After seven years in the making, the Aspire Center for Workforce Innovation will open in the spring.
The Aspire Center for Workforce Innovation, as its name suggests, will be a space for free training for trades and career development. But it will also offer services to support financial, legal, emotional, and familial aspects of life.
“It’s also what the center is looking to achieve – what happens within the building and how it transforms individuals’ lives,” said Darnell Shields, executive director of Austin Coming Together – one of the organizations planning and developing the Aspire Center – and a member of the board of directors for Growing Community Media, which publishes the Austin Weekly News.
In a webinar update on the Aspire Center for Workforce Innovation Jan. 21, Shields said it will be a place where “Austin residents imagine making the impossible possible, go beyond their limits, and achieve their highest potential in building wealth.”
ACT is moving its headquarters to the Aspire Center, and the building will also house the Jane Addams Resource Corporation, a workforce trade agency that provides free training. The center is estimated to train more than 2,000 West Siders by 2030. Tenants will also include the Westside Health Authority, which will provide services for reentry and youth development, and BMO Harris for advising and financial planning services.
West Side Health Authority’s sub-tenants will be the Law Office of the Cook County Defender and Legal Aid Chicago.
Other Aspire Center services on the building’s first and second floors will include recruitment, intake, coordination and referrals for workforce advancement. It will also support small business development by keeping businesses informed on opportunities and referring them to partners with resources and incubators, plus hosting events and pop-up vendors at the Aspire Center.
Though the building’s third floor is not yet leased out, Shields said, for now, it will serve as a space for organizations working in partnership with tenants to feature community programming.
Throughout the Aspire Center, there is ample public space for those who reserve it to hold meetings and community events. Anyone can visit the building, even if they’re not participating in programs there, to use public Wi-Fi and other free resources. The center also boasts a cafe, community plaza and one of the city’s POP! parks.
The base of the Aspire Center for Workforce Innovation has been constructed. Now, tenants are building out their spaces, except for BMO, which is designing its space and submitting building permits. After tenants move into the building and staff are hired to run the Aspire Center, there will be a grand opening come April.
Aspire Center partners are holding community tours ahead of the grand opening, as well as Hub 101s, where locals can meet anchor tenants through a Facebook Live on Austin Coming Together’s Facebook page.
“This center will be operated to the level of success that will meet the needs of Austin residents and possibly even the greater West Side once we get going,” Shields said. “We really believe this place is going to be a game changer in our community.”
Awakening the Aspire Center
The seed for the Aspire Center was planted nearly a decade ago, when Robert Emmet Elementary School closed in 2013. After serving the Austin area for over a century, Emmet was one of 50 Chicago Public Schools that shuttered that year. But locals knew they wanted to keep and develop the land at the corner of Madison and Central.
A few years later, conversations started about how to repurpose the lot. Locals made it clear that they wanted the project to include existing community resource partners, rather than outside developers, and pitched a building that houses job training programs.
In 2018, the lot was bought by Westside Health Authority, a nonprofit that aims to improve the health and well-being of Austin and its surrounding communities. The purchase was “to ensure that the redevelopment will reflect the community’s vision and needs,” Shields said.
Around the same time, ACT was developing its Austin Forward Together plan, and with it, the Aspire Initiative. Along with the Aspire Center for Workforce Innovation, the initiative aims to revitalize the area bound by Madison, Chicago, Central, and Laramie Avenues. In the future, the Aspire Initiative will include an education and wellness campus, housing, and a reinvention of the Austin College and Career Academy.
The Aspire Center for Workforce Innovation was reoriented on the lot from when it served as a school. What was once the building’s entrance is now the rear “so it could rightfully interact with the commercial side of the intersection right there at Central and Madison,” Shields said.
To develop the building, there was an extensive community engagement process. After a session in 2018 where residents convened to create a vision for a new building, there were several community panels at local summits.
“Community engagement is at the heart of this effort and is something that we will continue to do,” Shields said. “There’s nothing like this center in development that we know of,” he added, which means locals will have to help perfect the Aspire Center in the coming years to meet its mission.
In 2023, the project’s partners officially broke ground on the Aspire Center. Over 300 community members and public officials gathered to watch and celebrate, Shields said.
From 2020 to 2023, the building was funded by more than $40 million in capital. The money came from a grant from the state of Illinois, TIF funding from Chicago, about $10 million from new market tax credit equity, plus philanthropic support from Blue Cross Blue Shield, BMO, the Pritzker Traubert Foundation, and United Way.
The hope is for the soon-to-open building to improve the narrative about living in Austin and on the West Side.
“This development can really act as an opportunity to change the perception and outlook of our community,” Shields said.
He added that they’re working with residents to develop a mural on the outside of the building that will wrap along the wall and into the lobby. The mural will be painted by local artist Shawn Michael Warren, who created a portrait of Oprah Winfrey for the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in 2023.
When the Aspire Center received state funding, one of its requirements was for historic preservation. So, there will also be an art installation inside that includes images and information depicting the building’s history.
“Anybody that comes in, they’ll know what’s been the plight with this building and what’s been Austin’s plight over time,” Shields said.
But the Aspire Center will be much more than a building that offers free resources and shares its history through art installations.
“The Aspire Center for Workforce Innovation is really about representing the community’s effort to reclaim historic space in our community and transform it into a place that will meet Austin’s present-day needs,” Shields said.
The center is located at 5500 W. Madison St. in Austin.
Follow the Aspire Center on Instagram @acwichi. Scan the QR code to sign up for newsletter updates, which include information about when training programs start.
