Gary Comer Youth Center opened its Best Buy Teen Tech Center to South Side teenagers on Thursday, a technology hub built for video game design, music production and content creation inside the Greater Grand Crossing campus at 7200 S. Ingleside Ave. The nonprofit won the space in a national competition last spring, and Best Buy put up roughly $170,000 in start-up funding to build it out, said Remington Price, the center’s executive director.
The room opens five years after the sudden death of the instructor who built the campus’s original technology program from the ground up. Two program coordinators and the Teen Tech Center’s senior manager, all now on staff, came up through his classes.
Four Zones Under One Roof
Price said people tend to picture coding “and ones and zeros, like ‘The Matrix,’” when they hear the word technology. The new center was built to widen that picture. It splits into zones, each pointed at a different corner of the tech industry teens rarely get to touch before adulthood.
| Zone | What’s Inside | What Teens Learn |
|---|---|---|
| Photo and Video | Professional cameras, drop-down green screen | Content creation, social media production |
| Computer Science | High-speed gaming computers | Coding, game design, animation, character creation |
| Audio Lab and Vinyl Lounge | Turntables, electric guitars, drums, keyboards, donated records | Podcasting, beat-making, sampling and mixing |
| Makers’ Lab | Workbenches, advanced sewing and quilting machines | Upcycling, garment repair, hands-on fabrication |
The green screen lets teens build backgrounds and “new worlds” for video projects as they get “tapped into social media,” Price said. In the computer science zone, teens can tinker with animation and character creation and “see behind the scenes” of the careers built on a hobby many of them already love, she said.
The audio lab is meant to show how “technology interacts with sound,” according to Price. Its vinyl lounge holds donated records spanning English punk band Goat Girl to R&B singer Janet Jackson, there for teens to “open up their world” by learning to sample and mix. The makers’ lab extends an earlier partnership with Teens Take on Climate, which taught teens to thrift on a budget and upcycle old clothes; the new workbenches and machines are meant to deepen those same lessons, Price said.
A $170,000 Bet After a Spring Competition
Gary Comer Youth Center submitted to the competition last spring and was awarded the space ahead of Thursday’s grand opening. The Best Buy Foundation, the retailer’s philanthropic arm, covers staffing and programming inside the center in addition to the build-out money, Price said.
The Chicago site joins a national footprint the foundation has spent more than a decade building. Best Buy marked its 50th location nationally back in 2022, with a stated goal of reaching 100 by 2025. Whether that target has actually been hit is unclear, but the foundation still describes the network’s job as closing the digital divide for teens who lack tech access through hands-on labs in programming, filmmaking, music production and design.
Alex Guzinski’s Legacy Still Runs the Room
In 2021, Alex Guzinski, the technology instructor students called Mr. G, died unexpectedly. His death “rocked our community,” Price said. Guzinski had built the campus’s technology program “from the ground up” and was core to how the whole site operated, she said.
We’ve really been spinning our wheels and working really hard to regain that momentum that he had and make good on the work that he poured his whole heart and soul into.
That is how Price described the years since Guzinski’s death. Winning the Best Buy space changed the equation, she said: “I really feel like we’re able to honor his legacy and vision and make good on all of the hard work that he put into our youth and our space.” Two program coordinators and the Teen Tech Center’s senior manager are alumni of Guzinski’s original program, meaning the room he never got to see is staffed partly by students he once taught.
Digital Literacy Beyond the Screen Time Debate
The center will weave digital and media literacy into its programming, including lessons on ethical use of artificial intelligence (AI), Price said. That approach sits apart from a national conversation that has leaned toward limiting teen screen time rather than expanding supervised access to it; one New York educator has been pushing schools toward firmer teen tech limits to ease student anxiety.
Price described the stakes in broader terms. “Whether it’s about the food that they eat, the technology that they’re using, the neighborhood they choose to live in or how they choose to get to and from work, every single decision that our young people make has so many more layers than it ever has,” she said. “Opportunities like the Teen Tech Center are to guarantee that our young people are best equipped so that they can continue to flourish and grow beyond what any of us could ever imagine.”
Twenty Years, Two Grand Openings in One Month
The Teen Tech Center is the latest milestone for a campus marking 20 years since its May 2006 opening. Gary Comer, the Lands’ End founder who funded the original $30 million building after visiting his old grammar school a few blocks away, built the campus to give South Side teens a resource he felt the neighborhood lacked.
Earlier in July, the campus opened phase one of its Food Sovereignty Hub, an agricultural project run by young people to expand access to fresh produce. The Comer Crops Youth Farm now includes:
- A 1,400-square-foot greenhouse
- A hydroponic container farm
- A chicken coop housing up to 20 birds
- A 6,000-square-foot rooftop garden and hydroponic lab
The farm, backed in part by a $250,000 city Neighborhood Opportunity Fund grant, produces more than 16,000 pounds of fresh food a year across 1.75 acres, making it the largest youth-run farm in Chicago. Phase two, already underway, adds a retail space, a culinary galley and outdoor classroom space to the farm. “Our young people truly are assets,” Price said. “They have so much knowledge and unique lived experience and, more so than ever, no one older than them really understands in full the world that they’re navigating, because none of us have ever experienced life the way they are currently experiencing it.”
Who Can Walk In, and When?
Any teen between the ages of 13 and 18 can join by filling out a partnership membership form and dropping in; there is no long-term commitment or audition required to use any of the four zones. Summer hours run 8 to 9 a.m. and 2 to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, and the music studio keeps its own schedule, open 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. Mondays and Wednesdays.
For now, the zones sit ready on Ingleside Avenue, waiting on the next teenager to pick a corner, plug in and start building something Mr. G never got to see finished.
