The St. Louis Shriners Hospital is Moving - Into the City

The St. Louis Shriners Hospital for Children is returning to its roots. National leaders of the Shriners, in town for a national convention in early  July, will celebrate plans for a new 247,000-square-foot hospital at Clayton and Newstead Avenues on the Washington University School of Medicine campus with a ceremonial groundbreaking on July 3, 2008. The new facility will be built just two blocks from the site of the original St. Louis Shriners Hospital for Children, which was built at Clayton and Euclid Avenues in 1924.

The new 40-bed facility will feature an expanded research center, a largeroutpatient area, a motion analysis lab, four surgical suites, 30 clinic examination rooms, and more space for orthotics and prosthetics. There will be 12 private rooms for children waiting for same-day surgery; 10 beds in a Center for Metabolic Bone Disease and Molecular Research; and six rooms for parents. The research center will take up an entire floor of the six-story structure and include a DNA lab.

Construction at the new $170 million hospital actually will begin in early 2009 with completion slated for 2011. The project also includes construction of a 260-space parking garage. The hospital and parking garage will rise up on the site of a former Pepsi Bottling Co. plant and parking lot. The new facility will replace the current Shriners Hospital for Children on Lindbergh Boulevard in Frontenac, MO. Tammy Robbins, director of public relations for the St. Louis Shriners hospital, said the hospital moved from its original St. Louis city location to the suburban Frontenac facility in 1963. Once the new facility is completed, the Shriners intend to sell the hospital on Lindbergh.

"This is an exciting time for the Shriners Hospitals for Children in St. Louis," Ralph Semb, president and chairman of the board of trustees said in a report to the Shriners Fraternity. "We expect that this new hospital wil ultimately set the industry standard for quality and attract the best and brightest physicians and clinical staff in pediatric specialty care," he added.

Most of the medical staff at the Shriners Hospital for Children are on the faculty at Washington University. Semb said that moving the hospital closer to the university and St. Louis Children's Hospital would improve patient care, research, and education.

Paric Corp. is the general contractor. Gresham Smith & Partners is the architect.

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