I wanted to record before I forget that as Xy and I were coming home from an errand Friday, we saw there were lots of firetrucks clustered around Lindy Boggs Medical Center (aka Mercy). Later we learned that someone had broken in and started a small fire. [WWL has video.]
I further learned (through discussion with neighbors) that the physician’s group wanting to buy this facility is not giving up. Victory’s plans to demolish the hospital and build a shopping mall seem to be going nowhere, perhaps because of the national economic downturn.
There’s still that dirty deal Ochsner made with Tenet that prevents the site being used for medical purposes for five years. Standard business practice, perhaps, but I say it’s a dirty deal for a community trying to recover from a catastrophe. Still, the clock is ticking on that limitation.
Every time I look at that giant abandoned complex I get angry. My daughter should have been born there, just a few blocks from our house. The flood and the machinations of money-grubbers have conspired against us.
But what really matters is that we don’t have to give up hope for the site yet.
It’s hard to believe Ochsner does not have some sort of agenda when you put the pieces together: the dirty deal on Lindy Boggs; taking over hospitals on the Westbank, Uptown, & Kenner; saying we don’t need a new hospital downtown…
They’re really irritating the hell out of me.
I read in a Dec. article they planned to demolish it in 2-3 months without protest from mid-city neighborhood assoc. Well its been more than 3 mo. So as I understand they plan to make it a fenced off green space for the next few years? Essentially a prison for grass…
I find it deeply ironic that a ready-made medical site sits there untouched, because of this sleazy Ochsner/Tenet deal, while about a mile down the streetcar line, LSU and the VA are proposing to essentially demolish the entire neighborhood of Tulane/Gravier, which volunteers from around the world have worked so hard to rebuild, in order to build — you guessed it — a brand-new hospital complex from the ground up!
http://www.pnola.org
LSU would have to be a better fit for Mid-City than big-box Metry East! At least it’d be a prestigious institution for the neighborhood to identify with. As for the VA, VA hospitals are normally not located in major medical centers, so why not go over to Federal City where the hyper-security measures they want are already in place, rather than closing off city streets, etc.?
B –
Your daughter couldn’t have been delivered there because they didn’t have a maternity division. My wife worked at Boggs in Cardiac ICU before the storm and we had to have our daughter delivered at Tulane downtown. It and Baptist (which is now Memorial and was Boggs’ sister hospital) are the only two maternity wards in the city that I know of–before or after the storm.
Given we lived about 5 blocks away, it would have been quite convenient to have been able to do so, but it wasn’t possible.
I do agree that it should be re-opened. There’s no way that flooding the basement caused so much damage to make it irreparable. The nuns that founded it made do quite well with the facility for many many years.
The sign on the east side of the building (seen from the bayou and post office) now reflects the hispanic component of our fair city- it reads “Lin y Boggs Medical Center”.
A few weeks ago I saw them taking out utility stuff from the ground. Two big trucks with big trailers. Said some kind of recycling equipment on the side of trucks. Done on the street going to Rouses.
Is the Ochsner/Tenet deal not a violation of anti-trust laws? Basically this indicates a desire by Ochsner to control the market, which is a big fat no-no.
Voila! It just occurred to me that only the actual Mercy/”Lin y Boggs” (ROFL) site is subject to the scuzzy non-competition clause. If the whole Victory site could somehow be acquired, an LSU or other medical project could be done in phases, starting farther up towards Carrollton, with the last phase, Mercy itself, not coming on line until the five years were up.
Now if I could just find someone to pay me to come up with stuff like this, we’d be in business — but then I’d need a new blog handle…
MERCY-LESS OCHSNER.
SHAME ON YOU OCHSNER. FOUNDER DR. ALTON OCHSNER WOULD BE VERY UPSET AT WHAT IS HAPPENING TO HIS FOUNDATION.
SHAME ON ALL WHO HAVE THEIR HANDS IN THIS DEBAUCHERY.
TEAR DOWN THE WALL! LEAVE US KIDS ALONE! (For those of you too young to remember, the quote is from “Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”).