CHICAGO — Southside Community Optimal Redevelopment Enterprise (SCORE) celebrates the successful opening of Cermak Fresh Market grocery as part of the $60 million The Fields redevelopment in Chicago’s Avondale neighborhood. SCORE provided $6 million in federal New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) allocation and $5 million in Illinois NMTC towards the $12.9 million grocery on the northwest corner of Diversey Avenue and Pulaski Road. The 68,000 SF new grocery store will create 100 permanent, full-time jobs. It will also serve as the first phase and catalyst for a massive $60 million redevelopment of the 140-year old former Marshall Field’s department store warehouse. The building has stood vacant since 2008.
SCORE’s mission is to invest NMTCs in operating businesses, community-driven education and healthcare facilities, and fresh food anchored retail that will provide living wage jobs in highly distressed and low-income communities. SCORE’s controlling entity, McCaffery Interests (MI), was founded in 1990, with a mission of transforming urban neighborhoods in ways that inspire community, create opportunities and foster the ideals of smart growth. Over the last 5 years, MI has invested $153MM and facilitated an additional $345.8MM of improvements into urban revitalization efforts. More than 70% of these projects have been in disadvantaged communities.
“We’re grateful to SCORE and our other community financing partners who also believed in investing in a project for the future of Chicago’s workforce and creating a healthier community,” said Michael Bousis, Cermak Fresh Market owner. “I don’t want customers to feel different that live in the inner city to have a different shopping experience that the people on the North Shore do.”
The new grocery store joins Newly Weds Foods and Studio 41 as the first tenants of The Fields complex. At full capacity, companies locating at The Fields are expected to create more than 1,000 new jobs. When completed, the complex will include 100,000 square feet of retail space, 150,000 square feet of live-work space, 500,000 square feet of industrial and warehouse space, 300,000 square feet of office space, and parking facilities.
“The Marshall Field’s warehouse was a great economic engine of Chicago’s past. But today it is being reinvented as an even better economic anchor for the future of the Northwest Side,” Mayor Rham Emanuel said at the grocery ribbon-cutting ceremony. “With projects like this, we are writing the next great chapter of Chicago’s economic future, block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood.”
Chicago-based SCORE is one of two Community Develoment Entitites (CDEs) providing NMTCs to the project, allocating a total of $11 million in state and federal NMTC allocation. The Valued Advisor Fund, LLC, a subsidiary of Chicago-based Baker Tilly Capital, is also a CDE project partner, allocating $2.5 million in state NMTC allocation. Chase Community Equity, LLC, a subsidiary of Chase Bank capitalized the NMTC allocations and MB Financial Bank provided direct loan financing to the project. The project is being developed by Dimitrios and Michael Bousis.
“We’re proud to be investing in this exciting addition to Avondale. With the addition of the Cermak Fresh Market, the redevelopment of this iconic building is driving employment opportunities and economic development in a vital neighborhood of Chicago and supporting the mission of SCORE to provide meaningful community access to services in the disadvantaged communities we serve,” said SCORE Executive Director Angela Woolfolk. The project is located in a severely distressed census tract with a median family income 58.6% of the area average and an unemployment rate that is 11.7%, 1.63 times the national average.