South and West Side Neighborhood Revitalization Starts with its Residents

Community development in neighborhoods that have long faced underinvestment begins with the people who know their communities best. On Chicago’s South and West sides, community-based organizations are doing the heavy lifting of attracting the capital their neighborhoods need. As part of its commitment to increase access to opportunity and direct resources to communities that have been historically overlooked, The Chicago Community Trust invests in community visioning and supports networks of emerging, hyper‑local development organizations to turn neighborhood priorities into real projects.

That’s why in 2025, the Trust launched the Neighborhood Development Champions (NDC) to ensure community voices are the starting point for development in neighborhoods often overlooked by market-rate investment. NDC is a network of community-based organizations serving as anchors in their neighborhoods and doing the painstaking work of attracting the capital and partnerships needed to bring projects to life. Together, these organizations demonstrate how development can take root where it otherwise wouldn’t, when it is driven by residents’ realities, local expertise, and long-standing neighborhood relationships.

Embedded in neighborhood life, NDC organizations sit at the intersection of local insights, development practice, and a holistic neighborhood vision. This allows them to identify investment their residents need, surface persistent gaps, and address how issues like housing, economic opportunity, food access, healthcare, and safety intersect, translating resident priorities into viable, community‑led development strategies. Two NDCs — Greater Auburn Gresham Development Corporation (GAGDC) on the South Side and Latinos Progresando in Marshall Square on the Southwest Side — show how resident‑led development can move from vision to action.

Turning Local Vision into Neighborhood Investment

Latinos Progresando is advancing development rooted in local ownership, cultural identity, and long‑standing neighborhood relationships. Through the Marshall Square Resource Network, the organization convenes residents and nonprofit partners around a shared community plan focused on strengthening commercial corridors, supporting small businesses, and activating neighborhood assets near Cermak and California avenues.

“A core belief at Latinos Progresando is that the solutions to our community’s most pressing challenges already exist within the community,” said CEO Luis Gutierrez. By serving as a connector between residents and larger systems, Latinos Progresando helps ensure development reflects what neighbors say they need to thrive.

GAGDC plays a similar role in Auburn Gresham, grounding development in sustained resident engagement. Through town halls, surveys, roundtables, and focus groups, GAGDC turns community priorities into large‑scale projects that aim to create health and financial well-being for residents. Its work around the Auburn Gresham Health & Wellness Campus at 79th Street and Halsted, for example, has helped catalyze broader investment while keeping community benefit at the center.

“In our role as a Neighborhood Development Champion, we consistently listen to and learn from our neighbors about what matters most to them,” said GAGDC CEO Carlos Nelson. “We then translate that into development that benefits the people who call this community home.”

Strengthening the Development Ecosystem through the Excellerator Fund

Latinos Progresando and GAGDC have taken their roles as Neighborhood Development Champions a step further by working to strengthen the broader development ecosystem across the South and West sides. Recognizing that emerging, hyperlocal organizations — often closest to community priorities — frequently lack the capacity or capital to lead development, they partnered to create the Excellerator Fund. The fund provides technical assistance, subgrants, and capacity-building support while placing grantmaking authority in the hands of local organizations, shifting decision-making closer to impacted neighborhoods and enabling more responsive, community-driven investments. To date, the fund has mobilized more than $4.4 million to 87 organizations, the majority with budgets under $500,000.

One example of the work coming out of the Excellerator Fund is the K-Fresh Foods grocery store in Auburn Gresham. Informed by community engagement, GAGDC identified local access to healthy food retail as a critical neighborhood priority. K-Fresh foods, a community‑centered grocery store created by The Kindness Campaign, addresses that need. As Christopher Watts, CEO of The Kindness Campaign, notes, “Access to fresh food in our community is not just about availability, it’s about affordability, accessibility and dignity.” K‑Fresh Foods provides nutritious food options while strengthening the local economy, demonstrating how community voice can shape development strategies that advance health, economic vitality, and neighborhood stability.

K-Fresh Foods also illustrates the Trust’s layered approach to community development. A Neighborhood Development Champion, GAGDC, elevated the community priority of access to healthy food, while the Trust’s Pre-Development Fund provided early project support for the store, and the Trust-supported Excellerator Fund strengthened community-based capacity. Together, these aligned efforts are moving community vision into a tangible development project.

Community development is complex, long‑term work. General operating support gives NDCs the stability, staffing and flexibility needed to respond to resident priorities and advance projects from vision to implementation. Across Chicago’s long underinvested South and West sides, Neighborhood Development Champions are revitalizing corridors, supporting small businesses, and reimagining vacant spaces, driven by the belief that development must happen in all corners of the city, not push people out, and benefit the people who already call these neighborhoods home.