Church Health will be heading to Crosstown Concourse soon
Goal is no more than a three-day gap in services
Church Health expects its carefully orchestrated move into Crosstown Concourse to be completed by early April.
Like an orchestra, the shift involves the syncing of many players: Consolidating services now scattered across 13 buildings; moving while construction continues in the 1.1 million-square-foot Crosstown Concourse; relocating more than 200 employees; and moving an array of services that include medical, dental and eye clinics, family care and pediatrics, behavioral health, physical therapy and pharmacy.
And there’s this goal: No more than a three-day gap in services for Church Health’s the 65,000 patients.
Church Health provides care to workers and their families who are uninsured. The 30-year-old nonprofit founded by physician and minister Dr. Scott Morris has expanded over the years to include a wellness center and programs to promote health among congregations.
Even though the move is made more challenging by the construction that continues across the behemoth building, Ann Langston, senior director of partnerships and opportunities, said, “I think ‘complicated move’ is an overstatement. It has to be carefully orchestrated.”
The nonprofit organization plans to start moving in about two weeks. The migration will take another three to four weeks.
“Our goal is to transition in such a way that we’ll have very little down time in any service line,” she said.
Church Health will occupy 150,000 square feet inside Crosstown Concourse. Its space will surround the West Atrium on the first, second and third floors.
The move causes a domino effect involving all the property Church Health is vacating, especially the cluster of converted old houses along the block of Peabody west of Bellevue.
“It was never just about back-filling our space,” Morris said. “It was all about creating more value in terms of the work and the ministry that we do.”
Here’s a summary of the buildings and their future occupants:
» 1115 Union, the Wellness Center. Church Health has been paying $1-ayear rent to Baptist Memorial Healthcare for this building since 1998. The Baptist College of Health Sciences will now expand into the space;
» 1192, 1196 and 1200 Peabody. Alliance Health Services will lease these buildings from Church Health. A nonprofit, AHS is Shelby County’s largest provider of behavioral health services. Alliance Health Services will use the buildings to add services, not to move functions there from other places. AHS will not pay rent, but will bear the cost of the buildings’ upkeep;
» 1210 and 1216 Peabody, plus a carriage house behind 1216 Peabody. St. John’s United Methodist Church owns these buildings and is in lease negotiations with a potential user. The proposed service is ‘in line with everything else that will be happening in the neighborhood,” Langston said;
» 1203 Peabody. Also owned by St. John’s, the church will use the building to consolidate and expand its food ministries;
» 1178 and 1161 Peabody, and 321 S. Bellevue. The Dorothy Day House organization will use these properties for its mission of providing shelter to homeless families; Work has already started to transition 1178 Peabody as a Dorothy Day House. Church Health will continue using 161 Peabody and 321 S. Bellevue until the Dorothy Day organization can take them over;
» 420 N. Cleveland. This is space Church Health has been leasing across Cleveland from Crosstown Concourse. The Levitt Shell organization will move into the building;
» And 266 S. Cleveland. Church Health now uses some space inside this building for its dental clinic.
Alliance Health Services provides alcohol and drug therapy, individual and group therapy, crisis services, medically monitored chemical detox, parent-child interaction therapy and trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy.
“The mental health issues are critical. In some ways we’re not even leasing to (Alliance Health Services),” Morris said. “In my mind we’re bartering with them. They will help us with our counseling needs around behavioral health.”
As for the Dorothy Day House, Morris said that homeless families “have been in our wheelhouse since the day we began.
“The thought that three of our houses could go for Dorothy Day is very exciting to us.”
The plan for how the existing Church Health property will be reused stemmed from a three-year-old effort among Church Health, St. John’s United Methodist Church and Methodist Healthcare. The organizations reviewed community needs and determined three priorities: Women’s health and families; behavioral health; and food.
“From the beginning, the (Church Health) mission has always been to reconnect the faith community with work to provide hope and healing to those who need it so that we all become whole and healthy,” Langston said.