NEAR WEST SIDE — Rush University Medical Center is demolishing entire blocks of buildings along Harrison Street to make way for a new outpatient care center.
Crews are knocking down buildings in the 1400, 1500 and 1600 blocks of West Harrison, including the Center Court Gardens, a group of apartment buildings that were once used for student housing.
Center Court Gardens served as student housing for Rush University for more than 35 years, university spokesman John Pontarelli said. The apartments, which housed nearly 300 of Rush's 2,500 students, closed last year.
In 2016, Rush worked to find residents alternative housing, including securing a block of apartments at Tailor Lofts Student Apartments, a housing complex a mile east of Rush's campus at 315 S. Peoria St., Pontarelli said.
The new outpatient care center is expected to open in late 2020 or early 2021, Pontarelli said. The cost of the project, slated to be built at the northeast corner of Harrison Street and Ashland Avenue, across from Rush's butterfly-shaped tower, still is being determined.
In 2015, the nine-story, 620,000-square-foot project was estimated at $500 million, according to a Crain's Chicago Business report.
In February 2016, a group of turn-of-the-century buildings west of the project was torn down on the Rush campus to make way for green space.
Rush University also plans to occupy part of the old Malcolm X College campus at 1900 W. Van Buren St. The site is expected to be used primarily for academics, in conjunction with the new Malcolm X College, which has taken on a specialty in the medical field.
Rush's 14-story butterfly-shaped tower opened in 2012.
Buildings owned by Rush University on Harrison Street are being demolished to make way for a new outpatient medical center. [DNAinfo/Stephanie Lulay]
