Facility managers face difficult choices on what to do when changes in demographics and finances force difficult choices on the future of an institutional or commercial building. Is it smarter to continue maintaining an unused or underused building in the hopes the organization will find a future use, or is it wiser to sell or close it and reallocate the resources required to keep it operational? For one Chicago hospital, the decision also involves history and community health.

Activists, medical professionals and community members in Chicago are rallying against the looming closure of Mercy hospital – the oldest healthcare facility in the city and one of its most storied – warning its closure would worsen racial health disparities in the city, according to The Guardian.

Trinity Health, which has owned the facility for eight years, plans to shutter it later this winter or early spring, citing financial struggles. Organizers here say that its closure, particularly against the backdrop of the Covid-19 crisis, will exacerbate existing healthcare inequalities in the city and have called on officials to intervene on behalf of the hospital, an oasis in the medical desert of the predominantly Black and brown South Side.

Mercy was founded in 1852 and is regarded as a safety net hospital, serving mostly Black, poor and elderly populations. But the Michigan-based Trinity announced over the summer that it plans to close Mercy after a merger plan with other South Side hospitals earlier this year fell through and it couldn’t find a buyer for the 292-bed facility.

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