Ochsner Clinic Foundation has acquired a 25-acre parcel in The Grove from developer Richard Carmouche on which it plans to build a $100 million clinic and “microhospital.”
The New Orleans-based healthcare giant paid $7 million for the property in a deal that closed Monday. In addition to the land acquisition, Ochsner will spend some $7.7 million on significant infrastructure improvements to The Grove, opening the area up for additional commercial development, Carmouche says.
Among those improvements is the construction of a bridge over Dawson’s Creek and a new street that will connect the bridge to the Interstate 10 service road and on-ramp.
“They’ve agreed to do all the construction, all the traffic signaling and everything to connect to the interstate, which is a piece of the puzzle we’ve been missing for a long time,” Carmouche says. “While that’s under way they’ll also be building their clinic and it all should be completed at the same time.”
Construction is estimated to take about 18 months.
Earlier this summer, Ochsner announced plans to develop a clinic and five-story, 155,000-square-foot medical office building on the property, which is visible from I-10 and located between Bluebonnet Boulevard and Siegen Lane. The facility will also include a 30,000-square-foot, microhospital—a small, 10-bed, inpatient unit and surgical center that will be able to perform general, ENT, orthopedic, gynecology and urology surgeries.
Carmouche says the medical campus, which is expected to employ some 450 people by 2021, will be a much-needed addition to The Grove, which, until now, has been primarily residential. The development includes two multifamily complexes as well as an assisted living and memory care facility that is scheduled to open later this month.
“What we always contemplated was a mixture of uses and we’ve done the residential component up to this point,” Carmouche says. “We think the clinic will provide the workforce and the people on the ground that will use our residential component as well as the hotels, restaurants and retail that will come. So it’s a generator of people.”
Carmouche says he is negotiating with a hotel chain as well as a local restaurant group to develop in The Grove. He says the restaurant group would not only open a restaurant in the development but also build its operational headquarters in The Grove. He also plans to develop an office park.
For its part, Ochsner has previously suggested its plans for The Grove are part of an aggressive expansion strategy into Baton Rouge. Ochsner already has 13 clinics in the local market and an established presence around the periphery of the region. Now it’s growing its footprint in the backyard of its competitors—Our Lady of the Lake and Baton Rouge General— and in the heart of the city’s health district.
—Stephanie Riegel
