BJC complex expanding north with 12-story tower
Demolition is under way on two Central West End buildings that BJC Healthcare will replace with a $75 million, 12-story tower for outpatient clinics, doctors’ offices and its corporate headquarters.
Rising at the northwest corner of Forest Park and South Euclid avenues, the tower will extend north to the building that houses Majestic restaurant, at 4900 Laclede Avenue. The tower’s completion is expected in early 2012.
Consolidation of clinics, doctors’ offices and executive offices in the new 300,000-square-foot tower will expand BJC’s high-rise medical complex to the north side of Forest Park Avenue. It will go up just east of the parking garage built in 1994 and will be connected by an elevated walkway to the Barnes-Jewish Hospital complex.
The city’s Preservation Board voted July 27 to approve demolition of buildings to make way for BJC’s new tower and a small park. The structures at 4901 Forest Park, known as the Ettrick Building, and 3 South Euclid were completed in 1905 as apartments and ground-floor shops. Occupancy has dwindled in recent years.
Also scheduled to come down is the four-story building at 4949 Forest Park, erected in 1934 for the Shoenberg Nursing School. Now vacant, it served for many years as a nurses’ residence. June Fowler, BJC’s spokeswoman, said Friday that the site will be used as the construction staging area for the tower project. While another building may eventually go on the Shoenberg site, it will be set aside as green space after the tower is done.
In recommending approval of BJC’s demolition requests, the Preservation Board’s staff noted that the new tower, designed by the Christner architecture firm, will have "a storefront system to replicate the rhythm and integrity of the historic streetscape scale on the first floor."
The staff also said the park, between the Barnes-Jewish parking garage and St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, will benefit the church and the neighborhood.
Low-rise buildings once dominated the area but in recent decades, Barnes-Jewish, St. Louis Children’s Hospital, Washington University School of Medicine and St. Louis College of Pharmacy expansions have produced a high-rise complex with a daytime population of more than 20,000 employees and patients.
The new tower’s exterior will use materials similar to those of the Center for Advanced Medicine, which is across Forest Park Avenue from the new building’s site.
Fowler said BJC needs more headquarters space than it leases now from the Washington University medical school at 4444 Forest Park. Wohl Clinics in other parts of the BJC complex will be consolidated in the new building, which also will house doctor’s offices.
After the new building is completed, BJC will redo that section of Euclid to match a planned streetscape project in the vicinity. Utility relocations and preparation for streetscape work will require temporary closures of Euclid’s southbound traffic lane, said an official of Tarlton Corp., the tower project’s general contractor.