Rush demolishing student housing complex for new $500 million outpatient care facility

A block-long stretch of low-rise apartment buildings just east of Rush University Medical Center’s 2012 butterfly-shaped tower are getting to ready to bite the dust in order to make way for a new outpatient facility. This week, the city issued no less than 13 individual permits to wreck and remove a series of three-story brick structures stretching between 1404 and 1552 W. Harrison. Straddled by Ashland and Loomis, the doomed buildings were known as the Center Court Gardens apartments. The complex previously served as student housing and was permanently closed in June of 2016.

Its replacement—dubbed the Rush Center for Advanced Health Care—is being designed by HDR Architecture. While the firm has reportedly completed preliminary drawings for the new facility, Rush has yet to make the images available to the public. A conceptual strategic master plan released in 2015 featured an illustration that showed a placeholder design.

Rush University

The project hopes to consolidate outpatient services from multiple buildings spread across the hospital system's Near West Side campus. According to a recent report by Gazette Chicago, the building will be roughly 550,000 square feet in size and constructed at a cost of $500 million. It is expected to connect to the Rush’s signature tower building via a skybridge and will include its own separate parking structure.

A satellite outpatient facility operated by Rush University Medical Center is also expect to open in Chicago’s South Loop in 2018. It will occupy the first, fourth, and fifth floors of a 15-story, mixed-used development currently under construction at 1411 S. Michigan Avenue.

• Demolition permit at 1552 W. Harrison Street [Chicago Cityscape]
• Rush begins work on Advanced Health Care facility [Gazette Chicago]
• Rush plans $500 million outpatient tower along the Ike [Crain’s]