The hulking Hickory Hollow Mall — a whole 1.1 million sq. feet of retail place in southeast Nashville — was the moment the premier shopping heart in Tennessee. But like dozens of malls, it’s been in a downward death spiral for a lot more than a 10 years — even with a scrappy revival energy.
Now, the mammoth intricate surrounded by acres of parking is on observe to join the ranks of malls building a changeover into medication.
“The prospects for service offerings in a facility of this scale are unlimited,” reported Dr. Jeff Balser, CEO of Vanderbilt University Clinical Middle, at an announcement in March that it would be going into part of the room.
Vanderbilt is now an early adopter in the shopping mall-to-medication principle. The tutorial overall health technique took about its to start with shopping mall, One particular Hundred Oaks, and started out seeing sufferers there far more than a decade ago. Now, the suburban searching advanced houses 22 specialty clinics in just about a fifty percent-million square toes. Some massive-box merchants continue being on the ground flooring with exterior entrances. But the inside is typically a health care facility run by Vanderbilt Health and fitness.
A overall of 32 enclosed malls have moved to housing well being treatment services, in accordance to a national databases held by Ga Tech urban structure professor Ellen Dunham-Jones. Approximately a person-third of them were introduced considering that the start of the pandemic.
The far more the latest additions, with some however in the planning phases, dot the U.S. map. They range from Helena, Montana’s Cash Hill Mall being redeveloped by Benefis Health Method with key care and specialty clinics, to Alexandria, Virginia, where Inova Overall health Program is creating a billion-greenback blended-use development on the Landmark Shopping mall web site, total with a medical center and trauma centre.
The lockdowns brought by COVID-19 — both equally needed and voluntary — pushed several brick-and-mortar stores who had been already on the brink completely out of business enterprise. But medicine’s reuse of retail area is far more than pandemic opportunism, in accordance to the Harvard Business Overview. 3 authors suggest the rise of telemedicine and ongoing push to outpatient procedures will make malls ever more interesting sites of care.
As well as, some dead malls like Hickory Hollow are in various neighborhoods that want increased entry to overall health providers.