St. Mary's Health has high hopes that a new $12.8 million medical development will help it attract new patients from the county’s fast-growing North Side.
On Tuesday, the hospital had a news conference at its Evansville campus to announce details for Northside Crossing, a 31,000-square-foot medical facility to be built near U.S. 41-North and Inglefield Road.
“It’s an investment in our North Side community,” said John Greaney, St. Mary’s vice president of strategic services.
St. Mary’s first told the Courier & Press about its plans in August, but the hospital had not formally announced many details of the project until now.
The facility will be built on a 9.5-acre site. It will include space for as many as 10 full-timep hysicians, plus a handful of specialists who will see patients on a part-time basis.
It will also include an urgent care office, laboratory services, imaging (ultrasound, CT scanner, X-ray), occupational medicine, physical therapy and a retail pharmacy.
Construction should begin next month, St. Mary’s said, with the facility ready for use in February 2017. St. Mary’s already has a presence on the North Side, including pediatrician offices off First and Diamond avenues as well as a North Park office that includes physician offices, a lab and imaging.
Northside Crossing will be in addition to those facilities — not a replacement, said St. Mary’s Health President Keith Jewell.
“These are all net new jobs and services and resources that we’re providing to the North Side,” he said.
Part of the strategy behind NorthsideCrossing is to improve St. Mary’s reach in that part of town, Jewell said.
About half of all East Side residents use St. Mary’s as their medical provider, Jewell said. St. Mary’s main campus is on the East Side, and it also has an Epworth Crossing facility just over the county line in Warrick County.
But the hospital system’s reach is not so strong inother areas of town, Jewell said.
“On the West Side and the North Side, those numbers are quite a bit different.”
St. Mary’s broke ground last summer on a similar facility on the West Side. That property, Westside Crossing, is on Rosenberger Avenue just north of the Lloyd Expressway.
Northside Crossing will be built in a part of town that has seen significant growth recently.
Major recent developments along U.S. 41 include the North Junior High and North High School campuses, which opened in 2011/2012; and a new Schnucks grocery store, which opened last fall. In December, the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp. announced its plans to build a new North Side elementary school because of increasing enrollment.