The Chicago Fire Football Club celebrated the opening of its new training facility on the Near West Side in a ribbon-cutting ceremony Monday, as community members, public housing residents and worker and housing advocates remain frustrated with the Fire and the Chicago Housing Authority, whose land the facility sits on.
That tension was on display as CHA residents who showed up for the event were asked to leave and then escorted out by security and Chicago police.
As the CHA residents stood quietly in the new center, Paul Cadwell, the Chicago Fire’s senior vice president of community programs, engagement and facilities, mouthed to his staff to “get them out.” The residents, who were standing behind seated event attendees, were then ushered out of the team’s new space before the event began.
Mary Baggett, president of the ABLA Homes Local Advisory Council, CHA’s resident board for the Near West Side community, and who has been the Chicago Fire’s face for CHA residents for the partnership, told the Tribune that she asked the other residents to leave because they were there to be “disruptive.”
Baggett spoke at the event, praising the Fire for their investment in the community. The residents who spoke with the Tribune who were asked to leave said they were there to learn what is going on in their community. One asked to remain anonymous because he said he feared retaliation from CHA.
“It is unfair to bring events to the community and be escorted out by police when we are not making noise or causing conflict,” said Lorraine McCray, who lives near the training facility in CHA housing.
The facility has been mired in controversy from its inception. The City Council initially blocked the deal and then reversed course in September 2022, and housing advocates sued CHA — the entity that leased the land to the team — the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and then-HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge in June 2023, alleging the deal to lease 23 acres of vacant CHA land did not undergo proper local and federal reviews. Members of Congress also expressed concerns, sending letters to Fudge and then-CHA CEO Tracey Scott, after the project broke ground in April 2023. The lawsuit was dismissed in October.
Chicago Fire officials at the event were joined by city leaders such as Ald. Jason Ervin, whose 28th ward is home to the new facility, Chicago Department of Planning and Development Commissioner Ciere Boatright and former CHA Chief Development Officer Ann McKenzie. No current CHA officials appeared to be present.
The practice facility, named the Endeavor Health Performance Center, includes five turf/grass fields, a performance space, hydro pools and an area for the sports medicine team in Roosevelt Square on the site of CHA’s former ABLA Homes housing complex. ABLA Homes consisted of four combined developments, Addams, Brooks, Loomis and Abbott.
The lease agreement between CHA and the Fire is expected to generate about $40 million in revenue for CHA over the next 40 years, with that money going toward existing CHA housing efforts, such as those at Brooks Homes, Loomis Courts and Williams Jones Apartments. The Fire will provide an additional $8 million, with half going toward the rehabilitation of Brooks Homes and the other half earmarked for a community center for local CHA residents and a parking lot for William Jones Apartments, the Chicago Fire and CHA told the Tribune in a statement. Construction for the community center and the parking lot are expected to begin this spring, a Chicago Fire spokesperson said.
Joe Mansueto, owner and chairman of the Fire, called the training facility an “important civic project to Chicago.”
“We are going to be a good neighbor,” Mansueto said at the event. “That’s super important to us.”
Although the Fire and CHA say the soccer club has provided job opportunities to Near West Side and CHA residents, community members and worker and housing advocates say those opportunities have been few and far between.
The Tribune recently met with area residents, including two former ABLA Homes residents, leaders of the Bethel Mennonite Community Church, which is around the corner from the Fire’s training facility, and worker and housing advocates to discuss the Fire facility’s opening. The church is decorated with posters that have messages such as: “We need affordable housing for ABLA land” and “Come out and support ABLA.”
Both pastors at the church have been in their roles for decades and said they used to be part of the conversation with CHA about rebuilding their community. They said they were involved during and after CHA’s launch of its “Plan for Transformation,” its 2000 pledge to tear down and rebuild tens of thousands of units of public housing for Chicagoans.
Zenobia Sowell, co-pastor of Bethel Mennonite and a dentist, said she met with CHA across different administrations for about 15 years before they closed the deal with the Fire “behind our back.” She felt “betrayed” and “angry,” she said.
While the church has yet to meet with the Fire, “We did let them know we were opposed to what was planned” through protests, Sowell said.
Mario Godfrey, who grew up in and, until recently, lived in CHA housing at the ABLA site, is a part-time construction worker and runs an organization focused on youth mentoring. After repeatedly going up to workers at the Fire site inquiring about job opportunities for himself and other local residents, Godfrey said he got part-time employment with CHA’s Brooks Homes $85 million renovation project and a handful of other jobs for local workers.
While he is grateful for the work provided, Godfrey said the Fire and CHA have not done enough hiring from the community. Organizers from Working Family Solidarity, a community organization focused on job creation and worker rights, have been coming to the Near West Side regularly to speak with and advise workers and shared similar sentiments to Godfrey about the lack of work.
“To me, it’s sad … It really comes to show you that racism is really still going on,” Godfrey said, who was also escorted out of the Chicago Fire event.
CHA spokesperson Matthew Aguilar said the Fire “met and exceeded” most of the goals it created to meet HUD requirements related to resident employment on HUD-funded projects. These requirements ensure that CHA and lower income area residents and business owners receive a certain number of labor hours on projects and employment opportunities. The Fire said it is 4% short of these required goals.
A spokesperson for the Chicago Fire said the organization has provided 12 work opportunities throughout construction to area residents, ranging from landscaping and concrete work to natural grass field installation. The Fire could not provide a number for total workers employed over the course of construction by the Tribune’s deadline.
The Fire also hired a Black-owned general contractor to work with another construction company, and they have a history of hiring from the Near West Side, the spokesperson said. The Fire committed $5.3 million for day-to-day operations and development work to CHA Section 3 Businesses, the spokesperson said, which HUD defines as ones that are majority owned by CHA residents, housing voucher holders or low-income people or a business that has low-income workers who make up at least 75% of the labor hours.
Cadwell, the Fire’s senior vice president of community programs, told the Tribune that most jobs for residents will be on the back end of the project — such as for the community center — because the training facility construction project was a union site. The Fire just got their building permit on Feb. 24, Cadwell said, and now will be able to focus on hiring for jobs to maintain the facility.
“My team’s job was to make sure that we listen to the residents,” Cadwell said. “Even if there are some frustrations day one, it’s up to us to then get out and meet with the people and say, ‘Hey, we are your neighbors for the next at least 40 years’ … and I think none of us know what opportunities fully are going to be there for everyone until we actually move into the building and start living in the space.”
On top of these commitments, the Fire said it will have an annual internship program for area CHA residents that will start this summer or fall per an agreement it made with the ABLA Local Advisory Council, a group composed of CHA residents. The interns will work in positions in the business, sporting and community areas of the football club.
Job opportunities or not, Near West Side community members and local advocates remain opposed to the use of the public housing land for a soccer facility.
Donna Thadison, a long-time member of Bethel Mennonite and former ABLA resident in the 1960s and ’70s, works in CHA’s William Jones building for older adults, which is on the same block as the training facility, as a home care aid for one of the residents. She said what CHA has done with the land is “not right.”
“They promised people they were going to build houses, but they decided they weren’t going to do that,” Thadison said. “We lost members (of the church) because of this. It tore my community apart. It just hurts.”
McCray, one of the CHA residents who was escorted out of the event, said she used to live in public housing where the soccer facility stands and said it is unfair that they now “can’t even walk on the property.”
“They act like we are from outer space.”
