Amid recent traffic flow improvements and construction work at Naperville’s Edward Hospital, there’s one fixture the institution will not be changing: Pam Davis Drive.
For the second time, the hospital has renamed a stretch of private road at its Naperville campus in honor of its former CEO. The hospital’s new Pam Davis Drive is a replacement for a previous portion of campus road that used to bear the same honor but was removed to make way for the development of a new cardiovascular center.
Now, as the center at 10 W. Martin Ave. nears completion, Pam Davis Drive has found a new home. What was previously Osler Drive from South Washington Street to West Street has been rededicated to the longtime administrator.
“(The) new street signage has been installed,” Spencer Walrath, Endeavor Health spokesman, said in an email Wednesday.
The idea of retaining Pam Davis Drive amid campus changes was broached more than a year ago when the Naperville City Council in April 2023 approved plans for the hospital’s new cardiovascular center.
As proposed, adding the three-story, 71,000-square-foot facility to hospital grounds meant that Edward had to reconfigure campus traffic flow, including the loss of its original street dedication to Davis.
While city leaders ultimately OK’d project plans, they also suggested the hospital still honor Davis, just in a different place.
Edward officials agreed. In January, Endeavor Health Chief Growth Officer Joe Dant sent a letter of support to Naperville City Manager Doug Krieger notifying the city that it would be heeding council members’ suggestion.
“It is our intention to secure permanent recognition of Pam Davis on the Edward Hospital campus,” Dant wrote.
A street sign designating Pam Davis Drive on the Edward Hospital campus was officially unveiled in a ceremony on April 28, 2017. Davis, third from left, retired as system CEO of Edward-Elmhurst Health that same year.
For more than 28 years, Davis headed Edward Hospital and later Edward-Elmhurt, transforming it from a small community hospital into a regional medical center. Davis stepped down as system CEO in 2017.
In his letter, Dant wrote that Davis “is known for her courage, integrity and dedication to the Edward Hospital Service area” and that she “exemplifies the very best of Edward Hospital.”
With Pam Davis Drive reinstated, the hospital has submitted requests to online mapping locations — like Google Maps — to update the altered name on their platforms.
Meanwhile, up the road, the hospital’s new cardiovascular center is coming along. In the works for just more than a year now, construction is due to finish in the next few months, according to project developer Wesmont-based Ryan Cos.
“Work on this three-story medical office building, which will transform cardiovascular care in the region, began in the fall of last year,” Kevin Schoolcraft, vice president of health care development for Ryan Cos., wrote in an email Wednesday. “From kickoff to now, the process has been collaborative and we are on track to complete this project by the end of the year.”
Edward Hospital hopes to welcome its first patients to the center on Jan. 20, 2025, according to hospital President Yvette Saba.
“It’s very exciting,” Saba said. “We’ve done a couple tours through the space, and it is turning out exactly how we wanted it to turn out. It looks amazing.”
When completed, the center will include physician offices for the hospital’s cardiologists, cardiac surgery offices, cardiac rehabilitation, cardiac diagnostic imaging and testing, and an outpatient cardiac catheterization lab, she said.
Designed to complement the heart and vascular services Edward already offers, the center will help meet the community’s needs for outpatient cardiac care, Saba said.
“We know that as we continue to grow that we’re going to continue to need more space for the higher acute, more complex types of (cardiac) procedures (but) it’s very expensive to build within the hospital,” she said. “So building an outpatient center allows us the opportunity to move the less acute types of procedures to a different facility.”
As part of reconfigured traffic flow, there will be a new hospital entrance off Martin Avenue that brings “you into the outpatient center” that will also serve as “a new entrance right to the front door of the hospital,” Saba said.
The cost of the incoming center is $55 million.
