In October 2019, Mayor Lori Lightfoot launched INVEST South/West, a groundbreaking initiative to counter disinvestment on the South and West Sides, the result of decades of policies and practices that exacerbate racial segregation. Undoing this harm will not happen quickly, but it is urgent—as the COVID-19 crisis and recent civil unrest have underscored.

INVEST South/West will dedicate $750 million in public funds over the next three years to key commercial corridors in 10 communities: Auburn Gresham, Austin, Bronzeville, Greater Englewood, New City, North Lawndale, Humboldt Park, Greater Roseland, South Chicago, and South Shore. Additionally, INVEST South/West aims to attract significant private sector and philanthropic investments, taking an integrated approach to economic and community development that multiplies the impact of public dollars. This place-based approach to addressing economic disparities mirrors that taken in recent years by philanthropists like the Pritzker Traubert Foundation’s Chicago Prize, and by anchor mission collaboratives like West Side United.

Given the ambitious scope and timeframe of INVEST South/West, as well as our unique expertise cultivating cross-sector collaboration, the City turned to Civic Consulting Alliance to accelerate INVEST South/West’s implementation.

From January through April 2020, Civic Consulting Alliance joined our pro bono partner BCG to work with Samir Mayekar, Deputy Mayor of Economic Development, to define an operating model to implement INVEST South/West. This model features an investment committee that coordinates decision-making across all City agencies, as well as City planners who work with residents of the 10 communities to identify investment priorities and vet proposed projects through neighborhood-led roundtables that take place monthly, the first of their kind. Our staff and BCG also mapped how funding could be sourced from across City agencies and departments and redirected to INVEST South/West projects—a foundational resource for the investment committee’s decision-making.

To accelerate implementation of INVEST South/West’s operating model, Civic Consulting Alliance provided an ‘executive on loan’ to temporarily staff the role of Business Development Manager within the INVEST South/West office. With this resource in place, we have achieved the following since June:

• Worked with the Department of Planning and more than 50 private sector and nonprofit organizations to explore moving or investing in facilities on the South and West Sides, which led a major hospital to make plans to build a clinic in Bronzeville. This work entailed:
• Interviewing the organizations to understand their needs;
• Identifying potential sites;
• Understanding community residents’ priorities; and
• Mapping out the process for a move or investment.
• Supported the creation of the first three requests for proposals (RFPs) for development of sites in Austin, Auburn Gresham, and Englewood by coordinating input across public agencies, securing pro bono support from a design-build firm to calculate the City’s costs for subsidizing development, and securing other sources of funding.
• Developed a pilot effort to clean and beautify vacant lots on INVEST South/West corridors, coordinating with four City agencies, advising landscape design, and securing federal funding for the project, thanks to the work of a pro bono fellow from Bain.
• Secured support from a pro bono partner who gave us access to a data analytics platform to assess real estate investment trends.
• Helped secure $11 million in grant funds from the CARES Act for projects that will address health care deserts in the Auburn Gresham and North Lawndale communities.

“Civic Consulting Alliance has been instrumental to INVEST South/West’s progress. There is no other organization that has Civic Consulting Alliance’s depth of experience collaborating with the City, nor the breadth of visibility across major initiatives and sectors in Chicago. Having an embedded executive has meant that we are able to identify needs for additional, specialized pro bono support as the project moves along, and that they can secure that support from their partner network. At a time when the City’s resources are stretched thin, Civic Consulting Alliance has kept us driving towards INVEST South/West’s ambitious, transformative goals.”

—Deputy Mayor Mayekar