Just a few blocks west of there, Prime Group plans to open JW Marriott Chicago Sept. 21 after its $400-million restoration of one of Chicago’s historic landmarks: the Continental & Commercial National Bank building designed by famed architect and city planner Daniel Burnham in 1914.

The 1-million-sq-ft project includes converting the first 12 floors of office space into a five-star hotel with 610 guest suites, public space meeting rooms, ballrooms, restaurant, kitchens, spa, fitness center and hotel support functions. The project also included 337,008 sq ft of renovated office space as well as 18,676 sq ft of high-end retail.

Designed by Chicago-based Lucien LaGrange Architects and built by Chicago-based Evans Construction/Consulting, the grand entrance features a three-story glass curtain wall that allows light to spill into the street and expose the hotel’s full lobby.

“It’s an extraordinary building that’s classical, and it has been renovated with a respectful view of that classicism but brought forward into the contemporary era,” says Don Faloon, executive vice president of Prime Group.

Education Also downtown, Roosevelt University is building a 32-story, $110-million facility at 425 S. Wabash. It will support a projected 50% increase in the number of full-time equivalent students at the Chicago Campus between 2007 and 2017. The Herman Crown Center is being demolished to make way for the 413,724-sq ft, 469-ft-tall building.

The first five floors will be devoted to student services, the next eight floors will be for academic classrooms, laboratories and offices and the top 17 floors will be an upscale residence hall for 600 students. Roosevelt expects to move into the facility in January 2012.

VOA is the architectural firm. The John Buck Co. is the development manager, and Power Construction Co. is the general contractor. All three firms have Chicago offices.

West of Chicago, the $88-million DeKalb High School, slated to open in fall 2011, should be fully enclosed by fall so interior work can occur this winter. The new building will hold 2,000 to 2,500 students.

Health Care With steel construction topping out in December, interior work is the main focus of the $915-million, 23-story Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. The 1.25-million-sq-ft hospital with 288 private beds, designed by Solomon Cordwell Buenz of Chicago and Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects of Portland, Ore., is slated to open in summer 2012. The general contractor is M.A. Mortenson Construction, which has a regional office in Chicago, and Power Construction.

On Chicago’s South Side, a $700-million, 1.2 million-sq-ft, 10-story New Hospital Pavilion on the University of Chicago Medical Campus began construction last year and should be complete by January 2013. The Rafael Vi�oly-designed, 240-bed adult hospital is being built by a joint venture of W.E. O’Neil Construction Co. of Chicago and the local office of Gilbane Building Co. of Providence, R.I.

A new $620 million, 806,000-sq-ft hospital for Rush University Medical Center on Chicago’s near West Side is scheduled to open in January 2012. Perkins+Will, Chicago, designed the 14-story facility’s unique butterfly-like shape. Powers/Jacobs, a Chicago joint venture, is the construction manager.

In the western suburbs, the $450-million, 866,000-sq-ft replacement for Elmhurst Memorial Hospital is being built. It will hold 259 private beds. The project is scheduled for completion in summer 2011.

In far southwest suburban Chicago, construction of the $400 million, 572,000-sq-ft replacement Silver Cross Hospital in New Lenox is scheduled to open in early spring 2012. It is designed by RTKL and built by M.A. Mortenson.

Downstate, Abraham Lincoln Memorial Hospital broke ground in June 2009 on a 58-acre site in Springfield. A $50-million, 116,000-sq-ft replacement hospital and health-care campus is under construction.