Aurora St. Charles Senior Living
Aurora
Aurora St. Charles Senior Living is the recipient of the Landmarks Illinois’ 2017 Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Preservation Award for Rehabilitation. Located at 400 E. New York St. in Aurora, the project transformed the former St. Charles Hospital, a six-story Art Deco building, into a 60-unit senior housing complex. The building served as a hospital and nursing home beginning in the 1970s and closed in 2010. It then sat vacant for six years before being redeveloped as the state’s first affordable housing project to use the Illinois River Edge Redevelopment Zone Historic Preservation Tax Credit, a program in Illinois that offers development incentives in Aurora, East St. Louis, Elgin, Peoria and Rockford. The rehabilitation project included cleaning and repairing the original Art Deco-style brick, limestone and terra cotta exterior and restoring and converting the original chapel and balcony to a community room for the building’s residents. An incredible example of public and private cooperation, this iconic building can now continue to serve the residents of Aurora.
The team responsible for this project includes: Evergreen Real Estate Group, Weese Langley Weese Architects, Linn-Matthes Inc, MacRostie Historic Advisors, Invest Aurora, Northern Lights Development Corporation, Eriksson Engineering, Forefront Structural Engineers, Consolidated Consulting Engineers, Environmental Group Inc., and McKay Landscape Architects.