Early one morning in late February, David Winner and Virginia Sorrells were sitting in Caribou Coffee on North Broadway, a block and a half from the Jane Addams Center, poring over a two-inch-thick binder. Winner and Sorrells are two of the founding members of Friends of Jane Addams Center, and the binder was the Hull House Association’s just-released Request for Proposals packet, official information about the center compiled for prospective buyers. They were scanning through it page by page, looking for a glimpse into how Hull House has pitched the building so far. The reason? If they can find a buyer by March 26, maybe Lakeview won’t lose a community center.
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Friends of Jane Addams Center formed last summer in an attempt to keep the former settlement house at 3212 N. Broadway from being sold. FOJAC was interested in protecting the building and assumed that any new owner would probably raze it. Even back then it looked like a losing battle: the building needed repairs that the Hull House Association claimed it couldn’t afford to make, and Hull House CEO Clarence Wood argued that the social-service programs offered there might better serve a less gentrified neighborhood.
“In exchange for these concessions,” the agreement continues, “FOJAC agrees that if it is unable to secure sufficient funds…or to nominate a qualified purchaser on or before March 26, 2002, it will withdraw its opposition to the sale of the building and withdraw its support of any effort to down zone the property.”
