Chicago foundation awards $15 million for construction of two West Side community centers

Richard Townsell’s two children grew up playing sports, which often meant driving 45 minutes to an hour to practices held outside of city limits.

And if practice didn't involve travel, it required a bit of extra work.

“I coach [wrestling] at Chicago Hope Academy. We practice on the basketball court, and we have to roll up the mats at the end of every single practice,” Townsell, executive director of Lawndale Christian Development Corp., said. “We have an old facility, and that’s the case for many Chicago Public School athletes. They don’t have a permanent facility.”

But that will soon change for many students and youth on the West Side.

The Chicago-based Lohengrin Foundation announced Wednesday that Lawndale Christian Development and Erie Neighborhood House will receive $10 million and $5 million, respectively, for the construction of two new West Side youth and community centers.

The award stems from the foundation's Thriving Youth, Stronger Communities initiative, which launched in 2024 to help create environments where Chicago youth can grow and thrive.

Lawndale Christian Development and Erie Neighborhood House are the first to receive the award, Lohengrin Foundation CEO Mark Rodriguez said.

The $10 million will support Lawndale Christian Development's project, One Lawndale, that was approved by the City Council in late 2025.

The prize “makes [One Lawndale] possible,” Richard Townsell, Lawndale Christian Development's executive director, said.

“With Lohengrin being first in, it helps to secure everybody else,” Townsell said. He said an award of this size can help attract additional investors and funding.

One Lawndale, at the corner of South Springfield Avenue and West Cermak Road, will be a first-of-its-kind sports complex for the West Side. The $38 million indoor sports and recreation center will allow for year-round sports, with two indoor turf fields, six full-size basketball courts, a boxing and fitness room, wrestling studio, multipurpose room, concessions and bar area and a pro shop.

Sports leagues, mentoring programs and other initiatives will be helmed by Black- and Latino-led partners from both North Lawndale and Little Village.

One goal of the Thriving Youth, Stronger Communities initiative is to create safe spaces for youth to aid in violence prevention.

Townsell believes One Lawndale will achieve that as it will also offer nutrition, mental health and mentoring programs.

“We think that some of the best violence prevention work that you can do is work with young people before they get engaged in behavior out of boredom or having nothing else really to do,” Townsell said. “For us to be able to have something like this in the neighborhood that is high quality and that has all of the other supports necessary, we think it's going to be the best violence prevention and community building effort.”

The Lohengrin Foundation is helping the developer find other foundation partners to close its funding gap, Townsell said. It hopes to start construction in late summer or early fall. Completion is slated for fall or winter of 2027.

Erie Neighborhood House will use its $5 million award toward the La Villita Erie House Center.

The social services nonprofit has been in Little Village for about 20 years. It currently rents a building in the neighborhood.

La Villita Erie House, 2653-59 S. Kildare Ave., will allow the nonprofit to grow its footprint in the neighborhood — both in the number of people it serves and into a larger, permanent space. The five-story building will have spaces for children, teens and other community members, with the final concept shaped by community input.

Cristina De La Rosa, executive director of Erie Neighborhood House, said community members have continuously expressed a need for safety. The nonprofit hosted focus groups and distributed surveys to hear more from community members about what a safe space for residents would look like and what sort of programming they’d like to see at the new center.

“We wanted to be really intentional,” De La Rosa said. “We really wanted to make sure that when people walk into the building, they felt like they could see themselves there — that it was designed for them.”

The result is a center with a full-size gymnasium, flexible classrooms, an arts studio, private counseling and therapy offices, teen and tech lounges, community kitchen, outdoor green spaces, rooftop playground and children’s garden.

Erie Neighborhood House already offers a suite of youth programming, but the new center will allow the organization to offer full-day after school programming, De La Rosa said. And in the summer, school-aged children can stay during the week and receive breakfast, lunch and a snack.

Erie Neighborhood House hopes to break ground this fall and open within a year of its groundbreaking. The $22 million project will expand opportunities for the nonprofit to partner with other organizations in the area — like One Lawndale.

“We don't see this as two separate neighborhoods,” Townsell said of North Lawndale and Little Village. “We see this as one Lawndale and folks coming together around supporting young people.”

Rodriguez said the foundation didn’t intend to choose two winners, let alone two from adjacent neighborhoods. But the award is helping to connect both projects with possible capital partners, doubling its intended impact.

North Lawndale and Little Village have higher numbers of youth and youth violence, according to the foundation. The number of youth the projects would serve, along with each project's feasibility, helped elevate the two proposals.

There were more than 70 submissions for Thriving Youth, Stronger Communities, which showcases the excitement in supporting youth communities, Rodriguez said.

“There's no limit on the ideas or the need. It's only a limit on the resources that are available,” he said.