In 2013, Chicago closed 50 schools. Because four of them shared facilities, the closings emptied 46 buildings. Ten years later, the Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ visited every one of those buildings, talked to neighbors, and reviewed thousands of public documents. Their May 18, 2023 audit is the most complete public accounting we have of what happened to the real estate. The headline finding is not ambiguous: only 20 of the 46 buildings were back in use. Twenty-six had not been returned to use.
That is the number to keep in your head when anyone tells you the closures were a tough but necessary decision that the market would sort out. The market did not sort it out. A decade later, more than half of the buildings were still sitting there.
What the audit found, building by building
The Sun-Times/WBEZ project is the document this story rests on. It reports that of the 26 dormant buildings, 16 were publicly owned and vacant, and 10 had been sold but were not in use. That split matters for anyone trying to assign responsibility, because the two categories point to different decision-makers.
For the 16 publicly owned vacant buildings, the lever sits with Chicago Public Schools and the city: disposition decisions, land-sale processes, zoning, and redevelopment planning. For the 10 sold-but-unused buildings, the lever is split between the private owner’s redevelopment timeline and whatever public approvals or subsidies the project depends on. The audit does not establish which cause produced which outcome for any specific building, and this piece will not pretend otherwise. What it does establish is the aggregate picture, and the aggregate picture is that the promised rebirth mostly did not happen.
The 20 buildings that did come back were not a random sample of market success. According to the audit, seven were repurposed by government bodies — including offices for CPS and a temporary city-run shelter for migrants — and thirteen were bought by private entities. Of the reused buildings, seven became pricey private schools or luxury housing, including one demolished to build new houses priced upwards of $600,000. The remaining six became a union hall, a daycare center, a fraternity headquarters, a community center, apartments for senior citizens and veterans, and a fieldhouse leased to the Chicago Park District.
Read that list again. The audit’s own framing is that many of the successes owed their second life to public ownership or significant public money. That is narrower than saying public money caused success, and it is more honest than the 2013 promise, which was that the buildings would be sold by the end of 2014 and redevelopment would be underway by early 2015 — a timeline that coincided with Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s reelection bid.
The promise and the record
In 2013, Emanuel said the city had “an opportunity to use these facilities to revitalize our economy in key areas and expand opportunity for Chicagoans in our neighborhoods.” That is the standard the administration set for itself. The audit’s finding is that ten years later, the promise rings hollow: more than half the buildings still were not back in use, and few had been returned to community use as neighbors had asked before the closings.
The scale of the disruption is worth stating plainly. The closures affected 13,646 children from the closed elementary schools, and the buildings were spread across 21 wards. This was not a scattered administrative adjustment. It was a mass transfer of children and a mass disposal of public real estate, concentrated on the South and West Sides.
Melody Elementary: a case study in a stalled sale
The former Melody Elementary School on the West Side is one of the 26 buildings not returned to use. According to the audit, the property was sold twice, most recently in October 2019, and the original plans called for 80 units of affordable housing. Those units do not exist. The building sits.
Why? CPS spokeswoman Mary Fergus told the Sun-Times/WBEZ that the sale process “was put on hold in 2019 per the request of Mayor [Lori] Lightfoot’s administration in order to develop a strategy on potential repurposing or redevelopment of these sites.” CPS CEO Pedro Martinez, in office since 2021, blamed the pandemic for redevelopment delays and said the district was having conversations with Mayor Brandon Johnson about better planning.
Those are the official explanations on the record. What the record does not show is a public, address-level accounting from CPS of where each of the 46 buildings stands today, who owns it, what was paid, and what the plan is. The 2023 audit is a snapshot, not a live database. That gap is the accountability problem.
Why the address is the unit of accountability
Announcements are not accountable. Addresses are. A press release about “repurposing” cannot be checked. A parcel record can. If you want to know whether the 2013 promise was kept at a specific site, you need the address, the recorded owner, the sale or lease terms, and any city land-sale or zoning action attached to it. The Sun-Times/WBEZ audit gives you the starting list. The rest is public records work.
This is the practical companion to the audit: a method any reader can run on one building, without waiting for a new investigation.
How to check one closed school building
- Start with the audit’s address list. The Sun-Times/WBEZ project lists the closed schools and reports each building’s status as of May 2023. Use it to identify whether your building was counted among the 20 in use or the 26 dormant, and whether it was publicly owned or sold.
- Pull the recorded owner. Cook County Recorder and Assessor records will show the current legal owner of the parcel and the recorded transfer documents. That tells you whether the building is still in public hands or has moved to a private entity, and when.
- Check city land-sale and zoning records. If the building was sold or redeveloped with city involvement, there should be a paper trail: a land-sale action, a redevelopment agreement, a zoning change, or a planned-development record. The city’s Department of Planning and Development maintains land-sale information, and the relevant ward office should be able to point you to the zoning file.
- File a FOIA request with CPS. CPS maintains a FOIA process for property and disposition records. Ask for the disposition file for the specific address: sale or lease documents, appraisals, requests for proposals, and correspondence about the site. Keep the request narrow to the address and the date range.
- Ask the ward office and the alderman. Zoning and land-use decisions run through the ward. The alderman’s office should be able to say what is proposed for the site and what public process, if any, has occurred.
None of this requires a source inside the district. It requires a parcel number and patience.
Who has the power to fix this
The power is not diffuse. For the 16 publicly owned vacant buildings, CPS controls disposition, and the mayor’s office controls the political direction of the district and the city’s land-sale and planning apparatus. The CPS CEO and the Board of Education can publish an address-level status report for all 46 buildings — owner, use, sale price or lease terms, and plan — and they can do it without a new study. The mayor can direct the Department of Planning and Development to coordinate with CPS on a public disposition tracker. The City Council, through the Committee on Housing and Real Estate and the relevant ward aldermen, can demand it.
For the 10 sold-but-unused buildings, the lever is the private owner plus whatever public approvals the project needs. If a redevelopment depends on a zoning change, a land-sale subsidy, or a city agreement, the city has leverage it has not visibly used. If it depends on nothing, the building is a private owner’s problem and the public’s loss, and the only accountability is disclosure.
The thread to pull
Pick one building. The one on your block, the one your kids would have attended, the one you drive past every day. Get the address from the audit. Pull the parcel record. File the FOIA. Ask the alderman what the plan is and when it was last discussed in public.
The 2013 closings were sold as a hard choice that would be followed by a serious redevelopment effort. Ten years later, the audit says 26 buildings were still not back in use, 16 of them publicly owned and vacant. That is not a market failure to be explained away. It is a public real estate portfolio that no one has been made to account for, address by address. The records exist. The question is who will be made to answer for them.
FAQ
How many buildings did the 2013 closures actually empty?
Fifty schools were closed, but because four shared facilities, 46 buildings were left empty, according to the Sun-Times/WBEZ audit.
How many were back in use a decade later?
Twenty of the 46, or 43%, were back in use as of the May 2023 audit. Twenty-six had not been returned to use.
Of the unused buildings, how many are still publicly owned?
Sixteen of the 26 dormant buildings were publicly owned and vacant; 10 had been sold but were not in use.
Did any closed schools become affordable housing?
The audit reports that the remaining six reused buildings included apartments for senior citizens and veterans. The former Melody Elementary was planned for 80 units of affordable housing, but the property was sold twice, most recently in October 2019, and had not been returned to use as of the audit.
How can I find out who owns a specific closed school building now?
Start with the address list in the Sun-Times/WBEZ audit, then pull the parcel record from the Cook County Recorder and Assessor. For public involvement, check city land-sale and zoning records and file a FOIA request with CPS for the disposition file on that address.