The Aspire Center for Workforce Innovation opens this month after two years of construction, and about a decade of imagining and planning.
On a stretch of Madison Street that is seeing revitalization after decades of systemic disinvestment, the Aspire Center offers free workforce training, plus financial, legal, family and emotional services. But the building, the former and long-empty Robert Emmet Elementary School, is more than a 78,000-square-foot, $47 million investment in Austin.
“We don’t want our community to just visibly and physically change. We want the people to be a part of that,” said Darnell Shields, executive director of Austin Coming Together – which, with Westside Health Authority, helped develop the Aspire Center where both will now have their headquarters. Shields is also a member of the board of directors for Growing Community Media, which publishes the Austin Weekly News.
Shields took the Austin Weekly News on a first-look tour of the building ahead of its grand opening. Beyond the nearly completed Aspire Center’s expansive atrium addition, contractors are hurrying to finish work on areas for the building’s tenant organizations.
On the building’s first floor – in the former auditorium and gym of Emmet Elementary, which closed in 2013 – Jane Addams Resource Corporation offers free training for the trades in over 8,000 square feet of offices, learning space and machines.
Through JARC’s 10-to-16-week-long training sessions, participants can graduate with qualifications for trade jobs that pay up to $30 an hour. JARC will screen eligibility for those who want to be a part of their free training and, if they don’t qualify, they can start in the organization’s bridge program before beginning hands-on learning.
“The question isn’t if you can be a JARC candidate, but when,” Shields said. JARC estimates they will train over 2,000 West Siders in the next five years.
Also on the first floor of the Aspire Center, BMO bank provides financial planning services within 2,000 square feet. And ACT will move its headquarters to the center from Harrison Street. Though they will still make use of that building, their 7,000 square feet of new office and meeting space in the Aspire Center is about triple the amount they previously had.
On the building’s second floor, Westside Health Authority offers reentry services for those who have served time. JARC also offers training to those who are out of prison, as every year nearly 40% of their participants have a record.
The Law Office of the Cook County Public Defender and Legal Aid Chicago will also have space on the second floor to offer criminal, civil and domestic legal advice.
The Aspire Center property includes a vast amount of public space with a community plaza and POP! Park. Shields said that he’s already heard from children who enjoy using the track and field out front of the building, who, according to him, say, “‘My mom would never let me go to the park, but she lets me go here.’”
At the Aspire Center, anyone can hang out in the atrium and second-floor common space. There are several rooms on the building’s second level that can be reserved by anyone as a free meeting space.
The entire Aspire Center property has free public Wi-Fi. The center is partnering with Comcast to make the property a Lift Zone site, which has high-speed internet access in common areas while protecting digital information for tenant organizations. Comcast is also funding a laptop library, where visitors can check out computers, and the center is partnering with ScaleLIT to offer digital literacy training programs.
“There’s a big digital divide in our community,” Shields said. According to a 2022 report by Kids First Chicago, predominantly Black neighborhoods, like Austin, have a disconnected household rate of about 30%, largely because of a lack of affordable internet, computers and the training for how to use online resources.
The third floor marks what will be the second phase of the Aspire Center project. Construction will likely start in the fall to convert old classrooms into space to host community programming, events and conferences for up to 250 people.
“It’ll totally optimize the center,” Shields said, allowing them to host large groups without disrupting those using the center’s public space. It will also generate revenue, so use of much of the building can remain free to locals. “We want this place to be self-sustaining.”
Preserving history, looking forward
While the Aspire Center has about 20,000 square feet of new build onto what was once Emmet Elementary – including new electric, plumbing and HVAC systems – much of the original structure, built in 1893, has been preserved.
Emmet’s staircases remain, decorated with ornamental trims, as do the walls of the school’s high-ceilinged classrooms and wide hallways, lined with wooden seats that were once installed in the building’s auditorium and wooden lockers that have been turned into benches. Many of the hardwood floors are original and refinished, as are the door and window frames, though the doors and windows themselves have been replaced. Wooden built-ins still adorn some of the new office spaces and hallways, too.
“This building represents some of the most beautiful architecture,” Shields said of Emmet Elementary’s bones.
Shields added that the Aspire Center is only possible because of the Austin community. In 2018, Westside Health Authority bought the property. Though there were no plans for it yet, the organization wanted to keep it in the community.
Around the same time, ACT launched the Austin Forward Together plan. As a part of it, the Aspire Initiative aims to offer support for West Siders from early childhood to aging in place.
Westside Health Authority started the Aspire Center’s journey by purchasing the site for $75,000, though the building is now managed by a joint venture consisting of organizations that lead other parts of the Aspire Initiative. While the Aspire Center focuses on workforce development, By the Hand Club for Kids after-school program leads the youth education and wellness portion of the initiative. ACT plans to revitalize Austin College and Career Academy High School, focusing on teenaged children, in addition to uplifting the community around them.
“You can’t create a thriving neighborhood high school in a neighborhood that’s not thriving,” Shields said.
Finally, Aspire Housing provides shelter to residents throughout their lives, an initiative aided by By the Hand Club for Kids and Habitat for Humanity.
“That’s the continuum that all healthy communities look for and Austin hasn’t had,” Shields said of the four parts of the Aspire Initiative.
The creation of the Aspire Center was heavily influenced by community engagement, since the project’s leads wanted it to be built by Austin residents, for Austin residents.
“What we have been doing is a re-illumination of our connection … that connection allows us some stake and control of the system,” Shields said. “This is bigger than Austin. It’s a microcosm of a larger plight.”
And in turn, infrastructure like the Aspire Center helps continue the revitalization of Chicago’s West Side. A concentration of investment along Madison and Chicago Avenues can be seen in the construction of the HOPE Center in Austin, the Sankofa Wellness Village in Garfield Park, and the Aspire Center at 5500 W. Madison St.
Investment in the Aspire Center was funded by more than $40 million from a state grant, Chicago’s TIF funding, new market tax credit equity, plus Blue Cross Blue Shield, BMO, the Pritzker Traubert Foundation, and United Way.
RSVP to attend the Aspire Center grand opening on June 19 from noon to 7 p.m. here.