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Chicago Women's Health Center Moving to Uptown

 1025 W. Sunnyside Ave.
1025 W. Sunnyside Ave.
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DNAinfo/Adeshina Emmanuel

UPTOWN — The Chicago Women's Health Center is relocating to Uptown after more than 30 years in Lakeview.

The social service agency's mission is to empower women and transgendered people via gynecological health care, alternative insemination, counseling and health education, according to the center website.

Center director Jess Kane said the planned move from 3435 N. Sheffield to a second-floor suite in the former Salvation Army building at 1025 W. Sunnyside Ave. will allow it to "expand our space to have greater impact, serve more people and have a fully-accessible space."

The center's new digs will allow for additional clinical space and a large meeting room where educational programs will be held, Kane said. Construction has started at 1025 W. Sunnyside Ave. to prepare the new location, with a target completion date somewhere around late summer or early fall, she said.

"We're really excited to be moving to the Uptown community and being able to be in a community where we can really serve a diverse population," Kane said.

The organization said in its 2012 annual report that it provided health care and education to over 6,000 individuals throughout Chicago last year. The center's new location is in a neighborhood known as a social services hub, in a former Salvation Army building that hosted a shelter and feeding program before closing down in 2008.

Cedar Street Companies, the firm behind the FLATS Chicago brand, bought the vacant three-story building last year for $1.2 million with plans to move the company's corporate offices from Downtown to Uptown, according to Crain's. In addition to the health center, FLATS is looking to fill the rest of the building with office and retail tenants.

Former Ald. Helen Shiller (46th) floated the idea in 2009 of redeveloping the building into a green technology center that would specialize in aquaponics and hydroponics, include an indoor fish farm, and provide food to the Uptown community. But the project — which would have been funded via tax increment financing but faced stiff opposition from residents — never made it out the gate.