The elevators inside West Suburban Medical Center’s River Forest campus buildings have failed several inspections over the past year – most frequently for out-of-date fire extinguishers, broken emergency phones, or past-due category 1 tests that assess elevator safety.
But on Feb. 11, all elevators in the campus’ three main buildings passed inspection for the first time since last March, according to River Forest Village Administrator Matt Walsh.
On the River Forest West Suburban campus, Building A at 7411 Lake St. offers sports rehab and therapy, a pain and bariatric center, and houses the Chicago Health Medical Group. Building B at 420 William St. serves as a breast care center, provides advanced imaging, and is an occupational health center. Building C at 7420 W. Central Ave. is a center for cancer care.
According to records obtained by Austin Weekly News through a Freedom of Information request, a Burr Ridge-based elevator inspection service analyzed all these buildings’ elevators in Feb. 2023, March and December 2024, and again this January. Ahead of the Feb. 11 inspection, both Building A’s freight and passenger elevators had failed inspection since last March. The same was true with Building B and Building C, which each have a passenger elevator.
Manoj Prasad, CEO of Resilience Healthcare, which acquired West Suburban in late 2022, said he had no insight into why the elevators were down for so long since West Suburban doesn’t own the buildings.
The buildings are owned by Ramco Healthcare Holdings, the company that bought West Suburban properties to lease them to Resilience Healthcare.
However, the ownership of Ramco and Resilience Healthcare are intertwined. After Ramco bought the real estate at both West Sub and Chicago’s Weiss Memorial in 2022, the firm then leased the property to the newly created Resilience Healthcare. A press release from 2022 reported that Prasad and Reddy Rathnaker Patlola, owner of Ramco, were business partners.
Over the last year, Walsh said a couple elevator repair companies have visited the River Forest buildings to fix the issues with the elevators.
Outside of Building A’s freight elevator car being down during its March 2024 inspection, all the buildings’ elevators have been in working order though they’d failed inspections, according to Walsh.
“It’s the village’s hope to not to not shut down elevators unless it’s a very egregious example,” Walsh said. He added that it often takes time to schedule repair personnel to fix the elevators. “We want to be cooperative with buildings that might be having issues with their elevators.”
To that point, the Village of River Forest is also slow to fine owners of buildings that fail inspections.
“We try to not issue citations, because ultimately our goal is compliance,” Walsh added. “But if the village doesn’t see any meaningful progress or responsiveness to our inspectors or our staff, then we have escalated to citations.”
That was the case in December, when West Suburban was found liable for a $750 fine for the elevators on its River Forest campus after the hospital received several letters of violation.
“We had growing concerns that residents or visitors might get stuck in those elevators without access,” Walsh said of why the village took action to issue a citation for the elevators.
Adjudication documents that were provided to Growing Community Media, the parent company of Wednesday Journal and Austin Weekly News, show that Ramco Healthcare Holdings was fined $150 for weeds taller than 8 inches on its River Forest properties.
Walsh said the village issued West Suburban additional citations in January, which will be heard at a March 3 adjudication.
