Progress has been slow since Springfield landed Illinois’ second state-designated medical district earlier this year. Its nine-member commission has four vacant seats, and so far the state has provided no funding.
Just before sunrise on September 16, 22 people gathered in a Memorial Medical Center parking lot to board a Chicago-bound bus. The group hoped to pick up pointers during a daylong tour of the state’s first medical district, established on Chicago’s near west side in 1941. The trip would at least give them an idea of what a medical district looks like.
Riders included business and community leaders, property owners, physicians, politicians, city bureaucrats, and residents from the Enos Park and Oak Ridge neighborhoods, which lie inside the new medical district’s boundaries. Some had come to network; others wanted to see how the Chicago district treated its residents. All the participants–including about 20 others who had come up by car–wondered what they’d bring back home. They returned wondering whether they’d brought back anything useful.
Chicago’s medical district is 62 years old, with more than 40 healthcare facilities and research labs, generating billions of dollars in annual revenues. Smaller than a square mile, it provides 42,000 jobs and attracts 75,000 visitors each day. Research partnerships involve top-notch facilities around the world, such as M.I.T. and the Roslin Institute, a biotechnology lab in Scotland famous for cloning Dolly the sheep.
“The whole time up there I kept asking, ‘Where did you guys get the money to start all this?'” says Mayor Tim Davlin. “They kept saying, ‘The state, the state, the state.’ I kept thinking, ‘How will ours ever compare?’ ”
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Springfield’s medical district exists on paper, but not much more than that. Its commission has met only once and with barely a quorum. Four of the commission’s unpaid positions were appointed by former mayor Karen Hasara and one was picked by the Sangamon County Board. The remaining four choices belong to Governor Rod Blagojevich, but he hasn’t gotten around to filling them yet. Davlin says Blagojevich’s office has discussed names with him. The commission is supposed to meet again in October, when members will share what they saw in Chicago.
Commissioners say they’re a long way from crafting a master plan to guide development of a medical industry within the district, a square-mile area bordered by 11th, North Grand, Walnut, and Madison. Legislation allows them to purchase and lease land, as well as to fund and attract new businesses. They can also seize land by eminent domain, a controversial measure that worries people living in the district’s two neighborhoods. But the master plan will have to be approved by an advisory board of residents from Enos Park and Oak Ridge and then by the City Council–measures that will supposedly protect the residents and their homes. Davlin says the medical district should actually spur home ownership. Currently Enos Park residents are overwhelmingly renters.
Lack of a master plan hasn’t stopped developers from moving in. They’ve already
hatched plans to tear down blocks for medical buildings, and entrepreneurs are
talking about new business ventures–all in anticipation of a coming boom. Joe
Talkington, owner of Star Uniforms in Bloomington, was on the bus–he’s planning
to expand into Springfield because there are hardly any competitors supplying
medical uniforms. Talkington is also a professor at Illinois State University,
and he’s asked his students to analyze Springfield’s medical district, searching
for business opportunities. During the trip up to Chicago, Talkington chatted
with Charlie Salvo, a local developer who recently announced plans to build
a medical campus near Walnut and North Grand.
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If you ignore the large vacant lots, Chicago’s medical district can be intimidating. Once the bus turned off I-55, it seemed a new development was going up on every other block. It’s a compact, bustling urban center teeming with activity, bringing researchers and scientists into close proximity to encourage communication.
The Chicago district funds labs for new ventures, and then builds bigger labs to discourage them from relocating. New buildings must be at least 40,000 square feet to make any money, according to district officials. “Anything less and you won’t even be able to pay the light bills,” said one.
The district receives millions annually in state funds to pay salaries for a full-time administrative staff, to buy land, and to host the occasional catered lunch like the one provided to the Springfield delegation.
“The state has been wonderful to our research parks,” said Jim Peters, director of the Chicago Technology Park, one of the district’s main research centers. “Chicago has been wonderful too.” The city has paid for design enhancements, such as “streetscaping” and iron fencing.
The catered lunch was enough to set the Chicago district apart. While boarding the bus that morning, someone joked that donuts and coffee were nowhere to be found. The Springfield medical district has no money. The Davlin administration had to pay for the bus rental.
Riders quickly noticed the lack of residential development in Chicago’s medical district. Back in the days of postwar “urban renewal,” the City of Chicago razed entire blocks of housing, leaving empty lots with vague promises to build in the future. Decades later some residential developments sprouted, but district officials said it isn’t their job to develop housing. Enos Park resident Marilyn Piland was frustrated. She had come on the tour just to see how the district integrated new development with existing residential neighborhoods. “There was barely any residential at all,” she complained on the way back home. She was surprised to hear that over the years the Chicago district had relocated hundreds of residents to make way for new, non-residential construction.
Springfield’s medical district president, Mike Boer, stressed that residents will play an active role in planning the new district, which wasn’t the case in Chicago. But Chicago’s district remains a model, he said. “There are some similarities to what they were facing 30 years ago and what we’re facing today–a mix of residential, commercial, and retail uses, dilapidated neighborhoods. I was impressed to hear that during the entire life of district it never had to face legal action when relocating people or entities.”
During the tour, one of the guides spoke about the Chicago district’s “holistic design,” but he also added that it’s been difficult to impose signage standards. Commissioners held one of their regular meetings in the afternoon, and the Springfield entourage was invited to attend. This meeting was also catered with gourmet snacks. The agenda was filled by reports of demolitions and plans to put up new buildings. Former state representative Gwenn Klingler, who helped to draft the legislation creating the Springfield district, suddenly observed that there were no women on the Chicago commission.
At lunch Jim Peters gave a power-point presentation on the Chicago district. Though he stressed that “small cities can beat the big ones,” the presentation suggested that Springfield would have a hard time competing against Chicago. He said Springfield should pay attention to research centers in Aurora, Colorado; Fort Wayne, Indiana; and Louisville, Kentucky. Davlin picked up his head when Peters mentioned Peoria, which had lost the race to get the state medical district but had developed its own plans to foster biotechnology businesses and other high-tech industries.
The next day Davlin returned to Chicago to attend a government summit sponsored by Rod Blagojevich, who talked about dividing the state into economic development zones.
“There’s supposed to be state funding for different projects within each region,”
said Davlin. “My first thought was Springfield’s medical district.”
This article appears in Oct 2-8, 2003.
