Chicago Tool Library provides access to thousands of tools on the city’s West Side

By JAMAICA PONDER

Click here for updates on this story

    CHICAGO (WBBM) — At first look, it’s easy to mistake this Garfield Park warehouse for a Home Depot or a Lowe’s. But this place isn’t that at all.

“A lot of people had never heard of the concept before, but once you hear about it, it’s exactly what it sounds like,” said Tessa Vierk, executive director of the Chicago Tool Library.

Situated snugly in an alley, the Chicago Tool Library is the city’s one-stop shop to check out and borrow tools.

“We, of course, have power tools, saws, all the things you’d expect, but we also have kitchen equipment, camping gear. We have audio-visual equipment, printers, scanners, really all sorts of things that you want to be able to have access to but you don’t want to buy,” Vierk said.

Vierk co-founded the Chicago Tool Library when she noticed that none of the hundreds of tool libraries in the world were in Chicago.

“And it just made a ton of sense that Chicago would have one,” Vierk said.

From high prices to low storage space, barriers to owning tools in a city can stack up quickly.

“There’s kind of a saying in the library community: access over ownership,” Vierk said. “So we want to be that catalyst for people to get access to their things, and so a big way we do that is through our pay-what-you-can memberships. And that means that anybody in Chicago can choose what they want to contribute to use this resource.”

The library has had nearly 6,000 people sign up in the four years they’ve been open.

“No judgment, no rules,” Vierk said. “We actually have member signups from every single Chicago zip code, so we have people coming to us from every walk of life, from literally every neighborhood in Chicago.

“Memberships are actually our main source of income, so we really are defined and sustained through our members and users.”

Not just in keeping the lights on but the shelves stocked too.

“Almost all the tools we have here have been donated,” Vierk said.

New items always come in, ensuring enough tools to go around.

“There is sometimes a scarcity mindset that there’s not enough of everything for everyone, but really we operate from a place of abundance that we can create this really generous system to get them to people, and it feels good,” Vierk said.

The library gives out free seeds to members for their gardens; it also hosts repair fairs where folks can bring in their broken gadgets, and the tool librarians will help fix them up.

On Oct. 28, they’re having a housewarming party at their new West Garfield Park warehouse to introduce themselves to the neighborhood.

Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.