Breakaway Community Development was established in 2017 with the aim of providing affordable training services to young athletes in the Austin neighborhood, hoping to set them on a path to success through sports.
The nonprofit hosts basketball camps and offers athletic training in attributes such as speed and agility. But Khalilah Johnson, the co-founder and president, said it hasn’t been easy finding places to accommodate their sessions.
“We really started trying to find a building where we could house our events in one place and focus on all sports, not just indoor sports,” Johnson said.
She thinks the group found that place in the building that used to house the shuttered Armstrong Elementary School.
The Chicago Board of Education approved the sale of the property to Breakaway in a unanimous vote Thursday, for the purpose of turning the building into an athletic center focusing on affordable access for youth sports. The board also approved the sale of another former school, Ignace Paderewski Elementary in Little Village, to developers hoping to turn the site into affordable housing.
Both schools were shuttered in 2013 as part of a mass closure of 50 Chicago public schools that left behind 46 buildings. The district has tried to sell the vacant properties since the closings, promising they would be redeveloped as community assets. That proved difficult over the years because of factors such as a lack of buyer interest and deteriorating conditions of the buildings. Even when buyers have been approved, sales and projects have fallen through at times. Upkeep costs for CPS have piled up in the meantime.
The old Armstrong and Paderewski buildings were previously put out for bid in 2017, and the board found buyers for both sites at the time. But those projects never came to fruition. The district held its most recent round of bids for its vacant properties last May and plans to hold another later this year.
Through that process, CPS has picked up its pace recently, having identified five new buyers — including the two approved by the board Thursday — in the past two months. In all, 14 empty buildings are still publicly owned.
Even with approved buyers, the specter of failure still haunts proposed projects. Financial uncertainty and low community support have derailed or stalled plans at some schools sold years ago.
Johnson estimates that their project will take 18-24 months to complete and didn’t express concerns that it would stall. Several local athletic organizations have backed the proposal, Johnson said, including After the Game, a nonprofit that focuses on the physical and mental wellness of youth. The total estimated cost for the project is $12.5 million, $2.25 million of which has been secured, Johnson said.
“We’re confident that we are going to be able to meet those timelines,” Johnson said. “We have a lot of support from the community, which is huge.”
The plan is to repurpose the main building into a two-story facility with two full-size courts for basketball and volleyball. It will include an indoor turf field for baseball, soccer, football and other sports. The nonprofit also hopes to offer spaces where kids can learn skills in fields such as sportscasting, photography and sports officiating.
And the facility will provide mental health services, “To really treat the whole athlete,” Johnson said.
Sports can lead to a free education, and young people in the area are often priced out of them, she said.
“Whatever pathway we can help create we are willing to do,” Johnson said.
The annex building behind the main structure would become rentable studio suites for athletic trainers.
Breakaway’s $100,000 bid was the highest of two submitted for the property. The second was for $50,000 from Chaste Hair Institute, a hair-braiding school in Austin looking to expand its work.
Stephen Stults, director of real estate for Chicago Public Schools, said both proposals received support from the community but other factors are taken into consideration. There were concerns that the hair-braiding school’s plan underestimated the amount of renovations the school needs.
The building is without working plumbing, electrical or mechanical systems, and water has infiltrated through the structure, Stults said at a board meeting earlier this month.
“We review things like financials, what capacity they have, we also look at the past work they’ve done to make sure they are able to take on a project like this,” Stults said.
The former Paderewski property received three bids, two for $50,000 and one for $55,000 from P3 Markets LLC, which won approval from the board. The developer’s plan is to repurpose the main building into an 86-unit affordable housing development and demolish the two annexes.
The developer said it will donate part of the site to the youth nonprofit ARK Entrepreneurial Center, which plans to develop a mixed-used building containing a community center for youth programming.
Like the Armstrong building, the Paderewski structure has no working plumbing, electrical or mechanical systems and significant water infiltration.