The redevelopment of the former Children’s Memorial Hospital site officially broke ground in May, 2017. This $350 million redevelopment plan has been in planning since 2011 when McCaffery/Hines was awarded the project.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel called this a “new chapter in the history of Lincoln Park”. Twice a Chicago 7 (in 2011 and again in 2016), Preservation Chicago has been very active in advocating for historic preservation and would have preferred to have seen greater levels preservation and adaptive reuse. However, there has been a sincere effort to accommodate historic preservation and to recreate historic buildings whose functional obsolescence required replacement.
The design team lead which included Antunovich Associates, in collaboration with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), is preserving and adaptively reusing a number of historic buildings. The 1931, Holabird and Roche, red brick boiler house & laundry building at 2365 N. Lincoln is being adaptively reused. The former White Elephant Building is being renovated, while a second terra cotta building has been demolished and will be recreated using new material. The seven-story Nellie Black Building has been demolished, but will be rebuilt with size, scale and materials similar to the original building.
Additional Reading
Lincoln Park’s massive mixed-use “Lincoln Common” project formally breaks ground
First new building cleared to rise at the former Children’s Memorial Hospital site