The Aspire Center for Workforce Innovation in Austin has received the 2026 Landmarks Illinois Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Preservation Award for Rehabilitation for transforming the former and long vacant Robert Emmet Elementary School into a workforce development and community services hub.
The awards ceremony will take place Nov. 6 at the Art Institute of Chicago. The award recognizes the center’s rehabilitation of the vacant school building and its new role providing job training, financial coaching, legal aid and other services to Austin residents.
Westside Health Authority and Austin Coming Together partnered to co-develop and manage the Aspire Center. At the highly visible intersection of Madison Street and Central, this project turned a discouraging symbol of disinvestment into a community driven asset.
Morris Reed, president and CEO of Westside Health Authority, and Darnell Shields, executive director of Austin Coming Together, reflected on the Aspire Center’s recognition, its transformation of the long dormant school and its role in serving the Austin community.
“This project is very deserving of recognition in terms of the ambitions that we took on to renovate and transform an old school building. That involved adapting a lot of the existing infrastructure to the property while also trying to meticulously preserve certain aspects of the historic building and at the same time, making sure that it could serve and function in a way that fulfilled the uses that the community had hoped for,” Shields said.
For Reed, the recognition represents both a personal honor and an important moment for the Austin community. He said the award symbolizes reinvestment in neighborhoods by preserving, re-energizing and repurposing long-standing community assets. Reed also said the decision to rehabilitate the former school was influenced by architects who told them the building had ‘good bones.’
“It’d be a waste to demolish good bones just to build something that’s not as great. For me, it was also a comparison to how I perceive the neighborhood. I think Austin has good bones, with its people and its story,” Reed said.
According to Shields, residents helped shape the Aspire Center by advocating for the building’s reuse and participating in Austin Coming Together’s Quality of Life planning process, which guided the project around community needs.
“Community members got to work with urban planners, architects, designers and different types of planning professionals who really helped them shape their vision and synthesize the things they wanted to see happen into very feasible uses for the property. As a co-developer along with Westside Health Authority, we were tasked with bringing that vision to life. The blueprint was really laid out by the community,” said Shields.
Reed emphasized the importance of preserving the former school’s history and identity, noting that many people from Austin and the West Side attended Robert Emmet Elementary.
“They had a lot of interest in preserving some of that history and legacy, providing education not only for themselves but perhaps for a prior generation and creating a lesson for things to come. It was important for us to make sure that people didn’t feel like we were going to disrespect their history of attending this school and their memories of the chairs, the principal’s office and the auditorium,” Reed said.
The award recognizes projects that contribute to economic development and quality of life. When asked how he sees the Aspire Center contributing to those goals in Austin, Reed pointed to improvements in the quality of life in the immediate area, including what he described as a drastic reduction in crime.
“People can come up here and save. People can come up here and receive financial literacy. People can come up here and find a job. They can get training. Just that alone, this past year, we’ve placed over 150 people in new careers. So, that’s economic development,” Reed said.
As a lifelong Austin resident, Shields said the recognition is especially humbling after spending years looking for ways to make a difference in the community he has always called home.
“It’s hard to describe the joy that it brings to be a part of something like that. It’s such a unifying experience because no one person could do something like this. It’s just really great to be connected to so many people with a common focus that yields something much bigger than us,” Shields said. “That’s exciting and inspiring. It’s something that I think I’ll cherish for as long as I’m here.”
Looking back to when Westside Health Authority acquired the former school in 2018, Reed said the organization saw an opportunity to work with community members on something that had not been done in Austin in a long time. He said that opportunity ultimately helped shape what the building would become.
“When we first took over the building in 2018, we saw an opportunity to bring others in, not to go solo, but to bring others into a project of this scale. I like the fact that a lot of people take ownership of this project, not just Westside Health Authority and Austin Coming Together, but they talk about their contributions, whether they participated in a community focus group, worked on the project, helped protect the project or helped activate things beforehand,” Reed said.