By The Hand Club For Kids, Grace and Peace Revive Center and Intentional Sports today joined the Chicago Fire Foundation, Jason and Vedrana Heyward and state and local leaders to break ground on a first-of-its-kind professional-level facility for sports, education and wellness in the North Austin community. The $31 million state-of-the-art campus will help close the opportunity gap for youth on Chicago’s west side through access to education, leadership development and sports training, including soccer and baseball programming from the Chicago Fire FC and the Jason Heyward Baseball Academy, respectively. It features 150,000-square-feet of indoor space, new outdoor turf fields and Chicago’s only FIFA regulation turf arena for year-round indoor sport – the largest turf field on the city’s west side.

The 10-acre project transforms a vacant parcel of land on North Laramie to ensure families in the community have access to team sports, education, enrichment and wraparound services that help form the foundation of a strong, healthy and safe community. The campus will house after-school programming for more than 400 youth and over 100 free community hours per week. Through the work of the Chicago Fire Foundation, the Fire will offer more than 20 hours per week of free soccer programming for the community. The project is supported with a $1.5 million capital grant from the State of Illinois, which will assist with brownfield redevelopment of the former Glidden paint factory. The grant provided critical resources that enabled community leaders to break ground on the campus this summer and open to the community in the fall of 2022. Overall, the project will support 75 permanent jobs and 200 temporary construction jobs.