Chicago’s Woodlawn neighborhood celebrated two major milestones in its revitalization – the opening of a new 48,000-square-foot Jewel-Osco grocery store, the first full-service grocery store residents in that neighborhood in over 40 years, and the opening of Woodlawn Station, a new transit-oriented development consisting of 75 mixed-income units and 15,000 square feet of retail space.
The grocery store created more than 200 new jobs, employing Woodlawn and the surrounding South Side residents who were recruited by NH&RA member Preservation of Affordable Housing, Inc. (POAH) and Jewel-Osco as part of a 12-month workforce development program at the Woodlawn Resource Center.
Woodlawn Station was financed, in part, through HUD’s Choice Neighborhoods Initiative. By using Choice Neighborhoods Critical Community Improvements funds, the retail space can be rented at a reduced rate to local businesses. Daley’s, Chicago’s oldest restaurant, will make Woodlawn Station its new home.
HUD awarded POAH and the City of Chicago a $30.5 million Choice Neighborhoods Implementation Grant in 2011. The project was once a troubled Section 8 development that HUD foreclosed and sold to the City of Chicago with the promise that all of the assisted units would be replaced. Through a variety of public and private partnerships, the Choice Neighborhoods funding has leveraged an additional $410 million investment in the Woodlawn neighborhood.
