Ravenswood Senior Living, to open in the summer of next year, is the adaptive reuse of … [+]
Evergreen Real Estate Group
Once, these edifices were the bulwarks against illness. Today, they’re part of the cure for the malaise afflicting housing availability. Nationwide, vacant hospitals, mental institutions and sanitariums are being recast as newly-opened apartment buildings. In communities from Los Angeles to New York City, and from Charlottesville, Va. and Washington, D.C. to Denver, the doors of shuttered healing centers are swinging back open to admit residents.
Many experts believe it’s important at least some of these institutions are reborn as affordable housing. “Rental markets in the U.S. remain extremely tight,” noted the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University in its America’s Rental Housing 2020 report. “Vacancy rates are at decades-long lows, pushing up rents far faster than incomes. Both the number and share of cost-burdened renters are again on the rise, especially among middle-income households . . . [What’s needed] is a comprehensive response from all levels of government to address the scale of the nation’s rental affordability crisis.”
Greatest need
One Chicago-based developer is taking the hospital-to-housing trend one step further, to offer affordable housing to those who need it most. It is transforming old and abandoned hospitals into multifamily structures offering affordable housing for low-income seniors. In Aurora, Ill., a far western suburb of Chicago, Evergreen Real Estate Group acquired the former St. Charles Hospital, an historic Art Deco structure, and brought it back to life as Aurora St. Charles Senior Living, a 60-unit independent living facility near downtown Aurora that includes 44 units affordable for seniors at or below 50 percent of Area Median Income (AMI), and six units each for those earning 30 and 60 percent or less of AMI.
Evergreen has now taken that model into Chicago’s North Side Ravenswood enclave.
There, Ravenswood Hospital, built in 1974 and shuttered in 2002, is being accorded an $81 million top-to-bottom repurposing. When complete in summer 2021, the result will be Ravenswood Senior Living, a 193-unit affordable senior rental community that is sorely needed on Chicago’s increasingly rent-burdened North Side. Ravenswood Senior Living will be among the nation’s first developments offering in a single location both independent living and supportive living for low-income senior citizens.
“Over the past few years, we have found a sweet spot as a developer in the hospital-to-senior housing conversion niche, and it’s an area we believe will continue to see growth in the future,” said David Block, Evergreen Real Estate Group director of development.
Neighborhood landmarks
“With both our Ravenswood and Aurora St. Charles projects, we were able to repurpose structures, both of which were long-vacant buildings that were neighborhood landmarks, and transform them into much-needed affordable senior housing. We’ve also become adept at executing these projects, which requires pulling together complex sources of financing as well as collaborating with a number of public and private partners.”
In its 10 stories, Ravenswood Senior Living will offer 74 one-bedroom independent living units for Chicago Housing Authority residents. Also, 119 units for participants in the Illinois Supportive Living Program will be included.
These two separate populations, housed in the same building, will have separate entrances and live independently of one another.
Their amenities will differ as well. Independent living residents will have a roof deck, community room, fitness room, library and computer room, lounges and laundry rooms. With the exception of lounges and laundry, supportive living residents will have the above plus a dining room, salon, physical therapy room, multi-purpose TV room, attendant stations on each floor and – last but far from least – an on-site doctor’s office
Says Block: “We are extremely proud of both of these developments and believe they can serve as creative new models for senior housing across the country.”