A 111-Year-Old Rogers Park Firehouse Is Getting New Life as a Café and Event Space
By Socialhood News · Rogers Park ·
Rogers Park neighbors, one of the neighborhood's most storied old buildings is finally coming back to life — and it's going to smell like coffee.
The City of Chicago announced on May 28 that a shuttered firehouse at 1721–23 W. Greenleaf Ave. will be reborn as a café and event venue, bringing a long-vacant landmark back into the heart of the community. The $3 million project is being led by developer Ryan Cummings, and the plans call for a 2,000-square-foot coffeehouse on the ground floor, with more than 4,000 square feet of event space and offices on the second level.
The building has history that runs deep. Engine Company #102 served Rogers Park from 1915 all the way through 2009, when operations were relocated to a new facility on North Clark Street. Since then, the 6,323-square-foot structure has sat empty — for nearly 17 years, one of the neighborhood's most architecturally distinctive buildings has contributed nothing but nostalgia. That era is now officially over.
The project was selected from five responses to a Request for Proposals that the Department of Planning and Development issued in October 2025. DPD Commissioner Ciere Boatright, announcing the winning proposal, called it "a thoughtful proposal" that "will preserve a beautiful building with new uses that reinforce its role as a community anchor while complementing pedestrian-oriented retail activity on nearby Clark Street." The proposed purchase price is the building's appraised market value of $350,050. Cummings's team also includes Michael Salvatore of Chicago-based Heritage Hospitality Group, bringing hospitality expertise to a project that will need to operate as both a neighborhood café and a flexible event destination.
For Rogers Park, the adaptive reuse of Engine Co. #102 represents exactly the kind of investment the neighborhood has been championing: honoring what already exists rather than erasing it. The building has stood for 111 years. Its bones — and presumably its original character — will be preserved under a redevelopment approach the city's RFP explicitly prioritized. A coffeehouse that doubles as an event space is also a practical fit for Greenleaf Avenue, a residential side street just steps from the Clark Street commercial corridor, where neighbors can use it for everything from morning espresso to community gatherings and private events.
This announcement is part of a broader wave of adaptive reuse and investment that has been reshaping Rogers Park's built environment. The neighborhood is also in the pipeline for the Werner Bros. affordable housing redevelopment on Paulina Street, the new Loyola University academic building rising at 6551 N. Sheridan, and the newly opened Callan Plaza on Howard Street. Each project, in its own way, reflects a neighborhood choosing to invest in what it already has while building toward what it wants to become.
No construction start date has been publicly announced yet for the Greenleaf firehouse project, but with the city's selection now made and the purchase price established, the project is moving forward through the next stages of approvals and planning. Keep an eye on the Department of Planning and Development at chicago.gov/dcd for updates as the timeline takes shape. And when that first espresso gets pulled behind the old Engine Co. #102 counter — Rogers Park, you'll absolutely want to be there for it.
Sources:
1. https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/dcd/provdrs/ec_dev/news/2026/may/shuttered-rogers-park-firehouse-to-reopen-as-cafe--event-venue.html