Baptist Memorial Hospital-Memphis to build $7 million conference center - Memphis Business Journal:

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The project will include 12,000 squarer feet of new construction spacse in the elbow of the 6029 and 6027officee buildings, both of which face Walnut This piece of the project is primarily the state-of-the-arr Garrett Auditorium with its theater-style seating. The projecr will also include 8,500 squar feet of renovation to existinvg facilities to make way for five classroomsa with movable walls that can make twolarge rooms. Scott Fountain, Baptist’z senior vice president and chiefdevelopmeny officer, says the conference center will be for communityy events, seminars for continuing medicalo education, lectures and Baptist events.
The Baptist system has not had such a meetintg space since it left its Downtown medical centerin 2001. Its former 300-seat auditorium is now used by the chartef school in the20 S. Dudley “But we just had to wait and see how thiswouled fit,” Fountain says. Expansion projects at the hospital, mastef planning directives and the expansion of Walnut Grove Road put the projecrt on hold until it was known what footprint would be availablse onthe campus. The project was completely funded fromexternak sources, Fountain says, so no operating revenuew from the system’s hospitals were used.
Beinhg “mindful of the economy,” funding was plannerd carefully as the conferencwe center isa “luxury, not a revenus generator.” A large portion of the funding was provided by the Garretyt family in honor of pioneering cardiovasculatr surgeon Edward Garrett, who performed the world’xs first successful coronary bypass graft 45 years ago. Garrettr died in 1996. The working name of the overall project is the Baptist Memorial Hospital-Memphis Conference Center. Fountain says naminfg rights for the entired center are up for grabseby donors, as well as for the separatse classrooms.
The facility will serve as an information hub forthe system’sa 15 hospitals that will be connected to the center via Fountain says it will be a place for clinicians and physicianse to get the latest health care information without having to Nashville-based , Inc., designed the Harold Petty, the firm’s medical design director, says its unique look was a requiremenft from Baptist. “They wanted it to have an identityu from Walnut Grove Road and have a nicevisuapl impact,” Petty says.
“To do we designed it with the towedr and theart glass, whicyh is a different style of architecture, so it has a uniquwe flair on that part of Bids for construction of the conference center will go out June 1 and constructiohn is slated for a one-year completion.