St. Leo Residence
South-Side Facility Rises for Homeless Vets

by Pamela Dittmer McKuen

When completed later this year, a new campus of residential and support services will help Chicago's homeless veterans rebuild their broken lives.

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Catholic Charities Housing Development Corp., an arm of the Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago, broke ground in April on the former site of St. Leo the Great Catholic Church.

The $20 million endeavor consists of a fully accessible apartment building with 141 furnished studios and recreation and meeting space, and a commercial building with an outpatient medical and mental health clinic and employment assistance.

"We believe that veterans who have fallen on hard times have an interest in returning to the highly productive lives they once had," said William D'Arcy, chief operating officer of the development corporation.

Estimates are that about 18,000 homeless veterans reside in the Chicago area, with a large population on the south and southeast areas of the city, he added.

The 2-acre campus is being developed in conjunction with the U. S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which is spearheading similar campuses throughout the country.

The 65,000-sq.-ft. St. Leo Residence for Veterans, as the apartment building is named, is at 7750 S. Emerald Ave.

Backing up to it is the 15,000-sq.-ft. Veterans Affairs Clinic and Resource Center at 7731 S. Halsted St.

Serving as architect is Weese Langley Architects Ltd. of Chicago. Principal Dennis

Langley cited its multipronged mission: design two related buildings with widely disparate functions, create a feeling of permanence for clients who have none, blend into the character of the neighborhood and be cost-efficient.

"We had to balance all of those things," he said.

A Rocky Start

The project got off to a rocky start when preservationists objected to tearing down the historic church, which was built in 1917.

As a compromise, the bell tower, which was attached to the church, was saved as a freestanding structure on the property. That made the demolition, which was done by Henegan Wrecking of Chicago, a labor-intensive matter because the church had to be peeled away with care.

In addition, two of the tower's exterior masonry walls had to be rebuilt, which was done with brick salvaged from the church. The other two walls were cleaned and tuckpointed.

The bell tower has no bells, but it might someday, and when it does, they will ring once more, D'Arcy said.

Then came the job of coordinating the facade of the four-story apartment building with the adjacent tower. But the older brick, an orange-brown color, bears more color variation than contemporary versions and would be difficult to match. The designers achieved a similar effect by alternating two brick colors for the apartments.

"Once we worked out the deal to save the tower, that element became part of the whole design, which became historically respectful of the tower," Langley said. "We didn't want it to stand (visually) separate."

"They're not identical, but you can tell they belong together," said project manager and onsite superintendent John Zaucha of Par Construction of Oak Park. Par is the general contractor on the job and also is handling the majority of the new masonry in-house.

The two-story clinic fronts the commercial hubbub and new construction along Halsted Street. It, too, was appointed with brick, but with greater amounts of glass and metal.

"We used the idea of going more modern to fit into that context," Langley said. "The brick colors are gray and burgundy, and were picked to work with the metal coping and entry canopy of an aluminum panel material. They were also considered to be more modern than traditional colors for brick."

Deluge of Water

Once the design kinks were worked out, construction began in mid-June. Soon the construction crew was besieged by a different problem: too much water that flooded the excavation. Three broken water lines were the culprit.

"We were pumping 24/7 until the city located the leaks and capped them," said Russ Rojakovick, Par president. "The leaks were fairly far away but because of the clay, the water went pretty much horizontal until it poured into our hole.

"When the first one got fixed, we thought that was it. Then there were more."
On the plus side, the team has room to spread out - a rarity in the city, he said.

"This job is fortunate to have 20- to 30-ft. setbacks around the entire building, which allows plenty of room for masonry scaffolding," he said. "We're also fortunate that the owner owns vacant property across the street and we're staging out of that parking lot."

How the work will progress over the winter depends on the weather. Daylight hours are shorter, and the city doesn't allow construction before 8 a.m. But crews can work on Saturdays.

"It's not so much that the guys can't work, but the materials can't work," Rojakovick said. "We can't lay brick when it's below freezing."

The campus, which is being financed through state, federal and private money, is scheduled to welcome its first tenants in the fall.

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