Assuming negotiations go well, it looks like the Martha Jefferson Hospital has picked its redevelopment partner for the Downtown hospital site. At a meeting last night, the hospital’s Board of Trustees entered into an exclusive 120-day negotiating process with Crosland, a Charlotte, North Carolina, based private firm that would redevelop the Downtown hospital site into a mixed-use center.
“This is a facile metaphor, but you put engagement notices in the paper because you’re excited about the quality and the character of whoever your kid’s spouse is going to be,” says Steve Bowers, spokesman for the hospital. “Obviously something could go awry between now and then, but we’re confident and very optimistic that it’s going to work out for both sides.”
Crosland has been involved with the process since late 2007. “What’s compelling about this opportunity [is] that there seems to be an exceptional fit in terms of values between the two organizations,” says Steve Mauldin, Cosland’s president of mixed- and multi-use development.
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The 14-acre Martha Jefferson campus is possibly the city’s most promising redevelopment sites—and one of the most complex.
Crosland, a 72-year-old company with assets of $2 billion and about 300 associates, has predominately worked in the Southeast. Bowers and Mauldin point to a couple of Crosland projects in the Charlotte area as analogous: Alpha Mill, an adaptive re-use project that converted a cotton mill into luxury apartments; and Birkdale Village, a mixed-use greenfield development outside of the city.
“We do a lot of urban and infill, we do a lot of mixed-use projects, we’ve got longstanding capabilities in retail development, in residential development, in office development, which kind of allows us the ability not to be daunted by things that are as complex as this,” says Mauldin. “We’ve done historic adaptive reuse before. We’ve engaged with those projects in the past, so we’ve been at it for a while as a company, and frankly we feel we have the resources to pull something off as complex as this.”
Plans are still conceptual, but Bowers says that they will include preservation of the iconic Patterson wing, a mix of condos and apartments, possibly a grocery store on Lexington Avenue, and definitely the conversion of Locust Avenue offices into residences, something the neighborhood has requested. Mauldin envisions that the project, at full build out, will be worth $100 to $150 million.
Bowers has said that Martha Jefferson neighbors would be the first to get the news. He delivered word to neighborhood leaders this morning.
“We’ve had such a productive conversation with the Martha Jefferson neighborhood, in terms of understanding what’s truly important to them,” Bowers says, “but also gaining an understanding from them that the project has to work for Crosland, it’s got to work for the hospital, and it’s got to provide something dramatic for the city because of the location of where it is.”
Mauldin says his company isn’t worried by the current economic doldrums. “Frankly, we haven’t factored the current economy into the equation,” he says. “Number one, the hospital’s new facility is not ready until 2012. And that’s underway as we speak, so we have a good bit of time before their move takes place. On the same token, we’re a 72-year-old company, and with deep capital resources, with an identified financing source in place. …We’re going to refuse to pay much attention to the current news because we’re taking a much longer view.”
Go here for more background on the hospital and previous C-VILLE coverage.
