CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — They’re calling it Englewood Connect: a nearly $14 million culinary food hub to be located in the restored Engine Company No. 84 Firehouse, a landmarked building.
It’s the latest project in Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s prized Invest South-West initiative. Lightfoot said this was a true community partnership.
“We want local community members to have a hand in designing and shaping all of these Invest South-West developments,” Lightfoot said. “This project is also creating, as you heard, 70 construction jobs, and upward of 47 permanent jobs for Englewood residents.”
Planning and Development Commissioner Maurice Cox said the project will create a new community anchor in the heart of Englewood. There will be a commercial kitchen and event space.
“It’s also the beginning of a new phase, a phase where we will no longer demolish our history,” Cox said. “The demolition stops, and we will reuse those precious resources we have, and we will build this web of investment around it.”
Cox added that the project is part of an effort to reduce the city’s need for new buildings.
Ald. Stephanie Coleman (16th) said Englewood Connect gives her a lot to look forward to.
“I’m so excited for the hundreds of jobs that will be produced,” Coleman said. “I’m excited about the small business, and Black and brown people that we’ll see — and then the children, as we just had 5,000 people last week at the Englewood Music Fest with no incidentals.”
Developer Zeb McLaurin said this is precisely what Invest South-West is all about.
“To champion and siphon those resources and redirect them to areas that heretofore have not garnered them. So thank you very much, all of you, collectively, for forcing us to do what we all should have been doing for a very long time.”
City support for the project includes some $6 million in tax-increment financing and selling the firehouse, as well as two acres of land, to the developers for $1.
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