Advocate Lutheran General’s cancer center zoning gets OK in Park Ridge

The Park Ridge Zoning Board and the Zoning Board of Appeals in June approved a series of items that will allow Advocate Lutheran General Hospital to expand its cancer treatment center and develop it into a so-called “comprehensive cancer center.”

That center houses all the hospital’s cancer care in a single building, including diagnosis, treatment, and various care components for patients along their journey, according to the hospital’s president.

In a phone interview, Lutheran President Allison Wyler said having a separate facility makes sense because it allows patients and healthcare providers to have a one-stop shop, but, beyond convenience, she said it’s risky to have immunocompromised patients walking through a general hospital setting. But mostly, she said, she wants the patients to have everything they need in one place.

“There are elements of a cancer journey that are very predictable,” Wyler said. “And there are elements that are very specific to each patient. … The environment we are going to be creating allows it to be very patient-centered and team-centered, to support the entire patient journey.”

She said the features the facility will offer already exist within the hospital, but they’re not centrally located.

The facility will expand the hospital’s current Center for Advanced Care by adding two additional floors on the space at 1700 Luther Lane. This will add 77,605 square feet to a space that’s currently 99,602 square feet.

The hospital sought variations for required parking lot islands and for the required space for a wall or fence. Developers pointed out that the rest of the hospital doesn’t have a wall or a fence, and they plan to install shrubs along the perimeter. In addition, developers will include more green space in the entryway to make up for the removal of the parking lot islands. That green space is intended to help with stormwater drainage.

Steve Gregory, the landscape architect, spoke to the zoning board of appeals, pointed out that the project is over the required green space by about 10 %, and he feels shrubs and greenery offer a more inviting entryway than a wall or a fence for cancer patients.

“It helps calm people down who are anxious about where they’re headed,” Gregory told the board of appeals.

The board agreed and approved both zoning variances.

With the zoning boards signing off on the proposed space, the city council will next take up the matter, likely in July. This isn’t the first such comprehensive cancer center at an Advocate facility, but she said she expects it will be something of a destination facility, though she couldn’t estimate how many patients it might see.

Wyler said she expects the center to be finished in 2028, and while she doesn’t know exactly how many new jobs the center will create, she expects it will bring more jobs to the area.

“There will be new jobs created as a result of this,” she said. “We absolutely will have jobs created because of this.”