Residents React to Advocate Christ Expansion: ‘It’s About Quality of Life’

Residents attending the Oak Lawn Planning and Development meeting on Monday continued their pointed questions about

Longtime resident Terry Vordour, who said he met his wife in 1965 at the old Paragon Restaurant, which will soon be razed to make way for the parking garage for the ambulatory center, said he was there when officials laid the cornerstone for the medical center’s original six-story hospital building.

He said he’s learned to live with and accept hearing helicopters and ambulance sirens all night.

“I’ve lived my entire life in the shadow of the hospital,” he said. “As I resident, I want to know what the big picture is. I’m not against the expansion—it’s nice to know if I have a heart attack I got one of the best emergency rooms two blocks from my house.”

Commissioner Bill Lundy asked medical center officials to show residents their long-term plans so that residents “don’t feel blindsided in five years.”

Bob Harrison, vice president of business development for Advocate Christ, said the medical center doesn’t have a 10- or 20-year plan.

“We do five-year plans,” Harrison said. “We don’t fund five-year plans. As soon as we have plans that we can share that are concrete, (the village) will be the first to know and the community will be the first to know. It’s too early to tell right now.”

Debbie Fagan, a Crawford Gardens resident who has been very outspoken about the medical center’s latest expansion, said residents still have concerns.

“We have a love/hate relationship with the hospital. We love to go there when we’re sick,” Fagan said, who's lived in the neighborhood since the 1980s when there was only a Branding Iron restaurant and Holiday Inn near her hosue.

“Up until recently they haven’t been the best neighbors, but that may be our fault for not letting them know what bad neighbors they’ve been," she added.

She said that every time there is a shooting in the city and the victim is brought to the trauma center, gangbangers are hanging around the parking garage by the emergency room “yelling and using bad language.”

The medical center has addressed neighbors’ concerns for public safety by placing extra security and pursuing employees who violate parking regulations.

“I really feel like I’m seeing some difference,” Fagan said.

Vorder called the expansion a "great addition to the community if you live by Central Avenue, but you're not paying the price for it" like those living by the campus.

"Keep in mind all these things that affect the quality of life of those of us in the neighborhood," Vorder cautioned Advocate's executives. "It's the itty-bitty things you mention here that are important to our quality of life."