St. Luke’s Hospital in Kansas City is expanding its focus to surrounding properties by becoming a real estate developer, according to an article on the Kansas City Star website.
A subsidiary of the Saint Luke's Foundation is rehabilitating and selling residences near the hospital to help maintain the area.
“Our mission has been to improve the neighborhood west of St. Luke’s Hospital,” Whitney Kerr Sr., chairman of Westport Today, said in the article. “We didn’t want it to die. We wanted to stabilize the neighborhood. We didn’t want to think of moving the hospital like you’ve seen many other hospitals do.”
When the housing stock is stabilized, Kerr said, the area west of the hospital “can eventually sustain itself because of all the cultural taproots. … If we preserve the institutions, the businesses, the civic anchors, the nearby parks and boulevards, the timbre of the area will stay strong.”