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Firm Open to Selling Lindy Boggs Site
June 11, 2008
Original New Orleans CityBusiness article→
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“There is interest from doctors and an investment group in putting medical care back there,” said Dr. Robert Kenny, the former president of Lindy Boggs’ medical staff and a member of a group of doctors who, he said, tried to buy the 186-bed hospital from Tenet Healthcare Corp. last year but was stymied by a pact between its former owner, Tenet, and Ochsner Health System that prohibits acute-care uses on the property until 2010.
CityBusiness
Firm Open to Selling Lindy Boggs Site
by Ariella Cohen, Staff Writer
NEW ORLEANS - The Georgia-based development firm that planned to raze Mid-City’s Lindy Boggs Medical Center to make way for a sprawling retail and residential development is open to selling off the 26-acre North Jefferson Davis Parkway site.
“We are not actively marketing (the property),” said Bill Haynes, leasing specialist for Victory Real Estate Investments LLC. “But if someone wants to buy it we would sell.”
Already one group of doctors and medical investors has expressed interest in the brick-faced facility, which remains standing though the city approved demolition permits for it in December.
“There is interest from doctors and an investment group in putting medical care back there,” said Dr. Robert Kenny, the former president of Lindy Boggs’ medical staff and a member of a group of doctors who, he said, tried to buy the 186-bed hospital from Tenet Healthcare Corp. last year but was stymied by a pact between its former owner, Tenet, and Ochsner Health System that prohibits acute-care uses on the property until 2010.
Kenny, who made a presentation to the Mid-City Neighborhood Organization earlier this year, said the group is currently evaluating the factors involved in buying the property and getting it running as a medical care facility again.
“All you have to do is go into a hospital here and see the lines,” said Kenny, who was the first doctor to reopen a Mid-City office after the storm. “Clearly there is a need that could be met.”
Victory purchased the Katrina-damaged hospital last May for $9 million from Tenet, with a plan to demolish the shuttered hospital and incorporate the site into a much larger mixed-use project. Plans presented to Mid-City residents last spring showed development with residences, stores and above-ground parking lots spanning more than half a square mile between Jefferson Davis Parkway to North Solomon Street and from Toulouse Street to Bienville Avenue.
That vision, however, was met with opposition from neighbors who didn’t want to see their neighborhood inundated with the big-box chains Victory has put in other developments it has done around the country.
Following reports that the company had put its plan on ice until the national real estate market improves, it sold one of the project’s anchor parcels — 400 N. Carrollton Ave — to its tenant, Rouse’s Supermarket.
The sale signaled to observers, including the president of the supermarket chain, that plans for the mega-project were in flux.
“The first thing they told us was they weren’t going to sell because they needed the property for their development,” said Donald Rouse, president of the Rouse’s supermarket chain. “The market changed. … Neighbors raised resistance. … We made an offer and they sold.”
Mid-City residents would like to see a medical facility open on the Lindy Boggs site, said Jennifer Weishaupt, president of the Mid-City Neighborhood Organization. “Lindy Boggs was an anchor for the medical community in Mid-City, she said. “We would like to see it return.”
Neighbors are also interested in the possibility of locating an assisted-living facility at the site, she said.
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