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$30M Food Incubator Set For East Garfield Park

By Heather Cherone | July 11, 2017 1:49pm | Updated on July 13, 2017 11:46am
 The Hatchery, an incubator for food startups, will be built on a currently vacant lot near the Kedzie CTA Green Line Station.
The Hatchery, an incubator for food startups, will be built on a currently vacant lot near the Kedzie CTA Green Line Station.
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City of Chicago

EAST GARFIELD PARK — The Hatchery — a food and beverage incubator — would move to a new $30 million facility in East Garfield Park under a proposal unveiled Monday by Mayor Rahm Emanuel that he said would provide "a gateway to opportunity" for West Side residents.

The Hatchery will move from its space in the West Town offices of the Industrial Council of Nearwest Chicago to become the first publicly funded "innovation space" outside of Downtown, Emanuel said.

"I can't think of a better place than the West Side," Emanuel said.

The new facility — designed to help the corporate giants tap into emerging trends and technologies — will create an estimated 150 jobs in the first year, and 900 jobs in five years, officials said.

The 67,000-square-foot new facility will have space for 100 food entrepreneurs, including shared kitchens, storage and office space. West Side residents will be able to rent space at the Hatchery at a significantly discounted rate and the facility will host a neighborhood market.

Construction is expected to start in the fall and finish in 2018, officials said.

The project will get approximately $8 million from the city through the area's Tax Increment Financing district and will be built in part on land owned by the city sold to The Hatchery for $1 a parcel. The incubator is an effort designed by two Chicago nonprofit groups Accion and ICNC along with Kellogg Company and Conagra Brands.

A $95 million state-of-the-art police and fire training campus is set to be built about two miles away from the Hatchery under a proposal unveiled July 3 by Emanuel.