Grants

Grant Recipient

DEEPLY ROOTED PRODUCTIONS

Awarded: April 2023 Awarded Amount: $100,000

The SSDC will be a collaborative cultural and commercial hub that will expand the power and generative vitality of Chicago’s South Side, assisting with the recovery from the pandemic and the effects of systemic racism and decades of disinvestment. The SSDC project will transform a vacant property into a premier training/presenting space that will serve as an international home for Black dance and a thriving network of dance partners. It will provide these artists and the community with 30,000 square feet of human-centered space. This will include six dance studios, a rehearsal/studio theater performance space, a costume/set design shop, reception lobby and box office, administrative offices, meeting rooms, concessions boutique, rooftop terrace, courtyard, off-street parking, kitchen, and spaces for community gatherings.

Grant Recipient

Chicagoland Streets Project/Streetsblog

Awarded: April 2023 Awarded Amount: $75,000

Streetsblog Chicago is applying for a $75,000 grant to help fund our next year of sustainable transportation reporting and advocacy.

Grant Recipient

ALLIANCE FOR THE GREAT LAKES

Awarded: April 2023 Awarded Amount: $200,000

A diverse project team who will support the City in shaping a stakeholder and community-driven process to inform new site standards that will guide private development to incorporate more extensive environmental mitigation and community benefit strategies in sites within industrial corridors, with a focus on the Calumet River Industrial Corridor.

Grant Recipient

DELTA INSTITUTE

Awarded: April 2023 Awarded Amount: $150,000

Delta Institute proposes a collaborative project to support the vision articulated by Chicago Community Trust and Great Rivers Chicago to foster our City’s rivers as inviting, productive, and living places where everyone benefits from a more resilient and equitable Chicago. We will do so—in partnership with the Illinois International Port District, Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, and community stakeholders—by improving water quality along the Calumet River, utilizing the Port of Chicago as an anchor institution to drive local community engagement, site prioritization/selection, feasibility studies, and preliminary site designs for integrating Green Infrastructure across Chicago’s East Side over a 12-month period.

Grant Recipient

NORTH RIVER COMMISSION

Awarded: April 2023 Awarded Amount: $85,000

Confluence is a river-focused community development effort in Albany Park that began in 2020. Since its inception, over $7.1m has been allocated to local riverfront projects, including $3.5m of local funding to improve Ronan Park as a dynamic public space and river-centric neighborhood gateway, following a community-driven plan prepared through Confluence. Most recently, NRC and Great Rivers partners Urban Rivers developed a program that will implement in-stream habitat improvement, ecology education, and river recreation programs at River Park. This program was funded in late 2022 at approximately $350,000 and is slated to begin in 2023. Finally, a project titled “Lawrence Gateway'' will create a new development on Lawrence Avenue, just south of Ronan Park, turning a parking lot and warehouse into a new mixed use development with affordable housing. This approximately $17m development is supported by a Chicago Recovery Plan Grant of over $3,500,000. Confluence continues to center the Chicago River as a key asset for Albany Park within ongoing planning, community engagement, and program implementation at parks and riverfront sites across the community. NRC will continue to act as a community convener; surfacing local priorities and bridging public access to key stakeholders, funders, and decisionmakers. Through Confluence, the organization will continue to direct plans, projects, and programs that improve the health of Chicago river, create riverfront amenities, improve community access, and build neighborhood capacity for sustained programming and continuous improvements.

Grant Recipient

CHICAGO COALITION FOR THE HOMELESS

Awarded: April 2023 Awarded Amount: $66,700