Missouri Baptist Medical Center Plans More Growth

has requested an amendment from Planning and Zoning Commission regarding a future construction project. The hospital is planning to reduce the size of a medical office building to be constructed sometime in the future and instead build a two-story addition on top of an existing parking garage.

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Construction on top of Garage C would begin in October, according to Jesse Arevallo, the hospital’s facility and campus planning director. The addition will become part of “Building C” which is next to the parking garage.

This isn’t the first time Missouri Baptist has built on top of a parking garage. In January, the hospital opened its new Goldfarb School of Nursing, a $12.6 million facility, placed on top of the main parking garage next to the .

The West Pavilion is a six-story tower currently under construction, with the first floor lobby and patient pick up area scheduled to open August 18.

In 2009, Town and Country's planning and zoning commission approved the hospital’s plans to demolish the old Clinical Nursing Institute building. The actual demolition did not take place until June of this year, well after the institute was moved inside the new nursing building.

Arevallo said land where the Clinical Nursing Institute was located is being converted into a surface parking lot. He said the hospital does not have plans for a building on that site as yet.

Missouri Baptist’s long term development plan presented to planning and zoning simply reduces the size of a future office building by 92,000 square feet and places the same 92,000 square feet on top of  parking garage “C.”

No other changes to the hospital's development plan has been requested and the size of its future construction remains the same. The hospital does not plan to increase the size of its staff and will not require more employee parking space than what is already planned.

Sharon Rothmel, Town and Country’s director of planning and community economic opportunity coordinator, tells Patch that the planning and zoning commission approved the changes two weeks ago. The plan will go before the architectural review board on August 13, then before the board of aldermen that evening. It will not be voted on at that time.

The architectural review board makes a recommendation to aldermen on the architecture before the board of aldermen sees the site plan and the architecture, Rothmel stated in an email.