Mount Prospect supportive-housing project to break ground
Construction will begin Monday in Mount Prospect on a supportive-housing project that is likely to be the first of its kind in the Northwest suburbs.
Myers Place, as the development is called, will serve people who have a disability or mental illness but can live independently. A groundbreaking ceremony will be held Monday at the now-vacant site of the development at the corner of Dempster Avenue and Busse Road.
“This is monumental,” said Jessica Berzac, vice president of Chicago-based Daveri Development Group, the developer of the project. “This will be the first supportive-housing project in all of Northwest Cook County. We couldn’t be happier to be getting under way in Mount Prospect.”
Myers Place will consist of 39 federally subsidized residential units — 21 one-bedroom apartments and 18 studios — along with roughly 3,500 square feet of commercial space. Various support services will be available on site, as well.
The $13.2 million project is being funded by a variety of partners, including UnitedHealthcare of Illinois and the Illinois Housing Development Agency. It is expected to open in the summer of 2013.
Berzac said projects like Myers Place serve residents who require a level of care that can be difficult to access.
“This is for people who need some support, but not the intense, 24-hour services like you’d find in nursing homes,” she said. “That level of care can be hard to find. Before this, people who lived in the Northwest suburbs had to travel into the city to find it, or they moved into nursing homes or perhaps lived without any access to services at all.”
The Kenneth Young Center, an Elk Grove Village-based mental health agency, will provide on-site services to the residents of Myers Place, including counseling and coordination of health care visits.
“There’s a real need for this kind of facility in the Northwest suburban area,” said Mitch Bruski, CEO of the Kenneth Young Center. “How wonderful for people with certain kinds of mental illness or disabilities to be able to work and live independently in their own part of the region.”
Both Berzac and Bruski praised Mount Prospect leaders for welcoming Myers Place to the community. The village board approved the plan in November with a unanimous vote.
“Mount Prospect has been phenomenal throughout the process,” Berzac said. “And soon we will have a facility up and running that we can point to when we try to build in other communities and say see, this is what we’re talking about.”
The Myers Place groundbreaking ceremony will take place at 10 a.m. Monday, May 7, at 1585 W. Dempster Avenue. Numerous people involved in the project will be on hand, including Mount Prospect Mayor Irvana Wilks.
Myers Place will be the first of its kind in the area, but others might follow. A supportive-housing project is awaiting a final vote in Wheeling. It received a positive recommendation from that village’s plan commission. Another was proposed in Arlington Heights, but that project has become the subject of a legal battle in federal court after it was denied needed zoning variances. Daveri also is the developer for both the Wheeling and Arlington Heights projects.
Similar projects have been proposed in Oak Park and Country Club Hills with different developers, Berzac said.