The Cook County medical examiner's office is looking to move into new digs in the West Loop.
The office submitted a request to the Cook County Board of Commissioners to purchase two buildings on a full city block at 325 N. Ashland Ave. and 1532 W. Fulton St. for $15.5 million.
One building is 80,000 square feet, and the other is just over 20,000 square feet, according to the request. The buildings, not far from the office's current location on the Near West Side, would be used as the medical examiner's new facility.
The medical examiner's office has been at its current location for more than 40 years. The county purchased the building at 2121 W. Harrison St. in 1979 for $9.4 million, according to Sun-Times archives.
The Harrison location, set to be completed in April 1981, replaced the "overcrowded and obsolete office at 1828 W. Polk," the Sun-Times reported in April 1979.
The request to purchase the buildings on Ashland and Fulton was referred to the county's asset management committee during the board's July 25 meeting. Committee meetings will resume in September.
"After more than 40 years of operation at its current location, the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office (MEO) is working with the County’s Bureau of Asset Management (BAM) to acquire a new location to accommodate a larger, modern facility that can meet the current requirements and evolving needs of the MEO for decades to come," a spokesperson said in a statement.
"We look forward to working with the County’s Board of Commissioners to acquire a property suitable for a new state-of-the-art facility."
A storied history haunts the Harrison street morgue. A deadly 1995 heat wave in Chicago killed more than 700 people and sent thousands to hospitals. The medical examiner's office was overwhelmed with bodies.
By the second day of the heat wave, bodies filled all 222 bays in the morgue, the Sun-Times reported. Seven refrigerated tractor-trailers in the office's parking lot served as makeshift overflow storage.
It took until the third day of oppressive heat for the city to declare an emergency and begin a coordinated response. Then-Mayor Richard M. Daley was on vacation at the time in Grand Beach, Michigan.
That's not the only time the morgue was overwhelmed with bodies. A 2012 Sun-Times investigation detailed complaints from staff about poor management and "sacrilegious" treatment of corpses. The paper learned that around 500 bodies were stuffed into a cooler made to hold 300.
Two years into her first term, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle called for an overhaul of the office. Several top officials resigned over the scandal, including the chief medical examiner at the time, Nancy Jones. The office lost its accreditation.
In 2006, federal authorities launched an investigation into the medical examiner's hiring practices. The office had long been accused of a patronage hiring system, particularly when John Stroger was Cook County board president, according to Sun-Times archives.
The office joined modern times and computerized its operation about a decade ago under then-Chief Medical Examiner Stephen Cina. Before he took over the office in 2012, paper logbooks kept track of the bodies in the morgue.
