $1 million loan from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, supported through the state and federal New Market Tax Credits programs. There are also commitments from several local funding partners: IFF, Reinvestment Fund, Chicago Community Loan Fund, the MacArthur Foundation’s Benefit Chicago, and many others.

“By investing in communities of color with a focus on key industries including agribusiness, renewable energy, ag tech and manufacturing, we are growing the jobs of the future in the community,” said Michael Negron, acting director of the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity (DCEO). “The timing of this project could not be better to promote an equitable recovery in a community that has been disproportionately hit hard by the health and economic effects of COVID-19 and for too long has experienced disinvestment.”

The $2.5 million matching fund could potentially infuse $1 million into each of the other finalists’ projects:

• Austin’s Aspire Initiative to build a stronger cradle to grave pipeline. Its Quality of Life plan will create four investments in the area bounded by Madison, Chicago, Central and Laramie Avenues. These investments will include a state of art early learning, health and recreation center; a new high school; an economic hub that connects low-income residents with real opportunities and 60 units of affordable housing for purchase so that residents can build wealth. Partners include the West Side Health Authority, LISC Chicago, Austin Coming Together and more.

• Englewood Go Green on Racine, located at 63rd and Racine, which would include a Fresh Market cooperative; a mixed-use development of 12 residential units, E.G. Woode’s business incubator and 24/7 co-working facility, a food retailer and a hyperlocal recycling enterprise that would repurpose the vacant Woods Academy to generate 55 permanent living wage jobs. Partners include the Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN), Teamwork Englewood, Resident Association of Greater Englewood (RAGE) and E.G. Woode.

• Little Village – Creating a Solidarity Community, in which the Delta Institute and Little Village Environmental Justice Organization would turn a former Chicago Fire Department station at 2358 S. Whipple into a commercial kitchen and satellite retail storefront so that 150 food vendors could use professional grade equipment to offer food for sale. LVEJO could also create a sustainable food network with compost produced at another site and offer other programming.

• North Lawndale – Now is the Time, Advancing North Lawndale Together – whose partners include Lawndale Christian Development Corporation, North Lawndale Employment Network, Sinai Health System and more, which focused on working families ready to own their own homes, low-income families in need of affordable housing, access to health care, and remediating blighted buildings and vacant lots.

• South Chicago We’re Steel Here, which would incorporate local waterfront and business corridors connecting to Commercial Avenue, leveraging prime thoroughfares that embrace transit-oriented development and green technology. In addition to 78 units of affordable housing and a quality grocery store, there would be a wellness center and business incubator, two athletic facilities, a performing arts center and natural play space. Partners include Claretian Associates, Interfaith Housing Development Corporation, Our Lady of Guadalupe parish and school, Neighbor Space, 10th ward Ald. Susan Garza and more.

–Suzanne Hanney, from online and email sources