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ST. ANNE’S HOSPITAL WILL GAIN NEW LIFE

The chances of successfully converting the shuttered St. Anne’s Hospital in the low-income Austin neighborhood into a social-services complex seemed dim in 1990 when a West Side community group set out to do just that.

But seven years and several completed new facilities later, Bethel New Life will begin construction Wednesday on the most ambitious part of its plans to redevelop the 9.2-acre, seven-building campus at 4950 W. Thomas St.

The main building on the campus, which was formerly a 437-bed hospital, will be converted into a 125-unit apartment complex for low-income seniors with $10 million in funds from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“This could have been a dumpy hole of abandoned buildings. Instead, it’s coming into a new life,” said Mary Nelson, president of Bethel New Life, a non-profit development and social services agency founded by the Bethel Lutheran Church.

In addition to providing $10 million for building the senior center, HUD has committed to providing Section 8 funding for the building so that residents will only have to pay 30 percent of their income toward rent.

Already, Bethel has converted several of the other buildings or sold them to other agencies.

The complex, now called the Beth-Anne Life Center, includes a 5,700-square-foot day care and parenting education center, funded in part by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Chicago Department of Human Services.

The center houses a small-business center and a Chicago Public School Small School site operated by Westside Holistic, a social-services group.

Westside Holistic also owns a professional office building at the site that includes an Osco drug store and a branch of First Bank of Oak Park and the Austin-West Garfield Federal Credit Union.

The senior center, set to open in early 1999, will be designed for independent living, though Bethel plans to raise money to put an adult day care center on the first floor.

St. Anne’s closed because of financial problems in September 1988. Two years later, Bethel bought the hospital and its grounds for $3.2 million from Ancilla Systems Inc. of Elk Grove Village.

Bethel was able to pay off the loan from rent paid by the state, which temporarily housed mental health patients and staff at the former hospital for three years.