A cryoplant permit confirms construction is underway at the Illinois Quantum & Microelectronics Park on the old South Works site. The project carries roughly $960 million in public subsidies — attributed to a February 2026 Illinois Answers Project tally — and affordable housing commitments with no disclosed enforcement mechanism. The 7th Ward alderman voted for the zoning, spoke at the groundbreaking, and has not endorsed a Community Benefits Agreement.

SOUTH CHICAGO — A cryogenic plant is going up on the old U.S. Steel South Works site at 3733 E. 87th St., and the questions residents on the Southeast Side have been asking for two years have grown more urgent: what, exactly, is in writing for them?

Chicago Department of Buildings permit No. 101065270, approved October 1, 2025, authorizes new construction of a one-story, roughly 84,979-square-foot cryoplant for the Illinois Quantum & Microelectronics Park — a 128-acre campus carved from the broader ~440-acre former South Works lakefront site where the steel mill closed in 1992. The permit applicant is Related Chicago 8080 LLC, the developer entity for Related Midwest; architect of record is Lamar Johnson Collaborative. As of this month, the permit is in active inspection, meaning construction is underway. The Real Deal listed the project among Chicago's top construction permits in July 2026, putting the cryoplant at approximately $30 million.

The campus drew another announcement this week: Zero Point Cryogenics, an Alberta-based cryogenic systems supplier, said July 22 it is opening its first U.S. Innovation and Service Hub at the IQMP site — one more signal that the 128-acre development is past the press-release stage.

What it has not passed is a Community Benefits Agreement. The Coalition for a South Works CBA, which has organized since 2013 through two failed mega-development proposals on this same land, presented its latest proposal in September 2025 at the Salud Center, 3039 E. 91st St., backed by more than 40 organizations. As of July 2026, no CBA has been signed.

That matters because the affordable housing attached to the project — the piece most relevant to 7th Ward residents who have watched this site sit idle for three decades — is entirely voluntary. Related Midwest has announced roughly 181 affordable units across four components: Sacred Apartments (81 units, with 17 at 30% AMI, 48 at 50% AMI, and 16 at 60% AMI), a 57-unit Galleria 89, a 43-unit mid-rise, and 42 single-family homes. None of those commitments carries a disclosed deed-restriction term or a binding enforcement mechanism, according to reporting by The Real Deal Chicago and the Chicago Sun-Times.

Ald. Gregory Mitchell (7th Ward) — whose ward covers the South Works site and who has represented the Southeast Side since 2015 — voted for IQMP zoning at both the Chicago Plan Commission (November 2024) and City Council (December 2024), then spoke at the September 30, 2025 groundbreaking, calling the project "a turning point for the Southeast Side." Those appearances are distinct from a city-organized public meeting in March 2025 — covered by Block Club Chicago, hosted by the city's economic development director — where neighbors and activists disrupted proceedings to demand written commitments from developers; Mitchell was not present at that event. The Chicago Crusader reported that his office did not respond to a media inquiry about the Coalition's CBA demands. His stated position: community benefits should be secured through a binding redevelopment agreement with the developers, not a standalone CBA. No such agreement with specific community-benefit terms has been publicly disclosed. Fifth Ward Ald. Desmon Yancy has introduced a South Shore CBA ordinance; Mitchell has not publicly supported it.

The public side of the ledger is not similarly unenforceable. According to a February 7, 2026 tally by Capitol News Illinois and the Illinois Answers Project, roughly $960 million in public funds has been committed to the IQMP — 89 percent allocated to equipment and infrastructure, 11 percent to long-term tax incentives. The state of Illinois is the largest direct funder, committing roughly $700 million for environmental remediation, cryogenic plant construction, and organizational support. State tax incentives are a separate component: they include approximately $92 million in MICRO credits for anchor tenant PsiQuantum alone — at roughly $600,000 per guaranteed job against a state-program median of $20,000 per job, per the same Illinois Answers Project analysis. Cook County committed $20 million directly and a 30-year Class 8 MICRO property tax reduction; the City added $5 million from a housing and economic development bond; DARPA federal investment rounds out the tally, per the Illinois Answers Project chart. Binding incentive agreements require 240 new positions across all companies.

The earlier Chicago Lakeside Development plan — which envisioned more than 13,000 homes across the full ~440-acre former South Works parcel before collapsing by 2016 — illustrates the scale of what the site was once expected to hold.

"We want to make sure that with this potential development coming, that we are not displaced [and] we are not poisoned," said Renee Nowlin, a KECS Block Club Association member in the 7th Ward, at the September 2025 town hall.

The cryoplant inspection log is moving. The CBA signature line is still blank.