Having a checkup
Tour takes in progress at future home of Church Health Center
It’s kind of dusty now, but someday the Crosstown Concourse that once housed a Sears store will count Church Health Center among its tenants. Ann Langston (right), senior director of the health center, speaks during a tour of the site where services now scattered across 13 buildings will be consolidated. The move will also increase the ministry’s total size from 120,600 square feet to 149,000 square feet.
Twenty-eight years ago, Dr. Scott Morris retrofitted a dilapidated Memphis boarding house into a clinic and started seeing a handful of patients. On Thursday, the physician led a group of investors and employees on a tour of his most ambitious venture, a 149,000-square-foot expansion into Sears Crosstown, the vacant Midtown tower undergoing a $200 million renovation.
The January 2017 move will consolidate operations from 13 buildings scattered across Memphis into one and, in the process, increase the Church Health Center floor space by nearly 20 percent.
The faith-based health care provider currently handles more than 42,000 low-income patient visits a year, making it a key health care provider for the city’s uninsured working poor.
“The center has always been innovative when it comes to growing our services and doing what is possible with our resources,” Church Health communications manager Jeff Hulett said. “This, however, will be the biggest growth step for us in how we are able to do business and deliver our services. Under one roof we will expand our space and services allowing us to serve more and serve better.”
Work crews are still renovating the old building, turning the massive former Sears, Roebuck and Co. regional headquarters into Crosstown Concourse, a modern home for clinics, classrooms, art studios, restaurants and apartments.
Church Health, a key tenant on the first and second floors, plans bigger facilities than it now has, including a 300 percent increase in eye treatment rooms, 140 percent increase in dental operations and a 77 percent increase in exam rooms.
“We will not only be able to improve their medical health, we can focus on all areas of their lives, i.e., nutrition, exercise and movement, and their emotional well-being,” Hulett said.
Hulett said the center, which employs about 250 people, is taking a “wait and see” approach in regard to expanding its workforce.
Once it vacates the current buildings, Church Health hopes it can put its widely scattered buildings to good use.
“While the plan is not totally set in stone yet, the original clinic building will most likely turn into a retreat center/museum that other nonprofits can use,” Hulett said. “The other buildings will most likely be handed over to other non-profits doing great work in our city.”
Meanwhile, the center will become a major tenant of Crosstown Concourse.
To date, 16 other tenants have signed leases, including Crosstown Arts, Methodist LeBonheur Healthcare, Memphis Teacher Residency, Goodwill Excel Center and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
“One of our partners is Crosstown Arts, and we’ve already collaborated and connected with them on several projects,” Hulett said. “And in terms of education, take the Goodwill Excel Center, a charter high school for adults, for example. Say one of our patients comes to us working in a low-wage job but is hungry for more. After their appointment, we can walk them down to the Goodwill Excel Center and get them plugged in.”