New details on several major, previously announced projects in Baton Rouge were revealed today in permit filings with the city-parish Planning Commission.
Permits were filed by today’s deadline to get on the commission’s Oct. 19 meeting agenda for Our Lady of The Lake’s Children’s Hospital, the Center for Breast and GYN Cancer set for the Woman’s Hospital campus in partnership with Mary Bird Perkins-OLOL Cancer Center, and the $22 million, 33,000-square-foot building to be constructed on the City Dock for The Water Institute of the Gulf’s headquarters.
When OLOL announced the Children’s Hospital project in late July, details on square footage were not yet available. Today’s application says the hospital complex—which will be built on a 60-acre tract of hospital-owned property that runs parallel to Interstate 10 between Essen Lane and Bluebonnet Boulevard—would include three buildings totalling 454,200 square feet. Of that, 345,600 square feet would consist of the Children’s Hospital, while an affiliated medical office building would consist of 95,000 square feet and another 14,200 square feet would be used for supporting infrastructure.
As currently envisioned, the Children’s Hospital will include inpatient beds, an emergency room, surgical unit and a dedicated hematology/oncology unit that will be affiliated with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis. Construction on the hospital is expected to take two years once it is underway. The target opening date is some time in 2018.
Once completed, the facility will greatly expand OLOL’s ability to care for pediatric patients. The existing Children’s Hospital, located within the hospital’s main building on Essen Lane, is just one floor of the main tower. It treats 100,000 patients annually from across Louisiana Mississippi and Texas.
Details were also scant on the Center for Breast and GYN Cancer when it was announced in March, but today’s filing sheds a little light on the project. The center will be located on 4.5 acres at the Woman’s campus on Airline Highway, and would include about 74,000 square feet and 148 parking spaces. Woman’s spokeswoman Aimee Goforth says further details are not available at this time.
“Basically, this is the first step towards moving forward with the new cancer center, but we haven’t applied for our construction permits yet and have not set a construction timeline,” she says.
Also today, a final development plan application was filed for the The Water Institute of the Gulf’s Headquarters, Research and Interpretive Center on the City Dock as part of The Water Campus development. A new rendering of the building was released earlier this week, with officials saying the project will get under construction this year and is expected to be completed in July 2017.
—Steve Sanoski
Originally posted by the Business Report