Austin community residents, civic leaders and developers celebrated on Monday at a beam-raising event for the Austin HOPE Center, a $22 million development that will provide pediatric health care services hard to find on the Chicago's West Side.
Builders plan to complete the 25,000-square-foot, three-story facility at 5036 W. Chicago Ave. by late summer 2026. It's the culmination of a yearslong effort to identify and address unmet health care needs in the Austin neighborhood, where life expectancy is far lower than in the city's wealthiest neighborhoods.
"During the pandemic, I saw an uptick in trauma and a mental health crisis," said the Rev. Contrell Jenkins, CEO of Stone Community Development Corp. and pastor of Lively Stone M.B. Church. He knew several young people who either committed suicide or fell victim to violence and substance abuse. "I was doing what I could on the spiritual side, but as a pastor I began to feel overwhelmed and underequipped."
Jenkins forged partnerships with developer Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives and Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago. All primary health care providers in Austin were surveyed, along with many community residents, to find out which services were not locally available at affordable rates.
"What you can't do as an academic institution like ourselves is go into a community and tell them what to do," said Dr. Tom Shanley, president and CEO of Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago. "The fine-tuning of the clinical programming was dictated by the community, and even the design of the building itself was formed by the community."
Most needed were pediatric specialty care services, especially mental health care, behavioral health and clinics to address chronic conditions such as asthma, high blood pressure and sickle cell disease, Jenkins said. Young Austin residents, ranging from sixth graders to high school seniors, were deeply involved in designing the space, even choosing its color scheme and name.
"We wanted to make sure they would take personal ownership of the space, and that's what happened," Jenkins said.
Life expectancy in Austin is seven years lower than the citywide average, and nearly 16 years less than the Loop, according to the Chicago Department of Public Health's Chicago Health Atlas. Hospitalizations for preventable conditions are more than twice as high for neighborhoods such as Austin as compared with affluent neighborhoods, the department found.
"Right now, your ZIP code means more to your health outcomes than your genetic code, and that's a sad statement," Shanley said. But Austin HOPE Center will help people manage chronic disease, and "that will start generationally to have an impact. We're going to make sure we do our part."
The center will also include a full-service Wintrust Bank branch, spaces for educational programs and administrative offices for Thresholds' community-based mental health services for adults. Stone CDC will own the property and lease space to Lurie and Thresholds.
"It's great to see this level of investment going into Austin, especially because it's in response to the specific needs of the community," said David Doig, president of Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives. "I lived in Austin for about 20 years, and I can tell you this is one of the single largest investments into the community in decades."
Chicago Neighborhood Initiatives helped arrange financing for Austin HOPE Center, including a $5 million grant from the city and private financing through New Market Tax Credits.
Other recent major neighborhood investments include the opening of Forty Acres Fresh Market at 5713 W. Chicago Ave., which bills itself as Chicago's only Black-owned grocery store, the transformation of a former school at 5500 W. Madison St. into the Aspire Center for Workforce Innovation and the redevelopment of the historic Mars Wrigley factory site.
Doig said he hopes the new investments will spur job creation and eventually help reverse Austin's decades-long population decline.
"For too long, Austin residents have paid more -- financially and emotionally -- for the same basic health services others take for granted," said Ald. Emma Mitts, 37th.