Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago has received the final approval it needs to build a $480 million children’s hospital in Downers Grove, after the Illinois Health Facilities and Services Review Board voted unanimously Thursday to let the project proceed, according to the Chicago Tribune.
The planned 298,000-square-foot facility will have 48 beds, six operating rooms, an emergency department and space for outpatient care. It is slated for a site near the intersection of Interstate 355 and Butterfield Road, with the hospital potentially seeing its first patients in spring 2029. It will be Lurie’s first hospital with inpatient beds outside its main Streeterville campus.
Hospital leaders framed the project as a response to how far western suburban families currently travel for overnight pediatric care. About 47 percent of children in the western suburbs leave their communities when they need hospitalization, according to Lurie, and nearly 20 percent of the hospital’s inpatients already come from the west suburbs. “Behind every one of those numbers is a child who needs care and a family that’s navigating the added stress of travel, time away from work, time away from school and disruption of their daily life,” Lurie president and CEO Dr. Tom Shanley told the board Thursday, according to the Tribune.
The Downers Grove hospital will treat low-acuity patients, such as children with respiratory illnesses needing monitoring and supplemental oxygen, dehydration, or infections requiring IV antibiotics. The most complex cases will continue to be handled at the Streeterville hospital, though the new facility will include a helipad for rapid transfers. The board also approved closing Lurie’s Westchester outpatient facility once the new hospital opens, with those services relocating to Downers Grove.
Board member Gary Kaatz called the project “a significant transformational initiative” before voting yes. The plan had drawn support from the Itasca-based American Academy of Pediatrics, local pediatricians and families who said a closer hospital would ease the burden of repeated trips for treatment.
For DuPage County, the project is one of the largest healthcare construction investments in the western suburbs in recent years, and it is expected to create construction jobs and permanent clinical positions in the corridor near the I-355 and Butterfield Road interchange, an area that has drawn significant medical office development.
The approval also marks the end of a yearlong regulatory review. Lurie first filed its plans in January, and the project has advanced through drafting, community meetings and state review since then. The Downers Grove site was selected after a search that weighed proximity to the hospital’s western suburban patient base, highway access for emergency transfers and the availability of land near existing medical infrastructure. Village officials in Downers Grove have supported the project, citing the economic activity and healthcare access it brings to the community.
Children’s hospitals nationally have been expanding into suburban markets as pediatric inpatient demand consolidates into fewer, more specialized campuses. Lurie’s approach, pairing a smaller suburban facility with transfer agreements to the downtown flagship, mirrors strategies adopted by peers in other metros and reflects how families weigh convenience against the need for complex care.
