$400M Mission Hospital Tower Largest in Asheville’s History

A massive $400 million medical tower that will soon be built at 509 Biltmore Avenue will be the largest construction project in Asheville’s history.

The new tower will allow to Mission Health to shutter its aging St. Joseph’s campus and consolidate all operations on the newer Mission campus side of the operation.

Last year, the City Council voted its approval to Mission Health to build a new 12-story, 681,000 square foot tower, which will include new operating rooms and an emergency services department.

The project’s architect is HDR and the general contractor is Turner Construction.

The project’s large size meant it required a Level III review under the city’s Unified Development Ordinance and a council vote.

The tower would have frontage on Hospital Drive and Victoria Road, replacing the St. Joseph’s hospital campus, which is on the opposite side of Biltmore from most of Mission Health’s facilities.

That has meant at times patients are transported by ambulance across the busy road.

The hospital began seriously looking at changes four years ago. The facilities at the St. Joseph’s facility were aging out, and there was a need for a new emergency department.

The St. Joseph’s facility is outdated, cannot accommodate new technology, and would be too costly to renovate.

The tower project on the Memorial Campus achieve cost savings by eliminating the duplication of services required to maintain facilities on both sides of the street, as well as to improve patients’ experience and safety by eliminating the need to transport them back and forth.

Construction on the tower, which will have two floors underground, is set to be completed in November 2018.

City planning director Tod Okolinchany said it will be the biggest project Asheville has ever seen. “The Asheville Mall exceeds 900,000 square feet but was completed in phases over several years,” he said.

The tower will have 216 beds, and services such as a heart catheter lab and endoscopy, intensive care unit and medical-surgery recovery floor, along with a cafeteria, an 84-bed emergency room, and support offices.

The project calls for retaining walls as high as 28 feet in some places. To soften their effect, the hospital plans to use plants and design elements.

There are also plans for a small park area at the corner of Hospital Drive and Biltmore.

The former St. Joe’s site will later be redeveloped to provide needed affordable housing, as well as commercial use and retail shops.

Massive 1,555 Unit Residential Project For Rhode Island Ave

As one of the largest redevelopment projects in Washington, D.C., developer MRP Realty is planning on razing a retail center near the Rhode Island Avenue Metro station to construct 1.56 million-square-feet of residential, 245,000-square-feet of retail, and 1,992 parking spaces. The retail center, known as Rhode Island Center, will be razed to construct seven buildings with ground-floor retail, covering roughly six blocks of space.

The development plan calls for 1,555 residential units with eight percent set aside for affordable housing. The units will range from studios to three-bedrooms.

The first of the six-phase project will redevelop two buildings along Rhode Island Avenue NE into 345 residential units. Construction is expected to begin in late 2016.

MRP, with B&R Associates LP and Sandrock LP, proposes to transform 13 acres encompassing the Rhode Island Center — anchored by Save-A-Lot, Big Lots and Foreman Mills — a self-storage warehouse and 13 single-story retailers into a mixed-use, transit-oriented community that promises to “ultimately establish this locale as a destination in and of itself.”

The project will replace a shopping center that was the “product of the times in which it was built: it is auto-centric, set back from the street and does not interact with the greater community; it does not facilitate connections within the community but rather isolates itself, creating a barrier between the Metropolitan Branch Trail and the pedestrian path to the Rhode Island Avenue-Brentwood Metrorail Station.”

The development proposal calls for six new blocks along an extended street grid, all consisting of residential over ground-floor retail and 1,992 parking spaces.

The development site is bounded by Fourth Street NE to the west, Rhode Island Avenue to the south, the Metrorail tracks and the Metropolitan Branch Trail to the east and the Edgewood Terrace apartments to the north.

The number of units: 1,555, in a mix of studio to three-bedroom. Eight percent of the gross floor area, or 124,612 square feet, will be set aside as affordable.

There will be seven buildings. The first phase will feature two buildings on the two blocks closest to the Metro, to Rhode Island Row and the Brentwood Shopping Center.

The design of the first two buildings, totaling 345 units, “will pay homage to the industrial area that helped shape this neighborhood while generating an architectural vocabulary unique to this project.

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Northeast D.C., -- from Rhode Island Ave to Union Market, to NoMa Brookland to H Street, to New York Avenue -- is the epicenter of D.C.'s booming redevelopment pipeline.

Only last month, the JBG Cos. and the Boundary Companies proposed building 691 residential units over retail for the New York Avenue-Florida Avenue intersection.


Edens will break ground soon on multiple projects at Union Market, while LCOR recently picked up $30 million loan to build the 187-unit Edison at 340 Florida Ave. NE, and Level 2 Development has earned Zoning Commission approval for the 315-unit Highline at Union Market, 320 Florida Ave. NE.