Elmhurst University officials and Elmhurst Mayor Scott Levin gathered Oct. 12, for a symbolic ground breaking ceremony marking the start of work on the University’s planned new 45,000 square foot health sciences building.
The $30 million building, the first new building on the campus in 15 years, will house a state-of-the-art facility University officials say will be a hub for the nursing, public health, occupational therapy, and communication sciences and disorders programs.
The new facility will house a simulation space and virtual reality lab, able to put students in realistic health care settings. It will also contain a new speech-language-hearing clinic, classrooms, offices and labs. It also will also house the Jans Center for Veterans, a resource center for student veterans and students actively serving in the military.
In remarks before the official groundbreaking, University President Troy VanAken, called the new building an ideal environment for collaboration and innovation.
“I’m so excited about this building, what it means for our current and future generations of students, as well as our faculty and rest of the campus community,” VanAken said. “It will be a thriving hub. And it will energize an already exciting learning environment for our students in the health professions.”
In a conversation with Pioneer Press in July, VanAken talked about the fact that the University’s success in surpassing its $50 million goal in the school’s “Elmhurst 150? campaign was behind the decision to build a new health sciences building.
Original plans called for a $12 million expansion of Memorial Hall, as the heart of the school’s health sciences initiative. That would have added 22,000 square feet of space there for research and instruction.
But, VanAken said in July, “This campaign already has us thinking we can do even more. We’d only anticipated an addition to an existing building. Now we’re going to build a whole new building that’s three times the size we anticipated.”
That shapes up as the planned 45,000 square foot building with an anticipated price tag of about $30 million. Some of that additional cost is expected to come from additional fundraising, in what VanAken called a “quiet phase” of seeking contributions over the next several years.
The proposed new building doesn’t yet have a name, VanAken said in July, “but we’re having some pretty robust conversations with some individuals about that.”
The new building is expected to be completed in spring of 2025.
Graydon Megan is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
