After weeks of community meetings to brainstorm new uses for six shuttered schools across the 20th Ward, Chicago Public Schools confirmed there are four bids on the local properties.
The bids, which haven’t been reviewed by CPS to ensure they meet the minimum criteria as of press time, span the Washington Park, Woodlawn and Fuller Park neighborhoods. The CPS schools are among the 50 shuttered in 2013 by Mayor Rahm Emmanuel amid a long-term decline in the district’s enrollment figures.
According to Tyra Owens, Ald. Jeanette Taylor’s (20th) director of community planning and economic development, CPS officials recently informed the office that the bids had been for the CPS-owned properties. Once those bids have been evaluated to determine whether they meet CPS’ minimum criteria, she said, Taylor will review them and share viable proposals with the community.
“Ideally, the plan is for Alderwoman Taylor to at least hear all of the bids and then see which of the ones are viable and have, again, that community impact, for us to be able to take those to the community,” Owens said in an interview. “The ones that don’t necessarily meet — or are not a drop in the bucket for what we found out from residents — we likely will not even share those with the community.”
News of the bids came just one day after another community meeting hosted by Taylor, which brought more than 50 community members, city officials and developers to the Sherwood Park Fieldhouse, 5701 S. Shields Ave., to reflect on the months-long public engagement process for how to repurpose Betsy Ross, Fiske, Parkman, Till Annex and Wadsworth schools, as well as a vacant firehouse and sanitation building.
For years, residents and community groups in the ward and beyond have called for reinvestment in these long-vacant public assets, which stand as stark reminders of the shutterings that disproportionately affected Black and Latino children in low-income neighborhoods on the South and West sides.
Facing a $734 million deficit, CPS is trying to offload almost all of its vacant schools. The local properties are among 20 the district listed for sale with the hope of generating about $8.2 million in revenue and avoiding further maintenance costs.
Bids for the shuttered schools closed on May 30. Any final sale must be approved by the Chicago Board of Education and either the City Council or the Public Building Commission.
Owens said that community input collected over the past several months showed strong support for repurposing shuttered schools into affordable or transitional housing, health and wellness hubs, grocery stores and workforce development centers. Employment and local business support also ranked high, as did recreation spaces, youth services and cultural venues.
She also noted that more tours and meetings are being planned for the summer and fall, including developer roundtables and community-wide discussions about specific bid proposals.
“The idea is, we’re bringing something to the community that could actually move forward,” Owens said.
But any proposal will need to reckon with the deteriorated state of the buildings. Several of the sites have sat vacant for more than a decade and will require major renovations.
“Some of these buildings are worn down,” Owens said. “It is going to take a lot of money to get them not only up to code but also to get them in a space that, if it is housing, if it is something that has food access or farmers market connected to it … it’s going to take some time.”
Recalling a recent tour with developers and local residents, Owens said reactions were mixed.
“Some people were very shocked,” she said. “But then there were some people who live very close to the building and mentioned that it has looked like that for a while. … One of the things that was common throughout the conversation on Friday was people thinking into the future and thinking about possibility.”
(Right) 20th Ward Ald. Jeanette Taylor discusses redeveloping shuttered Chicago Public Schools facilities in her ward during a community meeting on June 24, 2025.
Provided
Taylor’s June 24 meeting also featured an “Adaptive Reuse” panel discussion with developers and nonprofit leaders who have experience converting shuttered school buildings into community assets.
Kamau Murray, founder of XS Tennis and developer of the newly renovated ACE Amandla Charter High School in the Chicago Lawn neighborhood, spoke about the importance of engaging residents directly in redevelopment efforts.
“I’ve been forcing this city to be accountable with our community, rather than me doing what I’m doing the traditional route without community,” he said.
Murray, who is also behind a proposed dual hotel-apartment project in Washington Park, noted he had invested around $5 million in the area over the past 20 years.
Cecile De Mello, executive director of Teamwork Englewood and partner at the Ujima HIVE Resiliency Hub, framed school reuse as a tool for long-term transformation.
“Repurposing schools in our communities to provide more economic development and educational development is critical and should be first priority,” she said.
De Mello is currently working to convert a former charter school in Englewood into the Regenerator, which would offer green housing and workforce development for formerly incarcerated residents, as well as an upcycling lab and a space for locally grown produce.
Taylor emphasized the importance of aligning redevelopment projects with available public dollars and pressing elected officials to help make those plans viable.
“This is no shade to these developers. Developers put up very little of their money but use a lot of public resources. We’re not doing that around here,” she said. “That’s the reason why this process was created, and we want to be able to help those people who actually need (it). So whoever your state rep is, whoever your Cook County commissioner is, whoever your senator is, you should be sending your proposal and talking to them about your project as well.”
Looking back, Owens said the community input process should have started earlier, before CPS opened the bidding period so that community voices could have better informed the bids that were made.
“What I would like to see is that this process never happens this way ever again,” she said. “Making sure we have those conversations on the front end with community … versus making the decision of, ‘Hey, we’re going to release this to everyone’ — everyone in the developer world — without being armed with what the community wants.”