Chicago Hospital Plans $645M In Upgrades In Lakeview

Another big Chicago hospital expansion is in the works.

Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center is planning a $645 million modernization of its Lakeview facility that includes adding four stories to its outpatient building, building new structures and demolishing others, the Tribune reported.

The plans were revealed in an application filed to the State Health Facilities and Services Review Board, and also include a new five-story tower addition on top of the hospital’s Center for Advanced Care to host most of the hospital’s overnight care beds, which would be relocated and transformed into private rooms. Between a quarter and a fifth of the hospital’s rooms are private now.

The plan also involves renovating large parts of the main hospital and demolishing three buildings that are a part of the main hospital now, including one that is 100 years old, the Tribune reported. All three buildings set to be removed are described as “outdated.”

“A hospital that has been dedicated to caring for the community for over 100 years is in need of a major overhaul,” Dr. Richard Fantus, Masonic medical director for trauma, surgical and perioperative services, wrote in a Feb. 28 letter to the state.

The project would add 332,780 square feet of new construction, and 260,493 square feet of existing facilities will be upgraded, with completion scheduled for 2030. It will leave the hospital with 326 licensed and staffed beds, down from 397 licensed beds in place now, even though there are only 304 that are staffed, meaning that’s how many can be used, hospital president Sussan Nordstrom Lopez told the outlet.

Adding patient privacy is the main reason for the project. The work is meant to allow all patients to have private rooms and make them and their visiting families more comfortable.

The new bed tower will host inpatient and intensive care unit beds, as well as labor and delivery and neonatal intensive care units. Most hospital inpatient beds would be moved to the new tower.

The expansion of the Center for Advanced Care would include a new breast center with mammography and ultrasound services that are now in a rented medical office building.

The Center for Advanced Care is already in a relatively new building completed in 2015 and is need of an update as demand for cancer services there building has been high. The four-story addition will extend the center to the west, the Tribune reported.

The Masonic plan is the second Chicago hospital facility this year to make plans to put more than $600 million into construction. University of Chicago Medicine has plans to build a $633 million, 500,000 square-foot cancer hospital in Hyde Park, meant to provide more health care access on the city’s South Side and free up beds at its main hospital. And Rush University Medical Center has under construction a $450 million outpatient cancer and neurosciences center nearby its Near West Side headquarters.

[Chicago Tribune] – Sam Lounsberry