Back of the Yards neighborhood group gets new home on Ashland Avenue

The Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council will soon be getting a new home.

BYNC, which works to address social issues in Chicago’s Southwest Side, including Brighton Park, McKinley Park and New City, is relocating to a development at 4630 South Ashland Avenue, Block Club Chicago reported.

The site, which is less than a half mile from the group’s former home at 1823 West 47th Street, was previously home to the Aronson furniture store and showroom.

“It’s a really big parcel of land in the heart of our retail corridor, so it’s important for so many reasons,” Craig Chico, CEO and president of BYNC, said. “It’s needed, and it’ll be a beautiful addition to what we’re doing over there.”

BYNC is working with architects JGMA and Park Row Development on the project, which will also include a performance theater. The theater will be available to any artist groups in the neighborhood, but will be used mainly by the council’s own Ballet Folklorico group.

“It’s not intended to be a revenue generator, but we want to be able to provide some performance space that doesn’t exist currently in the community,” Chico said.

Demolition of the 3,300-square-foot building is scheduled to begin in May. BYNC still wants to encourage community engagement with the project, so some details could change moving forward.

The new project and headquarters will sit only one block from the United Yards development at 1515 47th Street, where a joint venture of Celadon Partners and the Blackwood Group is redeveloping a city-owned lot into a 50-unit affordable housing building. Additional plans for United Yards include redeveloping a vacant four-story building at 4701 South Ashland Avenue with 30 senior rental apartments and a ground-floor coffee shop.

[BCC] — Victoria Pruitt