Daily Herald: With remodeling, new uses, company works to restore neighborhood’s pride in historic Aurora hospital
For a quarter-century, the shuttered Copley Memorial Hospital haunted an east-side Aurora residential neighborhood.
Vandals broke its windows and painted graffiti inside and out. Ghost-hunters, squatters and the just-plain curious broke in and roamed its halls. Somebody even dumped a motorboat in the courtyard.
The hospital scared neighborhood children, who became afraid to walk past it on their way to neighboring Bardwell Elementary School.
But the 9-acre site now hums with the positive energy of construction work, as it is reborn as housing for senior citizens, and supportive housing for people with cognitive and developmental disabilities.
With rebirth comes a new name.
“We want to stop talking about it as the ‘old Copley,’ because it is something different now, and start talking about it as Bloomhaven, which is really what it is,” said Patrick Skarr, a spokesman for Fox Valley Developers LLC, the owners. “This is the chance to re-imagine the neighborhood, reconnect this campus with the neighborhood.”