Rush gets go-ahead for orthopedic care facility

By Susan S. Stevens 

Illinois Medical District (IMD) commissioners have given Rush University Medical Center permission to build a five-story orthopedic ambulatory care facility on the southwest corner of Ashland Avenue and Harrison Street.

                IMD commission board members at their Feb. 27 meeting also approved construction of a parking lot for the University of Illinois at Chicago on the southwest corner of Roosevelt Road and Wood Street.

The IMD, which oversees land use and zoning in the area, approved the Rush project only after Rush officials made modifications to address IMD concerns about traffic flow in the area. The project now will provide underground loading docks and create turn restrictions.

“No left turns will be permitted off of West Harrison between Ashland Avenue and Paulina,” IMD Executive Director Samuel Pruett said.

Rush will build a central energy plant and parking deck extension at the same time.

                “It is a well designed project,” said commission member John E. Partelow.

“The IMD commission applauds Rush's bold expansion plans,” Pruett said.

The $137 million project will consolidate outpatient offices and facilities of Rush’s growing Department of Orthopedics. Rush officials expect to begin construction in July and complete all components by 2009.

“This represents the first, visible phase of construction in our campus transformation and is the necessary first step required to advance our other phases that will include construction of a new inpatient clinical facility,” said Peter Butler, Rush executive vice president and chief operating officer.

Later phases will upgrade Rush’s complex at a cost of $810 million; improvements will include a hospital addition, a new emergency medical center, and renovations of existing buildings. The Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board and the IMD must approve the plans, however. Tentative plans have construction beginning in 2008.

Flournoy Street will be closed during construction, so left turns off Harrison will continue to be allowed on an interim basis. Once work is complete, only eastbound Harrison traffic will be allowed to make right turns into Rush's Harrison Street parking lot entrance. Right turns out of Rush onto Harrison still will be allowed.

Commissioners expressed reservations about UIC’s parking lot proposal.

“Although the commission understands the need for additional parking on UIC's west campus, it is not encouraged by this use on the proposed site and does not find this use to be in keeping with the IMD Master Plan,” which calls for higher density construction on the Roosevelt Road corridor, Pruett said.

In the end, commissioners approved the plan unanimously, except for Kenneth Schmidt’s vote to abstain because he is a University of Illinois trustee and wanted to avoid a conflict of interest.

University officials expect to build on the property at some point. While the parking lot is in use, the IMD wants UIC to make spaces available to other institutions.

                IMD commissioners also are looking at a plan for a heliport and maintenance center on Wood Street between 14th Place and 15th Street near Illinois State Police and FBI headquarters.

                “There has been a great deal of interest expressed on behalf of law enforcement and public safety agencies as well as by IMD’s medical centers,” Pruett said.

The IMD scheduled a use value hearing, open to the public, at 3:30 p.m. on Monday, April 16, in the auditorium at 2100 W. Harrison St. Commissioners Leon Dingle Jr. and Abraham C. Morgan will serve as hearing officers, reporting on the hearing and making recommendations to the full IMD commission May 15.

                Pruett said the railroad tracks on the district’s southern boundary will provide a buffer between it and residential areas.

                Commissioners began the meeting with a moment of silence in tribute to a commissioner who died Feb. 24, Dorval R. Carter, MD. “He was very committed to caring for the poor,” Schmidt said.

                Carter, 72, was chairman of obstetrics and gynecology at St. Cabrini Hospital until it closed and then took the same post at St. Anthony Hospital. He also taught at Northwestern University. Carter died of pancreatic cancer.

                Mayor Richard M. Daley had appointed Carter an IMD commissioner, one of two mayoral appointees to the board, and will name a replacement.

 

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