East Garfield Park residents responded to the proposal to build an athletics and culture hub on the two city-owned lots near the intersection of Madison Street and Fifth Avenue with curiosity and skepticism.
The proposed redevelopment of the .95-acre site at 2905-29 W. Madison St. and 2900-14 W. Fifth Ave. is part of a broader city effort to revitalize the Madison Street corridor on the Near West Side and into East and West Garfield Parks. The Chicago Department of Planning and Developing received two proposals. On Jan. 14, it announced that it picked the proposal spearheaded by The Brim Foundation and P3 Markets to build a 30,000-square-foot Madison Street Athletic & Cultural Complex, which will offer classes and programs for local youth.
On Feb. 19, the city department held a community meeting at BandWith [sic] performing arts center to share more details. The presentation described a three-story building that would include athletic fields, a music studio, an event space and a rooftop community garden, among other amenities. Throughout the presentation, the development team emphasized that what they were presenting was not a final design, and that they would take community feedback into account.
The project still needs to clear some zoning changes and would most likely require city funding.
The project follows the approach pioneered under then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s Invest South/West initiative, which steered development toward South and West sides by inviting development teams to submit their ideas for how to redevelop large, usually city-owned lots. While the participials changed over the years and the city phased out the Invest South/West branding, the idea has always been to bring together nonprofits, developers and architects to create a development that would include some combination of residential, retail and cultural amenities and be financed through some combination of city, state and private funds.
Madison Street was the West Side’s busiest and most vibrant commercial corridor until the riots that erupted in the wake of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968. The Madison Street Corridor Study is just the latest in the long line of projects and initiatives that seek to revitalize the corridor.
The Brim Foundation was founded by TV host and actor Sterling “Steelo” Brim last year. While he currently lives on the West Coast, he grew up in East Garfield Park. Keisha Parham, the project manager for the foundation, said Brim wanted to give back to his home community, and creating something that will help kids become athletes and creatives was a good start. She said they see the Athletic & Cultural Complex as a “a cornerstone project,” the first of many investments to come.
Other team members include P3 Markets development firm, bKL [sic] Architecture firm and Bowa Construction company,
The Feb. 19 meeting included a presentation, followed by an “open house” where residents could look at display boards and ask questions directly to development team members and department staff.
During the presentation, Biran Hacker, a city planner spearheading the West Side projects, said the city originally put three Madison Street properties out to bid. While he said his department received bids for all three “clusters,” it felt that only The Brim proposal could attract enough private funding to make it viable.
“We want to make sure we’re financing projects that we feel are viable,” he said. Unfortunately, we didn’t receive applications we felt were viable for the other clusters.”
Hacker said other factors the city considered included how the proposals aligned with existing community plans and priorities.
Issac Persley, the director at bKL, said that the ground floor will include a cafe, a wellness center, and an indoor baseball diamond. There will be another athletic field outdoors, on the south portion of the site.
Parham told Austin Weekly News that the cafe is a “concept” that still needs to be fleshed out.
The second floor would include a music studio and a creative arts space. The third floor would have a training kitchen, a cafe that would sell some food the students make, and the event space.
As Persley acknowledged, the development will displace a community garden that’s been on the lots for 10 years. To make up for that loss, they plan to include a rooftop garden that the community will be able to use.
“We know there is a community garden on the site; we know it’s well-used,” he said. “We want to keep it.”
He said the development team will be working with artist Theaster Gates and his Rebuild Foundation to incorporate art into the building design. Persley said they wanted to involve local artists as well.
Steven Stultz, an East Garfield Park pastor who objected to many development proposals over concerns that they would encourage gentrification, told Austin Weekly News that while he believed the city “had the agenda of gentrification and displacement,’ he believed it possible to avert that.
“I believe in the sincere intentions of the people behind the project,” he said. “I hope we can work with them to stabilize the community.”
Angela Taylor is the wellness director at the Garfield Park Community Council and the founder of the Garfield Park Garden Network. She told Austin Weekly News that the proposed redevelopment left the future of the current garden uncertain.
“We keep on waiting to find out – do we need to leave? When do we need to leave?” Taylor said. “We can’t get a clear answer.”
She said she wasn’t impressed with the presentation.
“[The development team] is not here asking what the community would like to see – they’re just telling us what it’s going to be,” Taylor said. “I’m a community person. I would like to see them build what the community likes to see.”
P3 co-founder Juan Saldana III told Austin Weekly News they expect the project to cost around $38 million to $42 million. The city is willing to provide up to $10 million in grants to help with the startup costs, though they will require city council approval. Ald. Walter Redmond Burnett (27th), whose ward includes all three clusters, told Austin Weekly News he expected them to get some Tax Increment Financing fundings.
The project site is part of the vast Midwest TIF, which encompasses most of East Garfield Park and significant portions of North Lawndale and West Garfield Park. The TIF had over $87 million available at the end of 2024, the most recent year for which TIF data is available.
During the presentation, Burnett said he liked the city’s pick because it would provide opportunities for local kids and generally bring in investment “we’ve been missing for years.”
