The city of Chicago announced Monday it’s investing millions in a new grant program that aims to build generational wealth and give Chicagoans a chance to revive vacant buildings in their neighborhood.
The program, led by the nonprofit Community Desk Chicago, is open to worker cooperatives and Community Investment Vehicles, which is a fund used to buy neighborhood properties with financial resources pooled from residents.
The city said it’s contributing $3.5 million to the grant, called Wealth Our Way. Community Desk said the program has a total of more than $4.1 million to disperse among grantees.
Community Desk president and CEO Ja’Net Defell anticipates awarding grants to as many as 10 projects. A minimum of six real estate projects will receive funding at a maximum of $500,000 each, covering up to 75% of the total development costs.
“This W.O.W. program is really helping neighborhoods to develop their own capacity and really control the destinies within their neighborhoods,” Defell said.
W.O.W. will aid communities that have lacked economic investment in recent decades by helping to spur redevelopment projects.
While the focus will be on projects in the South and West sides, Defell said there’s no geographic restrictions. The aim is to create community wealth building opportunities where they may not have existed before, she said.
Mayor Brandon Johnson said in a news release: “As we celebrate Juneteenth, we are recommitting ourselves to the critical work of repairing past harms through investment and opportunity. The work of repair and restoration is central to our mission. This is collective work that impacts our entire communities, so we are putting these funds to help build up collective ownership models in neighborhoods that have been shut out for far too long.”
Grant funds for CIV projects will go toward redeveloping locally-owned properties. Grantees will also receive business coaching and technical assistance over a 16-month period to ensure their success.
Defell pointed to Englewood’s business incubator E.G. Woode as an example of a CIV. Located at 1122 W. 63rd St., the incubator buys and develops property on behalf of its partners, often entrepreneurs, so they can open businesses in their community.
CIVs are an emerging investment model for developments, where community members contribute funds toward a shared project goal. CIVs aim to be majority-controlled and majority-owned by residents or local members, according to Community Desk.
Unlike a CIV, a worker co-op doesn’t own real estate, Defell said. The workers own the business, but they might be leasing a storefront.
Through W.O.W., Community Desk will help worker co-ops get into leased spaces.
CIVs and worker co-ops can be a strong community wealth-building tool, Defell said, especially as CIVs become more widely used.
“What we really drive ourselves on is creating sustainability and self-reliance in neighborhoods,” Defell said.
The city will monitor Community Desk and grantees from pre-development to post-groundbreaking. The W.O.W. projects must be under construction next year, according to Defell.
Community Desk sees W.O.W.’s impact as two-fold — nurturing community-owned businesses that will create generational wealth and increasing the quality of life in neighborhoods often lacking local investment.
“The commercial corridors in these neighborhoods are so bad it impacts people’s quality of life and even just their desire to want to stay in the neighborhood,” Defell said.
“Reactivating and decreasing the vacancy along the commercial corridors ... actually contributes to the appreciated value of these assets — not only on the commercial corridor but residential. Now, it’s way more attractive to be in the neighborhood.”
This story has been updated with a statement from Mayor Brandon Johnson.
