September 20, 2007 | Read Time: 1 minute
Ann Lurie, president of Lurie Investments, in Chicago, and a former pediatric nurse, has pledged $100-million to Children’s Memorial Hospital.
Her gift will help build a new facility in Chicago’s Streeterville neighborhood and will support pediatric-health research.
The new hospital, which will be named for Ms. Lurie and her late husband, Robert, is expected to cost $850-million. Construction will begin in the spring, and the facility is scheduled to open in 2012.
“Medicine is evolving so rapidly,” Ms. Lurie said in a statement released by the hospital. “To capture some of the value of new innovations and technology, Children’s Memorial requires an updated clinical facility with space for upgraded equipment and services.”
Ms. Lurie, a mother of six, once worked as a critical-care nurse at Children’s Memorial Hospital. She is also president and treasurer of the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Foundation and president of Africa Infectious Disease Village Clinics, a charity she founded in 2002.
Her husband was a real-estate developer who died of colon cancer in 1990 at the age of 48.
At Children’s Memorial, Ms. Lurie previously endowed a professorship in cancer-cell biology and donated $1.3-million to support the Adolescent Medicine Trials Network, for HIV/AIDS research. She has donated large sums to Northwestern University, including $40-million to create a medical-research center and $10-million to endow the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center. In 2002 she pledged $25-million to the University of Michigan — Robert Lurie’s alma mater — to create programs in biomedical engineering and integrated microsystems.
Because of those gifts, Ms. Lurie has twice appeared on The Chronicle’s list of the most-generous donors of the year, each time ranking among the top 25 contributors.
