St. Vincent plans ‘health village’

To Manthey

LITTLE ROCK — St. Vincent Health System is planning to build a healthcare-related development of more than 300,000 square feet just south of the Promenade at Chenal shopping center in west Little Rock.

The development would sit on 37 acres and include a 164,000-square-foot “healthvillage.” It also would include about 150,000 square feet for inpatient services.

Plans filed with the city of Little Rock say the health village would include outpatient health-care services, doctors’ offices and retail businesses “with emphasis on healthy retailers.”

“St. Vincent Health System envisions a health-care master development designed with a similar philosophy, architectural, and planning style to today’s ‘lifestyle centers,’” according to the plans.

Margaret Preston, spokesman for the system, declined comment on the development, adding in an e-mail that the system is awaiting city approval and St. Vincent won’t comment until a deal to buy land for the development closes in December.

The Little Rock Board of Directors is to consider the project tonight. The city planning commission has recommended approval, casting 10 votes for the proposal, none against it, with one member absent.

A lifestyle center, typically featuring “traditional streetscapes,” tends to cater to high-income consumers, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers.

St. Vincent’s center should appeal to affluent baby boomers in particular, said Glen Mays, an expert in hospital competition and chairman of the Department of Health Policy and Management at University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. Homes in Chenal Valley, he noted, “are not starter houses.”

“You’re going to see geographic competition among health-care providers focusing on that [Chenal] area anyway, because that’s where the well-insured community is growing rapidly in Little Rock, and also an older demographic that is going to be a population that has a higher use of health-care services,” Mays said.

Bundling services in a center like the one St. Vincent is planning to build, he said, may help it grow market share in the baby boomer demographic and reinforce “brand loyalty.”

Paul Cunningham, a spokesman for the Arkansas Hospital Association, saidcreating such a center makes sense as hospitals adjust to a health-care industry that has moved more to outpatient services in the past 15 years or so.

Buildings in the village wouldn’t be taller than 75 feet, the documents say. Businesses would have separate storefronts, but there could be “shared support space” to reduce duplications.

The village “will meet the undersupplied ambulatory health-care demand in west Little Rock, and surrounding communities,” the filing says.

The inpatient facility would have 40 to 50 beds and be constructed in the final phase of the development, the filing says. An urgentcare facility and the inpatient facility would operate at all hours.

The new development comes on the heels of a $47 million expansion at St.Vincent Infirmary Medical Center, the system’s main hospital.

For the fiscal year ending in June 2008, the most recent figures available, St. Vincent Infirmary Medical Center sustained a loss of about $2.2 million, after recording surplus revenue of about $9.1 million for the fiscal year ending in June 2007, according to tax filings.

The medical center could benefit Promenade at Chenal and vice versa, said Erin Hershkowitz, spokesman for the council.

“What I’m thinking is building a facility like that is bringing a sort of built-in consumer,” she said. “The people that work there, the doctors, the nurses ... [are] going to be patrons” of shops and restaurants at Promenade.

A patient, she said, could get stitches and then go out to lunch.