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Officials from the Bon Secours and Virginia Commonwealth University health systems joined representatives from Thalhimer Realty May 21 to break ground for a $53.5-million medical office building and mixed-use development in Richmond's Near West End that essentially will expand the footprint of St. Mary's Hospital, located just a block away in Henrico County.
The project also will include the preservation of the circa-1917 Westhampton School building at the site, which sits at the corner of Libbie and Patterson avenues. The collaborative setup will connect pediatric care physicians from different disciplines and connect residents of Henrico County to the city of Richmond, officials said.
Richmond First District Councilman Andreas Addison oversaw the rezoning of the property and sees its potential for connecting residents.
“I think we’ll start seeing more people coming from Libbie Mill up in Henrico coming down here to hopefully shop and eat and enjoy the services provided, not only here but also in the rest of the First District and the city,” Addison said, “and that’s what this project does. It brings us all together.”
The new building will allow centralized care for children, streamlining treatment options, Bon Secours Medical Director of Pediatric Specialty Dr. Carl Bart Rountree Jr. said.
For example, if a specialist discovered complications during an appointment, the patient’s parents would not have to make another appointment across town, because a second specialist would be accessible in the new building, Rountree said.
The space also will make a difference because it will be child-friendly, Rountree said.
“If you think about kids, older kids especially, 3 to 17, they’re aware of what’s going on,” he said. “They come to a hospital, they see the emergency room signs, they see everybody in white coats, they’re already excited. They come here, they see apartment buildings, they see a restaurant, they see an office tower, they’re relaxed.”
Rountree is particularly excited for the new building because physicians will be able to collaborate more easily to help patients. He once treated a child who had swallowed a piece of plastic that embedded in the esophagus, and two surgeons from St. Mary’s stood behind him as he pulled it out in case they were needed. Those surgeons, Rountree said, would be upstairs from his office in the new building.
The medical office building will be three stories tall and include 55,000 square feet. The remaining property not occupied by the office building or the 1917 Westhampton School building will be developed for mixed uses, including a parking deck, a cultural plaza and a community green space and lawns.
Once completed, the new office building will create more than 120 jobs with a payroll of more than $10.8 million.
During the process to rezone the land for mixed-use business development, residents and varying groups expressed concerns about the original plan to tear down both Westhampton School buildings and promoted historical preservation, according to the Richmond Times- Dispatch.
Bon Secours, like the community, cares about historical preservation, said Bon Secours St. Mary’s Hospital CEO Francine Barr, so it appointed a Westhampton School Collaborative Committee composed of seven volunteers to make recommendations about what to do with the building.
“This highly experienced and professional group held meetings in early 2019,” Barr said. “They toured the grounds and buildings of the Westhampton campus, and they reviewed other commemorative sites and memorials around the world.”
The committee recommended “an experiential classroom carefully constructed and placed in the Westhampton commemorative gardens [that] will provide an intimate space for visitors and residents to walk around and absorb the relevance of their surroundings,” Barr said.
The committee also recommended that items be salvaged and used in the medical office building, including library shelves, auditorium windows, bricks and doorframes. The committee’s final plans will be released in the next few months, Barr said.
This site is historically significant for its role in desegregation, Addison said.
“A middle school student, junior high student, Daisy Jane Cooper, broke the racial segregation line of Virginia public schools at that site behind us,” Addison said. The work for this site was a way to memorialize Cooper’s story of needing a court order to go to the nearest school, he said.
Bon Secours has made two key commitments as part of the project:
• It waived its nonprofit real estate tax exemption, which will provide the city of Richmond an estimated $524,184 increase in tax revenue annually, making the annual total in real estate tax revenue from the site about $636,000.
• It will contribute $50,000 to the funding of a traffic study of the surrounding area conducted by Richmond. The organization pays the city of Richmond $28,000 each year to maintain athletic fields next to the site.
Bon Secours and VCU Health contribute to public transportation by financially supporting the GRTC, said Deborah Davis, the chief of strategic initiatives for the VCU Health System.
“We believe that we jointly can leverage our resources to make not only people healthier, but to create access for our team members and our patients across the region,” Davis said. The systems know that investing in education and employment improves health outcomes and can reduce healthcare costs, she said.
The medical office building is expected to be completed by the fall of 2020.
