St. David’s HealthCare is one step closer to redeveloping a medical office building near its South Austin hospital, nearly quadrupling the square footage.
The Planning Commission unanimously approved a rezoning request on Feb. 13 that would allow St. David’s to redevelop an existing medical office complex at 4007 James Casey St. The medical office currently sits on a 6.3-acre site and leases space to several health care specialists, including the Southwest Regional Cancer Center and Texas Heart and Vascular.
St. David’s plans would add 136,000 square feet to the existing building, which was built in the 1980s and is currently two stories and 58,205 square feet. St. David’s owns 51 percent of the property.
The additional office space is intended to fulfill growing health care needs in South Austin, according to St. David’s initial rezoning application.
Commissioner Felicity Maxwell, who lives near the St. David’s South Austin Medical Center, praised the project at last week’s meeting.
“There have been several times where (my family has) not used this facility, just because it has been chronically underinvested. To see new medical facilities coming in, that will be a meaningful difference for the district,” Maxwell said.
The building is currently zoned as a vertical mixed-use building, meaning it theoretically could be used for simultaneous residential and commercial use, but the rezoning would designate it as Commercial Highway Services-Planned Development Area-Neighborhood Plan (CH-PDA-NP). City of Austin staff suggested the new designation, stating it would better align the office building to the area’s status as a hospital special district and better support regional medical needs.
Under the special district’s zoning allowances, St. David’s would be able to build up to 120 feet in height. Current zoning allows the property to reach only up to 60 feet in height. Attorney Michael Whellan, St. David’s agent in the proposal, stated in a letter to the Housing and Planning Department that the added height would give the health care system more options during site development, citing macroeconomic challenges.
Resident representatives for the surrounding South Menchaca neighborhood spoke out against the project. Ray Collins, South Menchaca Neighborhood Plan (SMNP) contact team chair, proposed postponing the vote several times between December 2023 and the final Feb. 13 vote on the grounds that St. David’s had ignored his team’s requested community benefits. Those benefits included funding an engineering survey of a bike lane, providing free bus passes to St. David’s employees and small improvements to nearby St. Elmo’s Elementary School.
At last week’s meeting, both Collins and Commissioner Grayson Cox said the neighborhood was concerned that St. David’s discharges homeless patients into the neighborhood. The SMNP proposed that St. David’s provide free X-ray and other lab services to nearby clinic Lirios Pediatrics, as well as provide nonprofit medical offices and respite care for homeless patients at below-market rents in the office building.
Whellan countered the proposed SMNP community benefits by saying the St. David’s Foundation provides philanthropic aid around Austin and that people in need of affordable health care request aid from St. David’s Foundation or seek treatment at the South Austin hospital.
The vote passed despite the SMNP’s request to postpone.
St. David’s medical office renovations are only the latest development news out of the Central Texas medical giant, after it announced $1 billion of new development and renovations in and around Austin in 2022.
In addition to new hospitals in Leander and Kyle and a new behavioral health hospital near St. David’s North Austin Medical Center, St. David’s is undergoing a $249 million renovation and expansion of its South Austin Medical Center. Those renovations include new patient beds, operating rooms, obstetrics spaces and a parking garage. Construction on the parking garage and new surgical spaces was completed in 2021, while a new women’s services unit, new operating rooms and support spaces, as well as a new 24-bed rehabilitation unit, are underway.
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City of Austin Planning Commission: This commission addresses issues of land use as assigned to it by Austin's City Code. These include the abilities "[t]o make and amend a master plan, recommend approval or disapproval of proposed zoning changes and control land subdivision within neighborhood planning areas and submit, annually, a list of recommended capital improvements." It has sovereign authority, or the right to make final decisions on certain cases.
