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Originally published on wgntv.com 06/22/2020 | Image: Provided by Amazon
Two new Amazon fulfillment centers are coming to Chicago’s southern suburbs, bringing thousands of jobs to the area, officials announced Monday.
Governor JB Prizker and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle made the official announcement Monday morning from Matteson, which is where one of the fulfillment centers will be located. The other will be located in Markham.
There are 13 Amazon centers throughout the state already employing about 18,000 Illinois residents. The two new facilities will each hire 1,000 new local workers, according to Amazon, for full-time positions paying $15 an hour.
These 2,000 jobs do not even include the construction jobs that will be needed to build these facilities.
This announcement is being hailed as a much needed boost to the local economy. The investment comes at critical time during the pandemic. The southland area is in need of economic recovery. It has seen high unemployment rates as result of coronavirus.
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36 hospitals, health centers pledge to work to improve health equity across the city, focusing on vulnerable neighborhoods
Calling systemic racism a public health crisis, three dozen Chicago healthcare organizations are pledging to do more to overcome health disparities in minority communities and ensure greater health equity across the city.
The group, which began their work through Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s Racial Equity Rapid Response Team, initially joined forces to focus on COVID-19 and its disproportionate impact on minority neighborhoods by making testing more accessible, implementing contact tracing, and increasing distribution of PPE across the South Side and the West Side. The organizations expanded their work beyond the pandemic in the wake of the horrifying and unconscionable deaths of George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and others.
“Racism results in generational trauma and poverty, while also unquestionably causing higher rates of illness and death in black and brown communities,” the organizers said in an open letter to the Chicago community. “We have seen — in its rawest form — how the trauma of systemic racism adds to the historical injustices that have disproportionately affected communities of color.”
The 36 organizations, which include federally qualified health centers, safety net hospitals and major academic medical centers, collectively care for more than 8 million patients in the Chicago area.
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View Letter
Originally published on chicagotribune.com 05/22/2020 | Image: Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune
The renovation and reinvention of the old Cook County Hospital is a triumph of historic preservation, one that should resonate far beyond the walls of the beloved Beaux-Arts landmark on Chicago’s Near West Side.
Not only does it give new life to an ornate, more-is-more work of architecture that Cook County leaders, unconscionably, had in their demolition crosshairs 17 years ago.
It preserves a powerful symbol of compassionate care for the poor, serendipitously coming amid a pandemic that has seen doctors, nurses and other medical professionals battle heroically against the deadly coronavirus.
The project is the anchor of a much-needed, multiphase $1 billion redevelopment that promises to enliven Chicago’s vast but dull Illinois Medical District with new housing, offices and restaurants.
The biggest part of the $140 million hospital revamp, a Hyatt Place hotel and an extended-stay Hyatt House, is scheduled to open July 1. An eight-station food hall is expected to debut Aug. 1, though the state’s coronavirus restrictions could delay that. Cook County medical offices likely will open later in August.
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