The Laramie State Bank building sits at the corner of Chicago Avenue and Laramie. Over decades, the remarkable art deco façade and its stunning interior have fallen into advanced stages of decay.
Now with an adjacent affordable apartment complex complete and being filled with tenants, the project’s developers – the Oak Park Regional Housing Center and Pivotal Housing Partners out of Cincinnati – are turning to restoring the bank building.
Athena Williams, executive director of the housing center, said, “This corner is such a significant piece for the Austin community, with that historic building being there.” Williams notes the project falls within the Soul City Corridor, a long imagined and now real project to create a cultural and commercial destination stretching along Chicago Avenue from Cicero Avenue to Austin Boulevard.
Williams, who helped lead the project through the housing center, noted that the site’s history and location made it uniquely vital to the surrounding neighborhood.
Plans for the historic bank building include bringing in another bank or a commercial business that could serve residents and the broader community.
For Williams, who grew up on the West Side, the development also offered an opportunity to give community members a greater say in how neighborhood investment takes shape.
“When this RFP (request for proposal) opened, it was really critical to me that this is something that someone or a group of people from the community should have ownership of and have a really big say about how it functions for the community,” she added.
The housing center also sought to make the apartments accessible to working residents while bringing investment into the neighborhood without displacing existing residents.
“I worked really hard to make sure that one, that this property was affordable to working residents in the Austin community,” said Williams, emphasizing that local workers deserve clean, quality rental options.
From February through July, the organization held two-hour rental workshops covering the application process, lease expectations and fair housing laws. Nearly 2,000 people participated in those workshops or visited the housing center during that period.
The organization ultimately collected 506 applications for the 78-unit development. The team initially expected move-ins to begin in late July or August, but residents did not begin moving in until September. Williams acknowledged that the delay caused some prospective tenants to lose interest, though the team continued working with remaining applicants.