BR hospital purchases four properties

• By GARY PERILLOUX AND TED GRIGGS
• Advocate business writers
• Published: Jan 6, 2009 - Page: 1A - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center wrapped up 2008 with a $28 million shopping spree that included 60 acres spanning from the hospital’s Tau Center near Essen Lane to Interstate 10, two nearby outpatient surgery centers and an office building on Perkins Road.

The year-end deals came as LSU abandoned plans in December to build a replacement hospital for Earl K. Long Medical Center in north Baton Rouge and began negotiations to place LSU’s teaching hospital at the Lake.

Under that proposal, the Lake would be home to medical education programs for the state’s future physicians.

On Monday, it was unclear whether the LSU negotiations would lead to concrete plans for the 60-acre tract, which includes property once linked to the 440-acre LSU AgCenter’s Burden Center and to a Lake affiliate, the 184-bed Ollie Steele Burden Manor nursing home north of I-10.

Lake spokeswoman Catherine Harrell said the purchases are part of the Lake’s long-term planning and the hospital has not decided what it will do with the 60 acres or the former surgery centers on Brittany Drive, between Hennessy Boulevard and Picardy Avenue.

“Right now, we have no plans for either property,” Harrell said.

LSU Health Care Services Division spokesman Marvin McGraw referred questions to Our Lady of the Lake.

The Lake bought the properties to keep its options open, Harrell said.

The Lake paid Ward’s Creek Investors LLC $15.25 million for the undeveloped acreage. The managers of Ward’s Creek Investors include Kenneth J. Johnson, of Torrance, Calif., and Dr. Charles F. Mitchell II, of Baton Rouge, both of whom signed the Dec. 31 sale document recorded at the parish Clerk of Court’s Office Monday.

On Dec. 30, the Lake paid $4.76 million for the former outpatient surgery clinics on Brittany Drive. That transaction included a 21,000-square-foot building, a second 11,000-square-foot building and an additional lot.

Those surgery centers were the property of Surgi-Center LP, whose managing partner is Dr. Thomas Hansbrough, with Dr. Frank Fazio and Kirk Patrick listed in state records as business partners. The physicians didn’t return calls seeking comment about the sale.

Harrell said the Lake does not plan to reopen the facilities as surgical centers because it already performs outpatient surgeries at the hospital and at a Lake-owned center.

The Surgi-Center property, however, lies in close proximity to Our Lady of the Lake College, which has more than 2,000 students enrolled in chiefly health-related degree programs, Harrell said, and it’s near the hospital’s main campus, each of which could benefit from the property in the future.