WASHINGTON PARK — The University of Chicago and City Colleges of Chicago are planning two new facilities on Garfield Boulevard, which officials say provide more career and economic opportunities for South Siders.
UChicago Medicine will build a health care lab with 550 jobs, officials announced Tuesday. Of these, 350 would be transferred from the medical center’s main campus in Hyde Park, along with 200 new jobs, executive vice president Mark Anderson said.
City Colleges will build a neighboring Malcolm X College learning center with classrooms, dry labs, offices and street-level retail. The center will serve up to 800 students, establish the first clinical lab technician program in Chicago and host about 50 full-time and part-time jobs, officials said.
“There’s an abundance of talent here in this community, and we want to make sure we meet that talent where they are,” City Colleges chancellor Juan Salgado said at a press conference Tuesday. “These are connected projects that will provide a clear pathway to good paying, upwardly mobile jobs for South Siders.”
The lab facility will be built on university-owned property at Garfield Boulevard and Calumet Avenue, while the learning center will be built on Chicago Transit Authority-owned land next to the Garfield Green Line stop.
The properties were part of the proposed Washington Park Obama Presidential Center site, before the Obama Foundation opted in 2016 to build the center in Jackson Park.
Groundbreaking is expected to begin in 2025, while the labs would be open in time to support the UChicago cancer center expected to open in 2027. The lab project is estimated to cost at least $200 million, and UChicago Medicine will not seek public funding for the facility’s construction, officials said.
“This lab facility will operate 24/7, which will support the diagnostic needs of patients in our new cancer pavilion,” Anderson said.
In addition to the learning center, City Colleges also will begin offering “full pathways” to nursing careers at Kennedy-King College, 6301 S. Halsted St. in Englewood.
Malcolm X College will offer associate’s degrees in nursing and a licensed practical nursing program, while Kennedy-King will provide a basic nursing assistant program and general education courses. All programs will be hosted at Kennedy-King’s Englewood campus.
The Washington Park facilities and the new programs at Kennedy-King will improve South Siders’ access to nursing, lab tech and other “in-demand positions that pay well,” officials said.
In 2014, City Colleges began shutting down its nursing programs across the city, forcing South Siders to travel to Malcolm X College on the Near West Side if they wanted to study nursing, the Sun-Times reports.
As the country faces a massive shortage of nurses, the South Side program expects to see 50 basic nursing assistant students graduate by fall 2024, the Sun-Times reports.
“We will be looking for South Siders who are passionate about care for their community and they will be rewarded with meaningful work and career pathways that are limitless,” said David Sanders, president of Malcolm X College.
Mayor Brandon Johnson said City Colleges also will work with local high school students “to ensure their students can see themselves in these various roles.”
The Washington Park projects address key aspects of the neighborhood’s quality of life plan, which was completed in 2009 and set a vision for the neighborhood’s future, UChicago president Paul Alivisatos said.
The plan reflects residents’ desire to help neighbors “find jobs and build up their skills for higher paying work,” as well as establish “better connections to existing employers such as the University of Chicago.”
“We at the university and our nearby neighbors know well there is an incredible well of possibility at hand,” Alivisatos said. “… In advancing this project, I think we will help to counter some population loss and incredible disinvestment and some of the land vacancy that has really faced Washington Park.”
University officials have “come into the Washington Park in the right way” as they’ve developed the health care project plans, Ald. Pat Dowell (3rd) said.
Dowell, whose ward includes the Washington Park sites, attended Tuesday’s announcement along with neighboring Ald. Jeanette Taylor (20th), City Council’s education committee chair whose ward includes Kennedy-King.
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