Alderman Dowell Joins UChicago, City Colleges, UChicago Medicine, Mayor Brandon Johnson for the Announcement of a Washington Park Medical Facility
(Washington Park project deck community meeting 2.28.24)
Alderman Dowell was proud to host a community meeting on February 28th to introduce an exciting development project for the Washington Park community. Located on the northwest corner of Garfield Blvd. and King Drive on a vacant parcel of land owned by the University of Chicago, UChicago Medicine plans to build a new facility that consolidates its existing clinical labs, modernizes their operations, and maximizes lab test efficiency to ensure best-in-class care.
Directly west of the proposed UChicago Medicine lab facility, City Colleges of Chicago would construct a separate new learning center for Malcolm X College. The new facility would be built on land owned by the Chicago Transit Authority, immediately east of the Garfield Green Line station. Together, the facilities would support approximately 600 jobs, including 200 newly created positions at UChicago Medicine. The Malcolm X College Learning Center in Washington Park will serve up to 800 students and establish the first clinical lab technician program in Chicago.
The Malcolm X College Learning Center would include classrooms, dry labs, office space, and retail space at the street level, as well as support approximately 50 full-time and part-time employees. The ground floor retail space provides opportunities for local businesses with a built in customer base – the hundreds of people working and going to school every day in the facility, as well as other foot traffic stemming from the Garfield Green Line station.
UChicago Medicine’s Washington Park facility will meet construction diversity goals of 35 percent minority-owned contractors and 6 percent women-owned contractors, with 30 percent of hours from minority journey workers and apprentices and 40 percent of hours from minority laborers. The City Colleges of Chicago project will meet its board-approved goals of 35 percent minority-owned contractors and 7 percent women-owned contractors.
Alderman Dowell has long been an advocate of bringing more investment to Washington Park, especially in a way that contributes fresh vibrancy to our commercial corridors and brings needed jobs and educational opportunity to our community. This project builds on sustained investments the University of Chicago has made in Washington Park over the past decade.
During that time, UChicago has partnered with Washington Park residents to reactivate several vacant spaces along East Garfield Boulevard from South Prairie Avenue to South Martin Luther King Drive in an effort to transform the block into a cultural destination. New community assets on Garfield include the renovated Arts Incubator, the new Green Line Performing Arts Center, the historic Green Line station which now houses a retail space for South Side creative entrepreneurs, and, most recently, the Arts Lawn, which turned underutilized, vacant land into green space to be used for arts and culture-based programming and performances.
Alderman Dowell looks forward to working with the University of Chicago, the City Colleges of Chicago, and the community on this project to help realize the great potential of East Garfield Boulevard.