The Chicago Fire soccer club broke ground Tuesday on its 23-acre practice facility on the Near West Side as legal aid groups continue to raise questions about the use of Chicago Housing Authority land for purposes other than housing and continue to ask the Department of Housing and Urban Development to stop the project.
The team will build a 53,000-square-foot, two-story performance center with multiple soccer pitches in Roosevelt Square on the site of CHA’s former ABLA Homes housing complex in the 28th Ward.
The groundbreaking comes after months of controversy surrounding the development, with the City Council initially blocking the deal and then reversing course in September 2022 and with housing advocates expressing their disapproval of CHA land being used for nonhousing purposes.
The Coalition to Protect Chicago Housing Authority Land, as well as legal aid groups such as the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights, have written letters to HUD — as recently as April 11 — requesting that HUD not approve the project. The most recent request asks HUD to pause its approvals until Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson can weigh in. The groups said Johnson does not support the project.
Ronnie Reese, a spokesperson for Johnson, declined to comment.
HUD did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Representatives from the Lugenia Burns Hope Center in Bronzeville, one of the coalition members, will meet with Democratic Reps. Maxine Waters and Ted Lieu in Washington, D.C., this week “to rein in CHA and HUD from continuing to privatize CHA land,” according to Rod Wilson, executive director of the Hope Center, and a statement from his organization.
“The CHA has not met its obligation of returning the replacement housing that Chicago residents were promised,” the Hope Center statement said. “The promise was for 775 public housing units at the ABLA Homes site and to date, only 245 have been returned. This has been a 22-year process. Our community has suffered hard from the COVID-19 pandemic, we are seeing steep rises in eviction filings and this is a time when Chicago needs more affordable housing for the most vulnerable in our communities.”
The groundbreaking was celebrated by Ald. Jason Ervin of the 28th Ward, Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Chicago Housing Authority CEO Tracey Scott, Chicago Fire FC Owner and Chairman Joe Mansueto and public housing residents and other community members at a news conference at the Jane Addams Family Resource Center on the Near West Side. Many attendees were sporting red scarves emblazoned with “ABLA” and the Chicago Fire logo.
“I am excited to join Mayor Lightfoot, CHA, and the Chicago Fire Football Club to explore using this open space to support affordable housing, employment, and recreation on the Near West Side,” Ervin said in a news release from the mayor’s office. “I am committed to working closely with the Fire and the residents of the 28th Ward to ensure that this opportunity for economic investment creates a long-term positive impact on our community.”
The Fire will finance the $80 million facility and provide an additional $8 million toward the “rehabilitation and preservation of nearby CHA housing and the creation of indoor and outdoor community spaces,” the mayor’s office said. The lease is expected to generate about $40 million in revenue for CHA over the next 40 years, and that money will go toward existing CHA housing efforts such as those at ABLA Brooks Homes, Loomis Courts and Williams Jones, according to that news release.
Mary Baggett, president of the local advisory committee for ABLA Brooks Homes, said this project has been a “long time coming” and thanked the various stakeholders involved.
“You all have done an amazing job with valuing the residents,” Baggett said at the news conference.
She also said she wanted to dispel the rumors that no housing will come of this project. “This is a community benefit agreement. Housing will return back to CHA land,” Baggett said.
