Barnes-Jewish opens Plaza West Tower on site of former Queeny Tower

Barnes-Jewish Hospital has completed a major chapter in its long-running campus renewal with the Plaza West Tower, a new 16-story patient care building rising where the aging Queeny Tower once stood. The 660,000 SF facility is designed to expand capacity for complex care, modernize inpatient workflows, and improve the experience for patients and families on Washington University’s medical campus.

Plaza West houses roughly 280 private inpatient rooms — 224 acute care and 56 intensive-care rooms — across seven inpatient floors, plus more than 100 surgical prep/recovery bays and an advanced imaging platform that includes MRI, CT, and interventional radiology suites. The tower also features family-focused amenities such as rooftop gardens, a two-story glass-enclosed lobby, a large family lounge with a business center and quiet rooms, and a new kitchen and cafeteria serving the south campus. BJC and WashU Medicine expect the building to relieve regional demand for specialized heart, vascular, and other high-acuity services.

The project was delivered as a design-build collaboration led by McCarthy Building Companies, which served as the design-build contractor and construction lead. CannonDesign served as architect and interior designer; BR+A provided consulting engineering; Thornton Tomasetti handled structural engineering; Castle Contracting led civil work; and landscape design was provided by DTLS. Early demolition and disentanglement work on the Queeny Tower site was notable for its complexity and was performed by firms experienced in live-campus demolition and utility relocation.

That integrated team employed modern health-care design approaches — private-room layouts to reduce infection risk, dedicated ICU floors, and finishes and acoustical strategies aimed at lowering noise and improving rest and recovery. The exterior vocabulary takes cues from neighboring campus buildings, pairing ultra-high performance concrete panels with a limestone podium and a prominent glass projection that visually connects the hospital to nearby Forest Park.

Construction milestones included a topping-out ceremony in mid-2024 and phased site work that preserved adjacent clinical operations while crews demolished the obsolete Queeny Tower and built the new facility. Local and regional contractors handled civil, utility, and site logistics to manage one of the largest single capital investments on the campus in recent years. BJC and WashU Medicine moved forward with a careful commissioning and staffing plan to bring the tower online for patients in late 2025.

Plaza West is the latest visible sign of a decade-long campus renewal effort to replace aging infrastructure with facilities built for contemporary care delivery, research-informed clinical models, and the patient-centered expectations of the communities the medical campus serves.

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Header image: The newly completed 16-story Plaza West Tower replacing the aging Queeny Tower at Barnes-Jewish Hospital is set to open in October. Image | Barnes-Jewish Hospital

Insatiable appetite for commercial real estate continues

The St. Louis-area CRE market is still hungry for more, according to Commercial Real Estate Women (CREW)-St. Louis’ “Industrial Outlook” panelists.

Christie Brinkman, director, design build, Castle Contracting, LLC, moderated the March session as panelists, Cara Weber, Wakeel Rahman and Christy Campbell discussed recent pandemic-related challenges and predictions going forward.

Cara Weber, vice president, business recruitment, Missouri Partnership, said the Partnership is a public/private entity funded by the State of Missouri’s Department of Economic Development and the Hawthorn Foundation to focus on attracting new businesses to the state by functioning as a sales tunnel that includes marketing, business development and project management.

“Our Raise the Bar program is identifying sites for development so the region can control its own destiny,” Weber said. 

In the past five years, the Partnership has opened 615 projects and lost 142. Wins by industry include advanced manufacturing, energy solutions, food solutions, logistics and distribution, and office-based space.

“Expansion is incredibly important — about 80 percent of new jobs are coming from expansion,” she said. “I’m excited about the level of project flow so far this year, which has been mostly industrial. We’re seeing a lot of searches for existing buildings, but don’t have a lot available.”

“Retention (of businesses) is the key component. Attraction is our wheelhouse,” Weber said. “We’re getting more opportunities from big OEM businesses.”

Available CRE space is a factor in lost projects, along with whether a business has an existing presence in the area and concerns about logistics, incentives, available workforce, business costs and infrastructure, according to Weber. 

“What’s great about Missouri is our transportation resources: rail and river,” she said.

The CRE profession is faced with “trying to meet an almost insatiable demand for commercial real estate,” said Wakeel Rahman, vice president, NorthPoint Development. “The market is very healthy. Retail stepped up to take a lot of space to compete with Amazon.”

E-commerce is driving the market from “just in time” (JIT) to “just in case” (JIC), and the ratio of inventory to sales in the supply chain should increase. 

Rahman warned that national headwinds to watch include continued supply chain delays and cost increases for materials and construction, NIMBYism (Not In My Back Yard) attitudes toward industrial properties, entitlement and permitting, and warehouse fatigue. 

“St. Louis is still one of the tightest markets,” he said. “Looking forward, we will see an increase in automation and more-affordable systems; new geographies where companies can build; and spending more on infrastructure, which means good things for our industry because it creates improved access.”

The preliminary 2022 first-quarter numbers are encouraging, said Christy Campbell, brokerage associate, Cushman & Wakefield: “2.2 MSF of positive net absorption and a 2.9 percent vacancy rate — the lowest ever.” Asking rates are increasing in response, she said. “While St. Louis has always been a stable market, 2021 was a record year and we’re already halfway there in 2022, with 8.3 MSF under construction among 26 buildings with only one that’s tax-abated.”

Royal Canin, Ryder and Imperial Dade are leading the field; Duke Realty has completely left the market. 

The largest Q1 investment sales have been Duke to Exeter Property Group, Inc., TriStar Properties to Apollo Global Management and Duke to Pontegadea Inversiones as cap rates continue to compress.

“Trends are an upward pressure on rental rates and annual increases, changes in marketing strategies with less and less advertised rates, increased emphasis on e-commerce, and the move from JIT to JIC,” Campbell said.

In terms of some of the issues that Rahman noted, “The most common misconception about the industrial sector is negative environmental impact of large facilities on a community; but in reality, there’s no stress on schools, there are new jobs, and LEED buildings with high-tech electronics-driven systems are environmentally friendly,” she said.

“Industrial tenants are looking for buildings with 30- to 40-foot clear heights because of racking and are making heavy trailer parking demands,” Campbell said. “Land prices are increasing across the country, although St. Louis is lagging behind the coasts.” 

Upcoming CREW-STL events include Coffee with CREW, April 1; Membership Hike, April 6; Bar K & Green Street Real Estate Ventures Happy Hour and tour, April 12; and Dine Around, April 19. To register or for more event details, visit https://crewstl.org/events.

The Opus Group embarks on 13.5-acre industrial site in Earth City

Castle Contracting has begun earthwork and site utilities installation on a 13.5-acre, two-building industrial development for The Opus Group in Earth City, Mo.

The St. Louis suburb site offers easy access to I-70 and Highway 141 and will include two warehouses - one speculative - the other for Johnstone Supply's new office headquarters and distribution center.

Johnstone Supply, an HVAC equipment and parts supplier, plans to occupy four acres of the site to support the company's plans to centralize operations, further establish its presence in the St. Louis area and hire additional employees.

Opus' custom-designed, 10,000-SF office space will feature a working lab and training center where the company will provide hands-on certification training for St. Louis County mechanical licensees. The distribution center will occupy the remaining 35,000 SF.

The remaining 9.5 acres will include an 111,000-SF speculative industrial building, built to accommodate multiple tenants. The spec building will feature 32-foot clear height, 27 dock positions (including two drive-in positions) and clerestory windows to maximize natural light and wall space.   

Completion of the speculative industrial building is scheduled for May 2021; the Johnstone Supply headquarters is set for a February 2021 completion date.