Environmental Center Wins Athenaeum Award

Cannon Design Chicago has won the annual 2004 American Architecture Award for the proposed Ford Calumet Environmental Center sponsored by The Chicago Athenaeum, an international museum of architecture and design.

No timetable has been released for the project's start of construction.

The project, which is in Calumet City between industrial development and wetlands, reflects sustainability. The international jury was held under the auspices of the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland.

Hundreds of submissions were received from architecture firms across the United States. Forty-seven entries were selected as a way to honor the best contemporary architecture.

The projects are designed by American architects in the United States, Singapore, Kuwait, Great Britain, Chile, South Africa, Saudi Arabia and Japan.

Spertus to Build Distinctive Facility

The Chicago-based Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies has announced it will build a $30 million facility on Michigan Avenue.

Spertus selected Chicago-based Krueck & Sexton Architects to design a 10-story building that would make a "striking and signature architectural statement" about the impact of Jewish culture and learning, the institution announced.

The new facility will express the values of openness, transparency and hospitality. The facade's transparent, crystalline folded glass planes will glow with light to reveal the multi-disciplinary programs of the 80-year-old institution. The glass folds relate the Spertus facade to the numerous bay windows, cornices and other projects of the landmarked Michigan Avenue street wall.

Construction is expected to start in the spring 2005. Chicago-based W.E. O'Neil is providing preconstruction services.

Weiss Begins New Medical Center

Chicago-based Weiss Memorial Hospital has started construction of its $27 million Lakeshore Medical Center.

The five-story, 166,000-sq.-ft. center on Chicago's lakefront will offer an ambulatory surgical center that has four operating rooms and two procedure rooms. Physicians will have protected high-speed Internet access for instant viewing of medical records, pharmacy information and lab results.

The facility will cater to all disciplines in the medical field. It will offer such outpatient services as dialysis treatment and diagnostic imaging systems.

The Center will be built adjacent to Weiss, at 4700 N. Marine Drive, on land currently occupied by Walgreens, which is being demolished and is operating a pharmacy in a temporary facility in Weiss' parking lot until the new facility is completed.

The Weiss facility will connect to the hospital via a shared steel-and-glass winter garden entrance. The building will blend with the natural elements of a nearby park.

The Center also will be attached to a secure parking garage. A new ground-level Walgreens will be available with a lobby pickup window.

The completion is scheduled for fall of 2005.

$44M Underpass Project Launched

A $44 million underpass project, which residents sought for decades, was launched recently in northwest suburban Franklin Park.

The project on Grand Avenue is aimed at improving safety and reducing delays caused by traffic congestion associated with thousands of vehicles waiting for trains to pass at-grade crossings.

The key to the project is the consolidation of two north-south rail corridors into one larger corridor with a three-track railroad bridge crossing Grand. The consolidation and expansion of the existing Canadian National corridor to accommodate the Indiana Harbor Belt Railroad will allow about 4,500 ft. of the present IHB corridor to be abandoned and converted to a new local street.

Lorig Construction Co. and Lindahl Bros., both based in Des Plaines, are the general contractors.

Mc4West Offers Education Opportunity

Mc4West - the design-build team for the McCormick Place West project - is adding an education component to its affirmative action program.

The Mc4West Education Initiative will offer learning opportunities to elementary, high school and college students living in the project area and minority and women-owned firms.

The program was developed in cooperation with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign College of Engineering, the Illinois Institute of Technology and the Dawson Technical Institute of Kennedy-King College.

Two of the programs in the initiative have already begun. "Build Chicago," the Mc4West/Dawson Technical Institute program offering pre-apprenticeship training in the building trades to high school and general equivalency degree graduates.

Also, "Clark Corporate University," which the Bethesda, Md.-based Clark Construction Group, a Mc4West partner, developed, is aimed at minority- and women-owned construction firms.

Grant to Draw Women into Trades

Chicago Women In Trades has received a $2.1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor for its Women in Skilled Trades project.

WIST will use the three-year grant, reportedly the first ever of its kind, to create a network of partnerships aimed at creating construction jobs for women.

The network will include the Building and Construction Trades Councils of Chicago, the Construction Industry Service Corp., the Builders Association and others.

Retail Development For South Loop

The Zoning Commission of Chicago has approved the development of a 320,000-sq.-ft. mixed-use retail center on the corners of Roosevelt and Canal streets.

The project, Southgate Market, will be anchored with a 50,000-sq.-ft. While Foods market. Space will be leased to about 15 other retail tenants.

The development will be located on a former railroad yard that has been abandoned for three decades.

Construction is slated to begin in fall 2004. Chicago-based Pepper Construction Co. is the general contractor, and Chicago-based Eckenhoff Saunders Architects is the designer.