I consider myself a traditional B/W darkroom person, and do all my own gelatin silver film processing at home. But I've got to say that I've had some real good results from Ilford's chromogenic B/W film. At the time I was living in Portland, Oregon, and had the film developed and printed at Camera World in downtown Portland; the prints came out real nice and neutral toned.
You could consider sticking with C41 B/W film, but print them in a silver-based home darkroom. Ilford's chromogenic B/W film has a more neutral tone to the film base, making it easy to print onto gelatin silver paper; Kodak's chromogenic B/W film is tinted to make it print easier on machine processing, but doesn't work so well on variable contrast silver paper, due to the color tint of the film base.
Also, the main difference between the two types of B/W films (chromogenic vs gelatin silver) is the grain structure; specifically, chromogenic has 'dye globules', whereas silver has micro crystals of opaque metallic silver that clump together in the development process to produce visible 'granules' of texture. If you plan on scanning these negatives, the C-41 will scan much easier on consumer-grade scanners than does silver negatives; the opaque silver crystals scatter the light, whereas the translucent dye globules in C-41 pass the scanner light better.
Another thing with silver-based film is that the entire look of the negative is dependant on the type of developer and agitation used. Look on APUG and other analog photo sites and you'll see that there's entire schools of thought around certain families of development and agitation methods; one thing is certain, however, is that most all commercial lab development of silver-based film is iffy at best, since they don't know the brightness range of your scene, or your rated exposure index; nor do they know how you intend on the prints looking. So they use some textbook recommended development time, in a developer not of your choosing, and usually end up over-developing or over-agitating, resulting in 'soot and chalk' images with grain the size of river gravel. So you're best to learn to process your own silver-based film.
The lab prints you get from chromogenic B/W film are really intended to be 'proof' prints, not gallery quality; few labs will take the time to color balance their printer to get a neutral tone with your negatives.
In the silver darkroom, one has the choice of paper type (warm tone or cool tone) along with various toner processes (i.e. sepia, gold, selenium, lith printing, etc.) that can provide a limitless variety of effects. The thing to remember is that if you're interested in achieving a particular creative effect, you've got to gain control of all the parameters that affect the final output and learn to use them to your advantage. Meaning learn to use a silver darkroom, or scan the negatives and photoshop them. But you can't leave those creative decisions up to a 'lab rat', regardless of their caliber; they simply don't have the time, ability or understanding of what your creative intent is.
PS: I'm a silver 'lab-rat' by choice.
It's not at all expensive to get going (the setup will have paid for itself with the $ you'll save by not sending off your next few rolls) and it's a skill you'll have forever. It's a great feeling knowing you're no longer dependent on labs or the C41 films. 
