Howard Brown Health plans to renovate and improve its care center at 6500 N. Clark St. in Rogers Park, with construction expected to begin in spring 2027 and the project reconfiguring roughly half of the two-story facility. The overhaul will add primary care exam rooms, expand behavioral health services and modernize a building that has served the neighborhood for more than a decade.
The project will renovate and reconfigure about 10,500 square feet of the approximately 22,000-square-foot facility, according to Windy City Times. Plans call for five new primary care exam rooms, along with dedicated space for counseling, psychiatric services, crisis support and substance use disorder treatment. As CBS News Chicago reports, the expansion is also expected to increase lab capacity and reduce wait times for patients.
A Relocated Lab and Building-Wide Upgrades
The renovated center will include a relocated and expanded on-site laboratory, per the same Windy City Times report. Building upgrades will extend beyond clinical space, too, with HVAC and roof improvements and exterior tuckpointing planned as part of the overall construction work.
Howard Brown anticipates that the upgraded site will serve more than 10,000 patients each year once work is complete, an increase of about 2,400 patients over current levels. A separate estimate in the same report puts the facility's annual patient encounters at 28,000 to 32,000, though the publication does not explain how that figure relates to the patient count.
State Grant Covers Construction Costs
The Rogers Park project is funded through a $3 million capital construction grant from the State of Illinois, the Windy City Times report states. CBS News Chicago notes the grant is part of Governor JB Pritzker's Rebuild Illinois investment, which funds construction at 21 community health centers across the state.
The Clark Street location has offered primary care along with sexual health testing and prevention services since Howard Brown first announced plans to open a Rogers Park clinic in 2015, aiming to have it running by the end of that year, according to Howard Brown Health. The clinic sits at 6500 N. Clark Street, where it has continued to offer that mix of primary and sexual health care in the years since.
