The University of Chicago Medicine (UChicago Medicine) is building Chicago’s first freestanding cancer center with inpatient and outpatient services. Aiming to bridge longstanding health disparities on Chicago’s South Side, the $815 million project will consolidate care and about 200 team members currently spread across at least five buildings.
The new facility, which broke ground in September, is expected to open to patients in spring 2027.
Designed by CannonDesign in collaboration with Blue Cottage of CannonDesign and Yazdani Studio, the center will serve both patient and academic needs by supporting the research, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of cancer. It will have a capacity for up to 200,000 outpatient visits and 5,000 inpatient admissions per year.
The 575,000-sf, seven-story building, with room for expansion, will offer 80 inpatient beds (64 medical-surgical beds and a 16-bed ICU), 90 consultation and outpatient exam rooms, and an urgent care clinic that protects immunocompromised cancer patients from extended emergency room visits. To promote patient comfort and privacy, private infusion bays will be grouped by cancer type.
To improve the patient experience, the new facility will provide support services for patients and their families—including lifestyle classes, nutrition education, survivor support, music therapy, fitness classes, and a retail store selling cancer-specific products such as wigs or clothing with openings for ports. Family-friendly features also will include showers and on-site laundry machines, inpatient family dining areas, and larger consultation rooms for patients who attend appointments with loved ones.
In addition to a ground floor that serves both the University of Chicago campus and the surrounding neighborhood, amenities include a café, wellness and meeting spaces, public art, educational opportunities, and a publicly accessible garden.
The project will create more than 500 construction jobs and will give at least 41% of $435 million in construction contracts to minority- and women-owned firms.
On the Building Team:
Owner: University of Chicago Medicine (UChicago Medicine)
Design architect and architect of record: CannonDesign
MEP engineer: Affiliated Engineers with RTM Engineers
Structural engineer: Thornton Tomasetti
Contractor: Turner Construction
Related Stories
| Dec 30, 2014
The future of healthcare facilities: new products, changing delivery models, and strategic relationships
Healthcare continues to shift toward Madison Avenue and Silicon Valley as it revamps business practices to focus on consumerism and efficiency, writes CBRE Healthcare's Patrick Duke.
| Dec 29, 2014
HDR and Hill International to turn three floors of a jail into a modern, secure healthcare center [BD+C's 2014 Great Solutions Report]
By bringing healthcare services in house, Dallas County Jail will greatly minimize the security risk and added cost of transferring ill or injured prisoners to a nearby hospital. The project was named a 2014 Great Solution by the editors of Building Design+Construction.
| Dec 29, 2014
New mobile unit takes the worry out of equipment sterilization during healthcare construction [BD+C's 2014 Great Solutions Report]
Infection control, a constant worry for hospital administrators and clinical staffs, is heightened when the hospital is undergoing a major construction project. Mobile Sterilization Solutions, a mobile sterile-processing department, is designed to simplify the task. The technology was named a 2014 Great Solution by the editors of Building Design+Construction.
| Dec 29, 2014
HealthSpot station merges personalized healthcare with videoconferencing [BD+C's 2014 Great Solutions Report]
The HealthSpot station is an 8x5-foot, ADA-compliant mobile kiosk that lets patients access a network of board-certified physicians through interactive videoconferencing and medical devices. It was named a 2014 Great Solution by the editors of Building Design+Construction.
BIM and Information Technology | Dec 28, 2014
The Big Data revolution: How data-driven design is transforming project planning
There are literally hundreds of applications for deep analytics in planning and design projects, not to mention the many benefits for construction teams, building owners, and facility managers. We profile some early successful applications.
| Dec 28, 2014
AIA course: Enhancing interior comfort while improving overall building efficacy
Providing more comfortable conditions to building occupants has become a top priority in today’s interior designs. This course is worth 1.0 AIA LU/HSW.
| Dec 2, 2014
Nonresidential construction spending rebounds in October
This month's increase in nonresidential construction spending is far more consistent with the anecdotal information floating around the industry, says ABC's Chief Economist Anirban Basu.
| Dec 1, 2014
How public-private partnerships can help with public building projects
Minimizing lifecycle costs and transferring risk to the private sector are among the benefits to applying the P3 project delivery model on public building projects, according to experts from Skanska USA.
| Nov 25, 2014
Emerging design and operation strategies for the ambulatory team in transition
As healthcare systems shift their care models to be more responsive to patient-centered care, ambulatory care teams need to be positioned to operate efficiently in their everyday work environments, write CannonDesign Health Practice leaders Tonia Burnette and Mike Pukszta.
| Nov 20, 2014
Lean Led Design: How Building Teams can cut costs, reduce waste in healthcare construction projects
Healthcare organizations are under extreme pressure to reduce costs, writes CBRE Healthcare's Lora Schwartz. Tools like Lean Led Design are helping them cope.
