After listening to Northwestern Memorial Hospital officials outline a proposal to build a 1.2 million-square-foot tower on a vacant lot in Streeterville, residents at a Wednesday night community meeting were mostly supportive of the project. Many also mourned the impending loss of one of the neighborhood’s few green spaces.
“It was so nice of the hospital to plant wildflowers there that we can enjoy,” said Deborah Gershbein, president of Streeterville Organization of Active Residents, which co-hosted the community meeting with Ald. Brian Hopkins, (2nd). “But we will all need health care, and we’re so fortunate that the heart of this community has such a wonderful hospital, and (with these plans) it will get better.”
The tree-lined lot of more than 3 acres is across the street from Northwestern Memorial’s Feinberg Pavilion, and is bordered by Fairbanks Court, Huron Street, McClurg Court and Erie Street. It was once home to Lakeside VA hospital, which Northwestern acquired in 2005. The VA building was razed in 2009.
The new tower will add several hundred inpatient beds, along with at least five operating rooms, to Northwestern’s Near North Side medical complex, an essential move for what is already the state’s largest hospital, said Gina Weldy, senior vice president, administration at Northwestern Memorial HealthCare.
“We are seeing the sickest patients in Chicago, and they’re coming from farther and farther distances,” she said. “We’ve completely tapped our space. The emergency room can’t wait, and our surgical capacity can’t wait.”
Global firm Perkins & Will is still in the early stages of designing the proposed tower. Northwestern Memorial hopes to break ground in 2027 after receiving approvals from local community members, the city and the state, and complete the project by 2031.
“There are key decisions still on the table that need to be made,” said Hopkins, who promised residents that many more meetings will be held, and community input will shape final plans. “What you’re doing matters. It is not a waste of time at all. There are no foregone conclusions here.”
The project is part of a multiyear campus transformation, Weldy said. The hospital will soon add new operating rooms to existing buildings such as the Feinberg Pavilion, and consolidate and grow medical services throughout the complex. It will reserve much of the new tower for cancer patients, who now receive treatment in numerous buildings across Streeterville.
“That’s a population that needs as much convenience as we can deliver,” Weldy said. “We are actively thinking about how the campus will evolve over the next 100 years.”
Dr. Emmanuel Okematti, a neurologist at the medical center, applauded Northwestern’s decision to launch the Near North Side project. But he pointed out that resident physicians, who frequently work 70- to 80-hour weeks and have to live nearby in one of the city’s most expensive neighborhoods, need higher salaries and cost-of-living adjustments. Northwestern residents voted to unionize in January 2024, and are currently stuck in negotiations.
“I wish they would put the same investment into the resident physicians who will be staffing these buildings,” Okematti said.
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Northwestern hasn’t decided how tall its new building will be, or where visitors will park, and the old VA building’s remaining three-story basement needs to be dug up and demolished, said Charles Cloutier, Northwestern Medicine’s project vice president for planning and construction.
The new building will occupy the western two-thirds of the site, with a small public plaza along Fairbanks, a patient drop-off area along Erie and a second-floor bridge connecting it to Feinberg Pavilion. The eastern third will remain open for future clinical development.
Becky Critch, a resident of 680 North Lake Shore Drive, a residential and medical office building near the site, asked whether that eastern third could be temporarily preserved as community green space.
“The top concern is the demolition of the underground structure; there’s no way to go through that process without dust and noise,” Hopkins said, but he’s also willing to coordinate a community planning effort about preserving the last bit of green space, at least until Northwestern develops its final plans. “Everyone will understand this will have an expiration date. Count on seeing a lot of me and my team as we go forward. This is the beginning of a lengthy process of community involvement.”