UChicago Medicine plans to spend nearly $328 million to construct a four-story laboratory facility about a mile from its flagship hospital — a building that will be part of a larger partnership with the University of Chicago and City Colleges of Chicago to expand job training on the South Side.
The 144,368-square-foot building would consolidate and replace lab operations now scattered across multiple locations, according to an application for the project submitted to the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board. The facility would sit on East Garfield Boulevard in the Washington Park neighborhood.
“The four-story laboratory would bring UChicago Medicine’s pathology laboratories, currently in separate buildings across the Hyde Park campus, together in one modern building, expand testing capacity for patients across the health system, and support about 550 jobs in Washington Park,” UChicago Medicine said in a statement.
About 350 workers would be relocated to the new lab building, and about 200 new positions are expected to be created, according to the application.
The system’s current lab spaces’ “aging infrastructure” has meant ongoing maintenance that “causes frequent disruption in lab services,” according to the application. University of Chicago Medical Center’s main laboratories now sit in a basement, and “during periods of heavy rain or severe weather these areas experience inflows of water that damage laboratory equipment, threaten the integrity of patient specimens, and cause substantive delays in testing and reporting,” according to the application.
The new lab facility would also help accommodate expected growth in lab testing, and help support UChicago Medicine’s new freestanding cancer hospital, the AbbVie Foundation Cancer Pavilion, expected to open in 2027.
The health system expects that it will be able to transport lab specimens within an already-established 30-minute window, with the new lab facility.
The building would also be part of a larger effort with City Colleges to increase training for in-demand healthcare jobs.
City Colleges plans to build a new $40 million learning center for Malcolm X College adjacent to the new UChicago Medicine lab building. That learning center is expected to serve up to 800 students a year and have a new, dedicated program for training clinical lab technicians.
The training program is designed to help fill a need for clinical lab techs in the area, with Chicago hospitals struggling to find qualified workers, according to the application.
Graduates with associate degrees in clinical lab technology can earn between $42,000 and $80,000 annually — more than double the median income of residents in the Washington Park area, according to the application.
“This healthcare pipeline expansion builds on a successful and strong relationship between City Colleges, the University of Chicago, and UChicago Medicine that is already placing our students into upwardly mobile careers,” Mayor Brandon Johnson previously said of the plan, in a news release.
UChicago Medicine first announced the project in 2024, saying it expected to break ground on the lab in 2025. A spokesperson for UChicago Medicine did not answer a question Monday about why the project was delayed.
The Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board must first approve the project before it can move forward.
The lab facility would be built on land owned by the University of Chicago, and the learning center would be constructed on land owned by the Chicago Transit Authority, according to the application.
The University of Chicago and City Colleges of Chicago plan to hold a community meeting Tuesday at 6 p.m. to discuss the project at the Green Line Performing Arts Center at 329 E. Garfield Blvd., and over Zoom.
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