In the Media
Hyde Park Herald - July 27, 2005

Univ. to demo homes for research building
By JEREMY ADRAGNA

A community meeting is planned for this Thursday in which University of Chicago officials will announce that construction of the latest edition to its Master Plan, the New Research Building, will be underway this fall.

The New Research Building, to be constructed at the northeast corner of 57th Street and Drexel Avenue, will be erected at a cost of nearly $163 million as it recently garnered the support of university trustees and the city.

“This approval, which caps a series of approvals by the Trustees, along with approvals by the city of Chicago, allows us to proceed with site clearance and construction of the building,” said Dean James Madara in an email obtained by the Herald.

The 10-story structure, to be completed by winter 2007, is slated to house research groups from both the Department of Medicine and the Department of Pediatrics as well as the U. of C. Cancer Research Center.

The announcement coincides with the completion of one of the largest campus construction projects, the Center for Integrated Science, which has been under construction continuously since 2001. Officials said faculty from the Ben May Institute for Cancer Research, the Institute for Biophysical Dynamics, the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and investigators from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute should be completely moved by the fall.

“The idea is to get all of the major biomedical research in close proxmimty,” said Vice President of Community and Governmental Affairs Hank Webber. “That’s the way science and medicine is done these days.”

Computer renderings of the development show the two buildings will be joined across 57th Street with an elevated pedway.

The building will be constructed in place of nine greystone houses and apartment buildings between 5661 and 5629 S. Drexel Ave., which the university owns. Some of the buildings are over 100 years old, including the three-story Deronda apartment complex built in 1888. All of the buildings have apparently been vacated.

Similar demolition is not new to this portion of the campus. In April 2004, the university announced it would tear down seven three-story apartment buildings in the 5700 block of South Drexel Avenue, essentially one side of the entire block, to make way for a new 10-story hospital tower and emergency room there to be completed in 2010. The land is now flat and ready for construction.

When all of the new projects are completed a wall of new high-tech research facilities will line both Drexel Avenue and 57th Street. The meeting will be held Thursday, July 28 at the Donnelley Biological Sciences Learning Center, 924 E. 57th St. in room 205 between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m. For more information contact Sonya Malunda at 702-4568.