Community Renewal Good Stories - Chicago

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Neighborhood Rallies To Create Health and Education Center

Chicago, Illinois, EZ

The Austin Wellness and Educational Center owes its existence to the surrounding community. From groundbreaking to ribbon-cutting, local residents helped shape nearly every aspect of this new facility in the Chicago EZ.

With a $2.5 million EZ grant, Westside Health Authority set out to construct a new healthcare facility in the Austin community, a traditionally underserved area on the west side of Chicago. From the outset, the community was involved. Area residents raised $60,000 for the center through grassroots fundraising events such as Friday night fish fries and a gospel fest. Most impressively, more than half of the participating contractors were neighborhood residents.

African-American contractors comprised 55 percent of the total, and 33 percent of those contractors were from the neighborhood. For many contractors, the center's development was their first commercial project. The project timeline was extended to provide technical assistance, support, and training to the less-experienced contractors. The result was that 27 local residents were hired into various union trades and 11 residents from Westside Health Authority's ex-offender employment project were hired as union apprentices.

The two-story 28,500-square-foot Austin Wellness and Educational Center houses a clinic that provides a range of primary healthcare services, including pediatrics, family and internal medicine, and an urgent-care center. The center operates a 16-station kidney dialysis center for patients, many of whom used to travel to a nearby suburban hospital for treatment. When fully operational, the center will have added some 200 new jobs to the community.

For more information on the programs of the Chicago EZ, please contact Program Manager Gerry Berman at (312) 744-9745.