About the author: Liam T.A. Ford is executive director of the Ignatian Mission Center, a nonprofit founded in 2021 to create a social and spiritual services center on the Far North Side of Chicago.
This guest blog is part of Elevated Chicago’s ongoing effort to share perspectives from partners advancing equitable transit-oriented development across the region. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and reflect their experiences and expertise. Read more Elevated Chicago guest blogs.
People across Chicago and beyond stepped up late last year to support immigrant families and others who were suddenly facing the loss of federal food aid.
At the small, Catholic-inspired nonprofit I led in Rogers Park, the Ignatian Mission Center, our food pantry experienced an extraordinary outpouring of generosity. We were open two days a week for food distribution and a third day for cleanup and donation drop-offs. During that period, the number of people bringing food, toiletries, and financial support surged.
That immediate assistance meant the world to the roughly 350 families we served each week. At the same time, we remained focused on long-term solutions for the Far North Side. Central to that vision was transforming part of the former St. Ignatius Parish campus, just west of Loyola University, into a community-oriented social service center anchored by our food pantry.
Many of our earliest supporters, including former St. Ignatius parishioners and members of neighboring parishes, helped us reach the point where we could begin planning this project. Guided by a property-use study from nonprofit real estate consultant IFF (formerly the Illinois Facilities Fund), we identified the portion of the campus our organization could realistically develop.
Momentum grew in mid-2023, when the City of Chicago approved our application for an equitable transit-oriented development (ETOD) pre-development grant. With that support, we were able to hire architects who had toured the campus with us and advised us on creatively reusing the former rectory and the large basement beneath St. Ignatius Church as a community hub.
As a young nonprofit, we still had many foundational tasks ahead of us. We quickly discovered that the city’s inaugural ETOD pre-development program anticipated many of the challenges faced by groups like ours. In addition to architects, cost estimators, and environmental consultants we hired directly, the city-funded Elevated Works technical assistance program included specialized technical assistance coordinated by IFF and the Center for Neighborhood Technology in partnership with Elevated Chicago.
From a menu of options, we sought help strengthening our public messaging and ensuring our project fully embraced transit-oriented design. We were paired with two consultants: Morreale Communications and TYLin. Morreale helped us refine our public mission and communications strategy, developing a professional logo, a new motto, and a cohesive design template, along with a one-page overview that clearly summarized our project’s goals and long-term vision. These materials became essential tools for reaching new supporters and partners.
As our architects, cost estimators, and other consultants neared the end of their assignments, we approached completion of our pre-development phase. TYLin’s technical assistance helped us refine the elements that made our project meaningfully transit-oriented, analyzing how clients and neighbors traveled between the campus and nearby transit and cataloging community assets such as libraries, schools, and health centers accessible from the site.
By incorporating technical assistance into the grant process, Chicago’s Department of Planning and Development did more than provide financial support. Allowing grant recipients to select the expertise they most needed recognized that nonprofits entered these programs at different stages of readiness. This added layer of support gave smaller organizations a greater chance of success and helped ensure that new community anchors could take root across Chicago’s neighborhoods.
