The city is courting developers for the long-vacant Michael Reese Hospital land, but potential builders will have to grapple with radioactive waste discovered on the site.
In 2011, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency investigated the site and found 3 acres were contaminated with radioactive waste from a former uranium processing facility run by University of Chicago professor H.N. McCoy that had been on the site from 1915-20, according to agency reports.
McCoy also ran a lantern company in Streeterville that has left thorium contamination in the neighborhood.
The Mayor’s Office started talking a year ago about restarting its search for a developer for the 49-acre former hospital site along the lakefront in Bronzeville. On Friday, the city said it would put out a request for proposals from developers on Oct. 12.
“The Michael Reese site has been vacant for nearly 10 years,” Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in the Friday announcement. “This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform a part of the South Side and generate economic opportunities that will reach throughout Chicago.”
Former Mayor Richard M. Daley negotiated the purchase of the hospital site in 2009 for $89 million to build housing for athletes for the city’s bid for the 2016 Olympics, a deal that raised the price to $91 million when the city failed to secure the games.
Emanuel’s office said cleaning up the radioactive waste will be part of any deal to redevelop the land and referred questions to the city’s Department of Planning and Development.
A spokesman from the planning department was not immediately available to comment.
The EPA and a further investigation by the Illinois Department of Public Health in 2013 found the site is currently safe because much of the radioactive contamination is buried under the northernmost 3 acres of the site.
Any excavation of the site will require monitoring for gamma radiation, according to both agencies, because the facility was possibly dumping radioactive waste into sewers or wells that may still be buried under the site.
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