Will County showcases new coroner’s facility

Will County officials celebrated on Tuesday the opening of a new facility that provides more space and more modern equipment for staff investigating deaths in the fourth largest county in Illinois.

The Will County Coroner’s Facility at 16857 W. Laraway Road, Joliet, is part of a 15-year project to rebuild and modernize the infrastructure in the county, said Jacqueline Traynere, Democratic leader of the Will County Board.

“This county has squeezed every penny out of every dollar in all the time I’ve been on the board,” said Traynere, who was first elected in 2008. “And that’s why some of our buildings were in such poor shape.”

The layout of the new facility provides a clear separation of administrative and morgue spaces to maintain a healthy environment for county staff, as well as an enclosed sally port to provide privacy and security for transportation of bodies, according to county officials.

Will County Coroner Laurie Summers said the building was set up so her staff can do their jobs with state-of-the-art equipment.

“They have one of the most challenging jobs, outside of law enforcement and fire,” Summers said.

Summers thanked everyone who was involved in making the facility a reality.

“It did not matter what the letter was behind their name. We all worked together and continued all the way through the process,” Summers said.

Summers said the men and women behind the construction of the the building “paid attention to detail.”

“Every bit of it, right down to the type of sealant we put on the floor in that morgue,” Summers said.

She said she was told the floor will last for 100 years.

Construction for the building began in September 2022 and was completed in July of this year. Meta Muller, a Democratic Will County Board member, said she’s been working in construction for 25 years and the coroner’s facility represented the first time she’s seen a project come in on time and on budget.

“It’s going to be able to serve our community for decades to come,” Muller said.

Patrick O’Neil, who served as the coroner for 28 years before Summers took over, said he toured the new facility and said he thought it was “absolutely magnificent.”

“The technology is more than I would ever imagine,” O’Neil said.

O’Neil has lobbied in the past for a larger and more modern facility for the coroner’s office, which at one point had to make use of the lower level morgue facility at Silver Cross Hospital.

O’Neil recalled how difficult it was for his office to handle the deaths of 10 people who were killed in a 2001 crash on Interstate 55 while riding in a Salvation Army van. A temporary morgue had to be set up at a highway department garage, according to a Herald-News article at the time.

Will County Executive Jennifer Bertino-Tarrant said she was thankful of county board members who have recognized the need for a more modern coroner’s facility because the county’s population is “rapidly growing.”

“We need to make sure our facilities and services are prepared for that growth,” she said.