Standing outside the South Suburban Senior Housing Apartments in Harvey Thursday, resident George Ellis said that it’s a new beginning for the place he’s called home for nearly seven years.
The 120-unit building, on 155th Street just west of Park Avenue, is undergoing a $15 million renovation that will see apartments updated along with common areas of the building, formerly owned by the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago.
“I fell in love with the place when I first moved here,” Ellis said at a news conference detailing the project.
The building is owned by Preservation of Affordable Housing Inc., and work got underway about two months ago, said Bill Eager, senior vice president with POAH Midwest in Chicago.
South Suburban opened its doors to seniors and disabled residents in 1946 with 50 units, and another 70 were added in 1982, according to Preservation of Affordable Housing.
The group bought the building and another senior housing center in Harvey from the YMCA in 2019 for $18.6 million.
The two-building 120-unit Jesse Jackson Jr. Senior Center, on 151st Street between Dixie Highway and Wood Street, was built in 2002 near the site of the former Dixie Square Mall.
“This building is a symbol of progress,” said Harvey Mayor Christopher Clark.
The renovation, expected to be completed toward the end of the first quarter of next year, will “do tremendous things to improve the lives of everyday people,” Clark said.
Cook County contributed $1.5 million toward the project, and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle said “projects like this are the future of Harvey.”
After the news conference, Clark said, going back to when he was an alderman, he heard concerns from residents of the building about needed repairs. He was elected mayor in 2019, around the time the building was purchased by Preservation of Affordable Housing.
The mayor said he learned to swim in the YMCA’s pool in the building when he was in the third grade. The pool is still there, but has not been in use for many years.
“We would love to do something like that,” he said of getting the pool back in operation. “Pools are very expensive to maintain. It’s cost-prohibitive to do it.”
The work being done by Preservation of Affordable Housing is helping to ensure that area seniors on a fixed income have continued access to affordable rental housing, Clark said.
“We’re glad this is an issue that’s being addressed,” he said.
For Ellis, having a place to live is just one element of bettering the lives of “people in their golden years.”
Some apartment residents don’t have regular visitors or get out very much, Ellis, 60, said.
“Your senior years are your special years and you are supposed to enjoy them,” he said.
Ellis said that he will set up a barbecue grill on the apartment’s patio about once a month and cook food — rib tips are always a favorite — and invite residents to join in a meal to at least get residents outside of their apartments for a little while.
“I love to cook,” he said.
Ellis said he previously lived in Chicago and was on a waiting list for an affordable apartment there.
“It was a long wait, and I put my name on a list for the suburbs and this popped up,” he said.
Ellis said his apartment is scheduled for a remodel in September, and Eager said to minimize disruptions to residents, work on apartments is limited to a handful of units at a time.
The apartments haven’t undergone interior renovations since 2003, and work includes new floors and remodeling kitchens and bathrooms.
“It’s a very complicated construction job,” Eager said. “You are trying to rehab a building people are living in.”
During the approximately two weeks it takes to complete interior work on each apartment, the preservation group puts residents up at a nearby hotel.
Along with remodeling the apartments, the renovations include landscaping, improvements to corridors and common spaces such as the building’s lobby and community room, Eager said.
The three Harvey apartment buildings are the only south suburban properties Preservation of Affordable Housing has in its Chicago-area portfolio, he said. The nonprofit operates affordable housing properties in 11 states and the District of Columbia.
mnolan@tribpub.com
