Contract Connector

Inspiration

Historically, major projects have been built in Black and Latino communities, but the people who live there often benefit the least. Chicago has seen it before. When U.S. Steel's South Works closed in 1992, the Southeast Side never recovered. The 606 trail pushed up home prices and priced out longtime Latino families. And Black-owned firms still receive only about 11% of city contract dollars.

Now the Illinois Quantum & Microelectronics Park is being built on that same South Works land. Residents are already asking whether it will benefit them or just happen to them. We wanted to build a platform that makes sure community members are the first to benefit.

What it does

Contract Connector links local and Black-owned businesses to contracts from the projects being built in their own communities.

Businesses create a profile, get matched to open contracts, and see what they need to qualify.
Developers post contracts and find vetted local vendors.
The City gets a dashboard to track whether local spending and hiring promises are kept.

The platform is free for businesses and developers. The City of Chicago licenses it.

How we built it

We built a front-end prototype with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, hosted on GitHub Pages, with Firebase as our backend database. We split the work across design, development, and market research. The research covered Chicago contracting data, past developments like the 606 and the Obama Center, and the community's response to the quantum park.

Challenges we ran into

Time: we had a few hours to go from idea to prototype, so we had to cut scope hard and focus on the core flow.
Finding data: contracting numbers are spread across news reports and city records instead of one clean dataset.

What we learned

We learned that the problem isn't that local businesses can't do the work. They don't hear about the opportunities, or they get stuck on insurance, bonding, and certification requirements. Chicago has run more than a dozen programs to fix this, and the numbers barely moved. Programs alone aren't enough, and communities need tools that make access simple and keep the promises visible.

What's next

Pilot the platform with a South Side chamber of commerce on quantum park contracts, add verification of local status, and pitch a citywide license to the City of Chicago.