Bon Secours is building a 25,000-square-foot, two-story medical office focused primarily on behavioral health services. (Images courtesy of Bon Secours)
A years-in-the-making Bon Secours project in the East End is moving forward.
The health system broke ground Tuesday on a 25,000-square-foot, two-story medical office building to be constructed on a triangle-shaped lot across from the Sarah Garland Jones Center for Healthy Living at 2600 Nine Mile Road.
The upcoming office will primarily be used to offer behavioral health services as an extension of the nearby Bon Secours Richmond Community Hospital. Construction is expected to be completed this year, with the facility slated to be operational in early 2023.
Baskervill is the project’s architect, and Gilbane is the general contractor.
The facility will include a partial hospitalization program for adolescents and adults who have behavioral health or substance abuse issues, as well as a behavioral health tele-consultation call center.
The building will also be home to hospice care and the future headquarters of the Instructive Visiting Nurse Association, an in-home health group affiliated with Bon Secours.
“The (new facility) will have enhanced, extended, new behavioral health services that complement those programs that are already provided in our hospital,” Richmond Community Hospital COO Joey Trapani said during a groundbreaking event held Tuesday.
The project was driven by local respondents expressing a desire for such medical care in the East End in community surveys conducted by Bon Secours, Trapani said.
“A vital area of consistent focus that comes up in every conversation and every piece of analysis we have in this community is the need for enhanced behavioral health care services,” he said.
Local leaders and Bon Secours officials take part in a ground breaking ceremony Tuesday for the health system’s new medical office in the East End.
City Council President Cynthia Newbille, Bon Secours Richmond Market President Faraaz Yousuf and Rev. Sylvester Smith were among the speakers at the event.
The new office is the main element of the East End component of the 2013 performance agreement between the health system and the Richmond Economic Development Authority.
That agreement also involved what became the Washington Commanders summer training facility near Scott’s Addition and the former Westhampton School property at Libbie and Pattersno avenues.
The East End facility is expected to cost $11.5 million, coming in above the $8.5 million investment goal for the East End office building per the performance agreement, Trapani said in an interview after his remarks.
The facility is expected to have 75 full-time employees work there, and about half of them are expected to be new hires, Trapani said.
The new office will rise across the street from the Sarah Garland Jones Center for Healthy Living, a $1.7-million facility that opened in 2017. The center, which will share its address with the upcoming new office building, was formerly called the Parsley’s Center for Healthy Communities.
The office will be built on 1400 N. 27th St. and 1401 N. 26th St., parcels owned by Bon Secours that total a little over an acre, according to online city land records.
Richmond Community Hospital is 151,000 square feet and has 104 beds.
Bon Secours Richmond is the regional arm of Bon Secours Mercy Health, which is one of the 20 largest health systems in the country with operations in seven states.
Bon Secours has more than 9,000 employees in its Richmond market and operates St. Mary’s Hospital, St. Francis Medical Center, Memorial Regional Medical Center, Southside Medical Center, Short Pump Emergency Center, Southside Emergency Care Center, Southern Virginia Medical Center, Westchester Emergency Center and Rappahannock General Hospital.