The Cook County Board of Commissioners approved a Class 7 property tax incentive, at the recommendation of the County’s Economic Development Advisory Committee (EDAC), to support the ongoing redevelopment of a long-vacant Target store at 87th and Cottage Grove in Chatham into a customer care call center.
“I’m thrilled that Cook County can support the redevelopment of this critical site in Chatham,” said Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle. “Projects like this create quality jobs, bring much-needed investment to communities, and put properties back on the tax rolls. This is just the type of project that tax incentives are intended to support.”
DL3 Realty leads this $45 M project which utilizes a Class 7(b) property tax incentive to support the acquisition and renovation of a 127,000 square foot, vacant former Target store at 8650 S. Cottage Grove Ave.
“The Cook County Class 7b Assessment Incentive was critical to DL3 Realty’s efforts to secure Discover as a tenant for the property and to the economic feasibility of transforming the former retail box into a state-of-the-art call center,” said Leon I. Walker, managing principal of DL3. “I hope that this successful project will demonstrate to others the potential of investment opportunities to revitalize neighborhoods and inspire the next generation of local entrepreneurs.”
DL3 is a full-service real estate development and advisory firm that employs its nationally recognized Venture Development™ model to transform historically disinvested communities with high-impact commercial developments and affordable housing projects targeting working families. Over the past five years, DL3’s projects have generated more than 3,000 local jobs, and DL3 is working with America’s leading corporations to invest and create 10,000 new jobs in Chicago’s neighborhoods by 2030.
To date, more than 250 employees have already been hired and are working in a temporary space within the call center, and 82% of those employees live within a five-mile radius of the center. To make sure these jobs went to local residents, Discover, the anchor tenant, worked closely with the Chicago Cook Workforce Partnership to recruit and train employees. By 2024, Discover expects the project to bring approximately 1,000 new permanent, quality jobs to Chatham and the surrounding neighborhoods. Wages for each job will range from $15 to $17.25 an hour, and annual salaries will average $35,880 plus benefits.
Final construction of the Center will be completed this summer and will include substantial and unique benefits in the form of a community engagement space, which will serve as a resource for community-based organizations and may be utilized for programming to facilitate and foster relationships between Discover and the community, and an incubator space for new and startup companies from the area.
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