Within the next 30 days, Mayor Karen Hasara will begin appointing members to the commission that will oversee the Illinois Medical District in Springfield. The district became official on January 3, when former Governor George Ryan signed legislation drafted to create it.
The district was formed to develop Springfield’s medical industry, bounded by 11th and Walnut streets to the east and west and North Grand Avenue and Madison Street to the north and south. A master plan to be developed by the district’s commission is supposed to protect the integrity of the Enos Park and Oak Ridge residential neighborhoods, which the district envelops. The process to create the master plan must include public hearings. The City Council must also approve of the plan before it takes effect. An advisory committee made up of neighborhood representatives will provide the commission with feedback too.
Hasara discussed her appointment strategy with Enos Park residents at their neighborhood association meeting Tuesday night. According to the state law creating the district, Hasara gets to appoint four people to the commission. The governor gets four appointments. The Sangamon County chairman gets one. Hasara said her four, which must be approved by the City Council, will include a single representative from the residential neighborhoods, delegates from St. John’s Hospital and Memorial Medical Center, and an independent business leader whom she would like to serve as president of the commission, though this will be up to the commission members. Hasara also said the county chairman, who didn’t necessarily want an appointment at all, will agree with the city’s advice to use that appointment to choose a representative from Southern Illinois Medical School. The appointments from the city and county are enough to form a quorum, which means that even without the governor’s appointments the commission can appoint its president and get started on drafting the master plan.
Ryan placed an amendatory veto on an earlier version of the bill, arguing that the commission had too many members. As a result, the legislature decreased the size of the commission from 16 to 9, which was enough to earn Ryan’s approval.
During the Enos Park neighborhood meeting, Hasara and Norm Sims, the city’s director of economic development, were asked whether they knew of any recent purchases of land in Enos Park, evidently due to speculation that property in the neighborhood will become more valuable as the district takes shape. They acknowledged that they had heard rumors.
Such rumors are justified. Long before the district was created, a group called
Surgical Partners Inc., headed by Duane Schlueter of Springfield, had been purchasing
lots on the west side of Fourth Street and the east side of Third Street, just
north of Carpenter Street. The mostly commercial land falls within Enos Park’s
TIF district. And Judy Adams, who lives on the north side of Carpenter between
Fourth and Fifth streets, says that around the time Ryan passed the medical
district bill Springfield developer Ralph Hurwitz asked her and her husband,
Charles, if they’d be interested in selling their property as well as another
lot Charles owns on the east side of Fourth just north of Carpenter. Hurwitz
was unavailable for comment when Illinois Times called his business,
Hurwitz Enterprises.
This article appears in Jun 26 – Jul 2, 2003.
