Bert Brown has watched his wife decline since 2001 with advanced dementia. He likes living on Locust Avenue near the Martha Jefferson Hospital, as his wife has had extended stays there. So with the hospital’s relocation imminent—all activities will be moved from the Locust/High Street location to Pantops by 2012—he would like to see an assisted-living facility take its place.
 A crowd of neighbors cheered Martha Jefferson’s decision to preserve this house at 507 Locust Ave., along with four other former residences. |
“It would involve the most efficient use, probably,” said Brown at a January 31 meeting between Martha Jefferson officials and neighborhood residents. “It would also be making something that the community is crying out for more and more, to have an assisted-living facility right here in town.”
Steve Bowers, spokesman for the hospital, confirmed that it’s among the possibilities. “If you look at baseline assisted living, it’s running at 96 percent capacity in Charlottesville and Albemarle County,” said Bowers. “If I were in the market, I’d say that’s a pretty good indicator of need.”
But that it’s among the possibilities doesn’t mean that much at this point—just about every conceivable use is still a possibility. The hospital is counting on the sale of its current site to help finance the new facility, and Bowers told a crowd of locals that the only thing probably off the table is research and development (“It’s the only use that would have a higher [infrastructure] impact than us,” said Bowers). Whether the hospital will morph into a hotel/convention center, office space, or ground floor retail and condos will depend on the developer that the hospital “marries” for the project.
Even though the move is four years away, it will likely take several years for a developer to work through the approval process. The hospital site is complicated to redevelop, its centerpiece a motley building with a hodgepodge of additions since it opened in the ’20s. With 13.5 acres, it represents one of the biggest sites to come on the market so close to Downtown. “It’s a once-in-a-generation opportunity,” Bowers said.
He did unveil one given at the meeting: Five former residences that the hospital has acquired over the years will be preserved. That announcement drew applause from the crowd. Many attendees have advocated for a Martha Jefferson design control district, and the neighborhood recently was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
Bowers spent most of the meeting working to convince the neighbors to trust the hospital. “We can’t take the risk of this project not happening,” said Bowers, who emphasized that the hospital wants a developer with “character”—and with enough in the bank to finish the job.
He even spun the souring credit economy into a positive. “It’s better knowing you have a bad economy than riding a high economy and picking whatever partner looks good, because they’re going to have to prove themselves vis-à-vis the elephants of the day.” About half a dozen potential partners have contacted the hospital, though “there’s not one legitimate offer on the table.” (UVA is not among those that have contacted Martha Jefferson.)
In the next two weeks, Martha Jefferson Hospital will release a report that analyzes the local market and demand, a tool to help developers suss out what they could do with the site.
Yet the meeting wasn’t all good cheer. “You talk about a patient approach to this,” said one man. “And I have a feeling that we will wake up one day and find out that a lot has happened because you’ve been able to marshal support from those concerned with tax revenues and try to frankly marginalize the interests of the community. I’d like to have some reassurances about that.”
“We’ve been working on this report for nine months now,” answered Bowers. “And you’re the first people to see it.”
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