Lincoln Park’s massive mixed-use ‘Lincoln Common’ project formally breaks ground

The long-awaited—and at times controversial—redevelopment of Lincoln Park’s former Children's Memorial Hospital into the $350 million Lincoln Common project reached an important milestone today as city officials joined developers Dan McCaffery and Houston-based Hines Interests for a groundbreaking ceremony. Touted as a “new chapter in the history of Lincoln Park” by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Lincoln Common has been in the works since McCaffery was selected as the winning bid to redevelop the six-acre site back in 2011.

With the 1960s-era hospital building now demolished, work is ready to begin on the new multi-building development. Designed by Antunovich Associates in collaboration with Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), the upcoming mixed-use complex will include 540 rental apartments in a pair of 19-story towers, a 60-unit mid-rise condominium building, 150,000 square feet of retail, and 57,000 square feet of publicly accessible open space. The plan will utilize the hospital’s existing 1,044-stall parking garage but will add new ground floor commercial bays and give the structure an aesthetic overhaul.

The site’s 1930s brick-clad boiler house and laundry building plus an older terracotta structure at the southwest corner of Lincoln and Halsted will be preserved for possible adaptive reuse. The second terracotta building at the southwest corner of the intersection, however, was deemed beyond saving though it could be rebuilt in a similar architectural style. Meanwhile, across the street at 700 W. Fullerton Parkway, the site’s seven-story assisted living structure replacing the similarly-sized Nellie Black building has already been cleared to begin construction.

Image via Hines Interest webcam

• First new building cleared to rise at the former Children’s Memorial Hospital site [Curbed Chicago]
• Developers Finally Take Control of Children's Memorial Site [Curbed Chicago]
• The Lincoln Common [Hines]