Naperville to ask Edward to rename road for Pam Davis after project eliminates street named in her honor
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Naperville will ask Edward Hospital to rename another street on the hospital campus after longtime administrator Pam Davis because a section of the existing roadway that bears her name will be taken over by new development.
The Naperville City Council this week approved the plans for a three-story, 96,430-square-foot medical office on 2.31 acres at the southwest corner of Martin Avenue and Washington Street that will serve as a cardiovascular center.
To make way for the structure and adjacent parking lots, developer Ryan Cos. will reroute Pam Davis Drive and close the roadway’s entrance to and exit from Washington Street.
Mayor Steve Chirico said Naperville has become known as a city that provides great health services and Davis is largely responsible for that.
He’s spoken with the hospital board, he said, and members are supportive of renaming Osler Drive in her honor and out of respect for what she’s done for the community.
For more than 28 years, Davis headed Edward Hospital and later Edward-Elmhurst, transforming Edward from a small community hospital into a regional medical center.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, during her eight-year tenure as president and CEO, Davis led a multitude of development initiatives that included opening the first medically-based fitness center in DuPage County and building the first all-private inpatient rooms in Illinois.
It also was during that time Davis and her team made plans to expand into Plainfield and build $218 million hospital.
During the application process, Edward was urged by state officials to hire builder Jacob Kiferbaum’s firm to construct the hospital only to have the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board ultimately reject the facility.
Davis has said she felt she was being strong-armed into working with individuals who had no experience in building hospitals, and ultimately she contacted the FBI about the situation.
For eight months secretly wore listening devices for the FBI in an effort to gather evidence about possible extortion in connection with Edward’s hospital proposal.
Her efforts shed light on corruption in former Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s administration.
In 2016, Davis announced her plans to step down as system CEO.
Construction of the medical office building is scheduled to begin this summer.