City and state officials joined Illinois Medical District leaders on Tuesday to cut the ribbon on IMD Park, a new one-acre green space and home to the Global COVID-19 Monument of Honor, Remembrance and Resilience. Located at 2023 W. Ogden Ave., the park sits in a high-density healthcare corridor between Stroger Hospital and the Jesse Brown VA Medical Center, and within reach of Rush Medical Center and the University of Illinois Hospital, Block Club Chicago reported.
The project transforms a previously developed lot—where the Easter Seals building stood until its 2024 demolition—into a permanent site for reflection and public health. For the clinicians and patients who visit the Illinois Medical District, the park provides a pocket of nature in the largest urban concentration of healthcare facilities in the United States.
Steel sculptures symbolize universal pandemic suffering
The centerpiece of the park is a series of three soaring stainless steel sculptures, the tallest reaching 25 feet. Designed by Casey Schachner, a sculptor and art professor at Georgia Southern University, the structures blend the visual core of the COVID-19 virus with the shape of a dandelion puff. According to Sally Metzler, chair of the COVID-19 Monument Commission, the dandelion was chosen because it grows worldwide, symbolizing the universal nature of the pandemic’s suffering.
The three stems of the sculpture represent honor, remembrance, and resilience. Around the circular base, inscriptions detail the pandemic’s toll, while five abstract benches—each featuring a silver globe—represent the five continents and the global scale of the crisis.
“This monument of honor, remembrance and resilience gives this park an enduring purpose: to remember those we lost, to honor the healthcare workers, the essential workers, the patients and the families whose lives were forever changed by the pandemic,” said Allyson Hansen, Illinois Medical District Commission CEO and executive director.
While the physical monument serves as a local anchor, the project includes a digital component. A virtual monument at covidmemorialmonument.org allows people to share tributes in a digital dandelion memory garden, extending the reach of the memorial beyond the borders of Chicago.
A 4.95 million dollar investment in civic space
The creation of IMD Park required a complex layering of state and private funding. The total project cost reached $4.95 million, fueled largely by state capital appropriations. State Sen. Lakesia Collins secured $3.4 million in State of Illinois Capital Appropriation, while state Rep. Yolanda Morris secured an additional $500,000.
Additional funding came from the state’s Open Space Lands Acquisition and Development Program and grants from the Hektoen Institute of Medicine. This collaboration changes the district; this is the first new public park in the Illinois Medical District in decades, following the 1946 relocation of the Louis Pasteur Monument to West Harrison Street.
Alongside the monument, the site includes two fitness areas, a playground, a concrete walking path, and a lawn intended for future programming. To ensure the space remains a sanctuary for those in crisis or exhaustion, Hansen noted that the park will remain unfenced and accessible 24/7.
The path to completion
- 2021: Sally Metzler forms a volunteer COVID-19 Monument Commission comprising doctors, professors, and public health experts.
- 2023: Casey Schachner wins the competition to design the monument.
- 2024: The former Easter Seals building is demolished to make way for green space.
- August 2024: A Welcome Plaza opens at West Ogden Avenue and West Harrison Street.
- Last November: Officials break ground for the new park.
- October 27, 2026: Ribbon-cutting ceremony held for IMD Park.
Balancing memory with urban utility
As of late October, crews are still finishing the landscaping and planting trees. The top sections of the stainless steel sculptures are slated to illuminate in various colors at night, pending final technical details from the city and ComEd.
The park is expected to be fully open to the public by Dec. 1, 2026.
