ANDERSONVILLE — Work will soon begin on a new park in Andersonville that’s set to fill a notorious neighborhood vacant lot.
Crews for the Chicago Park District will break ground “extremely soon” on Park 599, a public space promised as part of the Edgewater Hospital redevelopment, according to Heather Gleason, director of Planning and Development for the Park District.
The park will rise on a lot that has been vacant since the hospital campus at 5700 N. Ashland Ave. was demolished in 2017. Some hospital buildings were redeveloped into apartments that debuted in 2020, with developers agreeing to turn a portion of the site into a public park.
Those plans have hit many snags, including an earlier schedule that called for a park opening this fall. But with a general contractor now in place, work will likely start in October, Gleason said at a community meeting held by Ald. Andre Vasquez (40th) Monday.
The park should be open to the public by the spring, when some plantings will likely take place after most construction wraps, officials said at the meeting.
The park will sit just west of the redeveloped hospital site between Edgewater Avenue to the north and Hollywood Avenue to the south.
The park will feature a large lawn encircled by a peanut-shaped walking path. There will be two areas with tables and chairs along with benches on the walking path, according to renderings of the plans.
Trees and plantings will surround the lawn and walking path, with an ornamental fence around its perimeter.
The design was selected from two final schematics that the Park District and contractor Hitchcock Design Group unveiled to neighbors in spring 2021. Those final design schematics were informed by community meetings held as early as 2016, when the park project began in earnest.
The park will have the official name of Park 599, but neighbors are likely to ask the Park District to change it to West Edgewater Green Park.
The former Edgewater Hospital complex was an eyesore for nearly two decades before being converted into upscale apartments in 2020. As part of that project, MCZ Development pledged to give a portion of the hospital site to the Park District to build a park.
The portion of the property slated to host a park has remained a brown site even though the apartment building has opened. That’s because the developer had to make improvements to the site and surrounding infrastructure before turning it over to the Park District, officials have said.
The property was turned over to the Park District earlier this year, Vasquez previously said.
Vasquez said he is glad to see the project moving forward, along with the nearby Metra station that could also debut in the neighborhood early next year.
“There will be a lot of things to be happy about in quarter one, quarter two” of next year, Vasquez said at the meeting.
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