West Englewood’s shuttered Charles Warrington Earle School reopens as affordable housing

The former Charles Warrington Earle School — one of 50 Chicago schools that shuttered in 2013 — is taking on a second life as an affordable apartment building, with roughly a third of its units already leased.

Project and city leaders cut the ribbon Wednesday on the Earle Residences at 1711 W. 61st St. in West Englewood. The project has been almost a decade in the making and is one of several school-to-residential conversions that Wisconsin-based Gorman & Co. is completing in Chicago.

The Earle’s 50 apartments are about 34% leased, according to Matt Burbach, Gorman’s director of development for Illinois.

Units include one- and two-bedrooms and are available to households making 60% of the area median income, or AMI. For a Chicago couple, that’s a combined annual income of $58,320.

Nine units are supported by the nonprofit Chicago Low-Income Housing Trust Fund’s MAUI program, making them available for households at 15% AMI. MAUI stands for Multiyear Affordability through Upfront Investment, and the program offers interest-free forgivable loans to replace up to 50% of a developer’s private first mortgage loan, according to the nonprofit.

“This is a working-class development. It is for our working-class neighbors,” Chicago Department of Housing Commissioner Lissette Castañeda said.

The Earle has a community room, computer lab, fitness room, playground, community garden, laundry facilities and green space — amenities that “are not luxuries … [but] what we need to thrive,” Castañeda said.

Gorman is also partnering with Chicago-based Phoenix Foundation and Phoenix Recovery Services to offer on-site supportive services for individuals and families experiencing or at risk of homelessness.

The nearly $35 million project was supported by $4.2 million in tax increment financing and $540,000 in Chicago Recovery Plan Permanent Supportive Housing funds. The Illinois Housing Development Authority, Federal Home Loan Bank’s Affordable Housing Program and ComEd were also among the financial supporters.

The Earle is Gorman’s eighth project in Illinois. Gorman has completed more than 20 school-to-apartment conversion projects, with market-rate and affordable units. Its next project, Regenerator, is in partnership with local community groups and will turn West Englewood’s former Woods Mathematics and Science Academy into a community and health center with affordable housing. And Gorman’s redevelopment proposal for the former Bontemps Elementary School is pending city approvals, according to the city.

The Earle building is 129 years old and on the National Register of Historic Places. It served students for more than a century before it became one of 50 Chicago schools to close under then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Some of the shuttered schools have been converted into other uses, including luxury, low-income or senior apartments. But a 2023 Sun-Times and WBEZ investigation found the majority remain vacant.

Mayor Brandon Johnson, who was a Chicago Teachers Union organizer when Charles Warrington closed, reflected on the school closure’s impact. He said Wednesday that he fought against the city’s school closures because he “knew the damage that it would cause.”

“I am so honored to be standing in the community that I organized to protect,” Johnson said. “Now, I get to cut the ribbon at a school that was closed, bringing affordable housing as mayor of the city of Chicago.”

Charles Mayfield, chief operating office of Chicago Public Schools, said CPS is “hyperfocused” on forging partnerships to bring buildings like Earle back to community use. He said the Chicago Board of Education recently approved the sale of more former school buildings for reuse, with another round of sales to come “in the weeks ahead.”

“Even when transformation takes a long time, it’s still worth pursuing,” Mayfield said. “Look at Gorman & Co. and the Phoenix Foundation and this coalition of partners have done here. It’s magical, it’s beautiful and they didn’t erase Earle’s history. They preserved it.”