It’s been roughly seven years since Scott Morris, MD, first heard the suggestion, but he still remembers his reaction.
“It was the greatest and craziest idea,” said Morris, founder and CEO of Church Health.
That’s what Morris thought when Todd Richardson walked into his office in 2010 with his idea to redevelop the historic, 1.5-million-square-foot, ten-story tall Sears Crosstown building at the southwest corner of Watkins and North Parkway.
As crazy as the scheme seemed, it was the answer Morris needed to make his dream a reality, which it will become this month when the first tenants move in.
“At the time, we were looking to consolidate Church Health’s operations under one roof, and I was looking for a solution,” said Morris, a family practice physician and ordained United Methodist minister. “We were operating out of 13 separate buildings, and we wanted to bring all of our clinical and wellness services together.”
Located in Midtown since its founding in 1987, Church Health is a faith-based nonprofit organization that provides primary and specialty healthcare, dentistry, eye care and counseling to low-income and uninsured Shelby County residents. It has grown into the largest faith-based healthcare organization of its type in the country, currently caring for more than 58,000 patients.
According to both men, Richardson approached Morris initially about setting up a 3,000-square-foot satellite clinic to provide healthcare to artists at Crosstown.
“Church Health’s mission is to provide healthcare to the uninsured, which was a fit for Crosstown Arts,” said Richardson, now managing director of the Crosstown Concourse. “The original idea was to create a satellite clinic, but Scott had a need to consolidate Church Health’s operations, and he was willing to move his entire organization to do that.”
Richardson co-founded Crosstown Arts, a contemporary arts organization dedicated to cultivating the creative community in Memphis, in 2010 to redevelop the abandoned Sears Crosstown building and create a multidisciplinary arts center.
“The plan was to redevelop the building for the arts and build community through Crosstown Arts,” Richardson said. “We wanted to benefit thousands living in the neighborhood.”
Morris was sold on the idea.
“I loved the idea that we would share the building with artists,” Morris said. “Artists are independent contractors who are typically uninsured.”
Not everyone believed the idea would work. The structure is an art deco high-rise built in 1927 that was originally a Sears mail-order processing warehouse and retail store. The building was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2013. But it stood empty for decades as no proposal for a new use for the building could gain traction.
Richardson worked with consultants and completed a feasibility study to determine whether it was feasible to renovate the property.
“We were taking a risk,” Richardson said. “The idea was to create a vertical urban village. We were in the middle of a recession at the time, and we knew we couldn’t do a traditional approach with the building. It isn’t a 9-to-5 office park. We had to think about creating a new neighborhood with access to healthcare, education, arts, retail and greenspace.”
According to Morris, the turning point in the evolution of Crosstown happened when several key players, including Gary Shorb, then CEO of Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare, and former Memphis mayor A C Wharton, flew to Minneapolis to tour another redeveloped Sears building called The Midtown Exchange.
“It was a parallel scenario with a building that was designed by the same architect and looked identical to Crosstown,” Morris said. “That trip created an enthusiasm that this could actually happen in Memphis. After the trip to Minneapolis, it wasn’t just Scott and Todd anymore. Methodist came on board, then ALSAC/St. Jude. It became, ‘Now, who else wants to be a part of it?’”
Richardson agrees that after several key hospital systems and Crosstown Back and Pain Institute, a non-surgical, multidisciplinary neck and back clinic, agreed to house operations, a medical community formed inside the building.
“Piece after piece fell into place, and it became a logical choice,” said Ann Langston, director of strategic partnerships and opportunities for Church Health. “Crosstown became more than a place for just artists. It became a center for arts, education and healthcare. It was about being a part of a community and not just a workplace.”
Relocating from 135,000 square feet in 13 buildings to 150,000 square feet under one roof and on three floors, Church Health will be the center of the medical community inside Crosstown.
According to Langston, Church Health’s clinical services will expand with the new relocation. The organization will go from 34 exam rooms to 62. It will have more dental operatories, eye treatment rooms and counseling rooms for patients.
Langston says expanding the exam rooms will assist in integrating care, which has been a long-term goal for Church Health.
“Patients will be able to see primary care physicians, specialists, dietitians and counselors all in one exam room,” Langston said. “We can’t do that now because each service is too far away.”
Morris added that Church Health has a subspecialty clinic staffed with 63 retired, volunteer physicians.
“Currently, we don’t have enough space for them to work,” he said. “We will have the capacity for these physicians to see patients.”
In addition to more exam rooms for patients and physicians, Church Health will partner with The Southern College of Optometry. Residents from the college will work at the 8,000-square-foot eye clinic on the second floor inside Crosstown along with Church Health optometrists.
Crosstown Back and Pain Institute, founded by orthopedic surgeons Sam Schroerlucke and Owen Tabor with Tabor Orthopedics, will be a 9,500-square-foot nonsurgical back and neck clinic, created to address chronic back pain in patients.
“It’s difficult to treat patients with chronic back pain in a traditional clinic setting,” Tabor said. “Physicians don’t have the tools for a multidisciplinary approach. At Crosstown, we can offer patients a full array of treatment and management options by partnering with the Church Health wellness center.”
Tabor says patients will have access to a pain counselor, group exercise classes, acupuncture and smoking cessation classes at Crosstown through Church Health to manage back and neck pain.
A recent development is the Church Health YMCA, which will be a 25,000-square-foot gym and wellness center on the second floor.
“The YMCA will manage the membership side and Church Health will operate the wellness side,” Morris said. “It will be a model for healthy living.”
Residents at Crosstown will receive a membership to the Church Health YMCA center. As with other YMCA facilities, general membership will be awarded on an income-based sliding scale, and members of the Church Health YMCA will have free access to other YMCA gyms in the area.
Additionally, Church Health has partnered with Tulane University to offer a licensed culinary curriculum for physicians, residents, nurses and pharmacists. Church Health is one of 30 medical institutions in the United States to offer this curriculum, known as culinary medicine. A teaching kitchen will be housed on the first floor of the West atrium in Crosstown.
“Our goal is for physicians to receive continuing medical education credits through this in-depth curriculum,” Langston said. “Medical professionals will then go back to their offices and teach their patients the foundation that food is medicine.”
According to Morris and Langston, both medical professionals and the general public will be able to take cooking classes and learn how to incorporate healthy eating into everyday life. Food prepared in the teaching kitchen will be grown on-site on top of the roof in a 100-tower garden as well as in a separate community garden at Crosstown.
“We are building the greatest kitchen in America,” Morris said. “The way to get doctors talking about food is to get them in the kitchen.”
Langston says Church Health’s move will be phased and take approximately two to three weeks.
Although other tenants also have begun moving in, the official grand opening of Crosstown is planned for May 13. Richardson is eager to see this dream come to fruition.
“This project brings things full circle,” he said. “Three thousand people will be coming and going inside the building every day. It’s a small city with its own ecosystem. You will be able to do everything here.”
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