SW Side Development To Feature Hospital, Retail Center

(CBS) -- The ribbon's been cut on a huge healthcare and retail project on the city's Southwest Side.

Focal Point Community Campus at the corner of 31st and Kedzie will be the new home for St Anthony Hospital and dozens of retail shops, an outpatient center, charter and trade school, child care center, and a rec center. It's being billed as the first of its kind self-sustaining collection of buildings and services.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel says it's a long time coming and much needed for the Southwest and West Sides.

"I want to make sure that regardless of where you live in the city of Chicago, you have the basics that people can come to rely on and this project encompasses that vision," said Emanuel.

Congressman Danny Davis says St Anthony's will be able to serve over 400,000 residents on the Southwest and West Sides.

"It's a hospital that has hung in there. It often existed in the shadows of another hospital in this community," Davis said.

The project means 3,500 construction jobs while it's being built and hundreds of retail and healthcare jobs once it's open.