The Lincoln Common

By redeveloping the old Children’s Memorial Hospital site in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood into numerous residential, office, and retail buildings, W.E. O’Neil played a significant role in revitalizing this site.

A multi-year collaboration between major developers Hines Interests and McCaffery Inc., the $200M, one million SF development includes:

• 538 residential units across two 20-story towers, amenity spaces, rooftop decks
• A 68,000 SF, five-story office building
• 85,000 SF of retail space across several new and repurposed historic buildings
• One acre of green space with a plaza and fountain

W.E. O’Neil self-performed the concrete structure, pouring 33,000 CY of concrete for the new apartment towers, the office building and several retail core and shell structures in under 12 months.

To prepare the site for construction, W.E. O’Neil performed the demolition of the existing Children’s Memorial Hospital, taking care to limit dust and debris from demolition, and engaging the community to give bricks from the building to those whose families had been patients at the former hospital.

Our team also developed a creative recycling program to re-use demolished materials as back-fill on the site. This Lean approach to demolition eliminated the need for approximately 12,000 truck-loads from entering and existing the site and reduced the carbon footprint of the project overall.

Our team took a proactive approach to interfacing with the neighborhood by developing a community agreement to minimize impact and safety concerns to surrounding businesses, pedestrians, and residents. As a result, neighbors of the site praised W.E. O’Neil at community meetings for our team’s ability to keep them informed and minimize disruptions.