Pritzker, Lightfoot unveils design plans for new Chicago technology center

Chicago – Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Mayor Lori Lightfoot showed off a model of the first building planned for a technology office campus between Riverside, the South Loop and Chinatown.

“I am proud to share with you what DPI headquarters looks like,” said Pritzker.

It’s been years since Discovery Partners instituted its headquarters.

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Pritzker and the state of Illinois have earmarked a quarter of a billion dollars for technology projects that include the new campus with partners including the University of Illinois, the University of Chicago and Northwestern University.

“The new DPI headquarters will house offices and classrooms, laboratories and event space in a long-vacant, old train yard along the Chicago River into a world-class talent and creative powerhouse, matched with beauty,” said Pritzker.

The governor, whose multi-billionaire family contributed millions of dollars to the project, said 2,500 Chicagoans with no tech background would learn new skills in the new building.

Pharmacy company CVS will use part of the structure to house 200 technology-related employees.

Among them could be a 12-week, 40-hour-a-week online course for Chicago’s Rukia Dykes, who learned computer programming for the first time. Then she did a coding “boot camp” and went to work for CVS, a job that paid about $50,000 a year to start.

“And after that, I mean, it’s just up to them. It just takes that time and dedication,” Dykes said.

“It’s very difficult to find that kind of initiative. And so we feel that we want to tap into that initiative and then make engineers and developers with individuals who have been given the skills of Interapp, it’s the right combination,” said Roshan Navagamua. , executive vice president of CVS Health.

One of the goals of Discovery Partners Institute is to create new opportunities for those who want to study the fundamentals of computer programming and climb the ladder.