AURORA, Ill. — Evergreen Real Estate Group is set to open Aurora St. Charles Senior Living, a 60-unit affordable seniors housing community in the Chicago suburb of Aurora.
The project is a $24 million redevelopment of St. Charles Hospital, a historic art deco building near the city’s downtown. Evergreen started on the rehabilitation in December 2015.
Designed by Wybe J. Van der Meer, the former hospital was built in 1932, with additional renovations made to the interior of the structure in the decades that followed. Until the redevelopment, the building had been vacant since 2010, the year it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
Evergreen Real Estate Group collaborated with Invest Aurora, Northern Lights Development Corp., the City of Aurora, Illinois Housing Development Authority (IHDA) and Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, along with several private lenders and investors, to secure financing and tax credits needed to fund the rehabilitation.
Evergreen obtained approximately $3 million through the River Edge Redevelopment Zone program, created in 2006 to incentivize riverfront development in Aurora and other Illinois cities. A combination of federal historic tax credits, low-income housing tax credits allocated by IHDA and private financing funded the balance of the project.
Founded in 1999, Chicago-based Evergreen Real Estate Group develops, acquires and manages affordable and market-rate multifamily apartments for both seniors and families across eight states.