Does the Downtown Baptist location have any zoning restrictions as to what can take its place? I would think that developers are salivating at the thought of building million dollar condos.

The Atlantic Mills site is only a couple of miles, if that, from St. Mary's, and not much nearer downtown than they are (albeit closer to the interstate).

Very sad, indeed.

"every associate in a meaningful position."

"fair and just severance package in accordance with (its) separation policies" for those who are not placed in a job.

I predicted this when the merger was announced, but I am still surprised. How long has the hospital been there? 60 years? More? I wonder what's wrong with the existing faciity that makes them want a new/different facility downtown.

Ah! Are they getting a good deal on some old City/County land? Some TIFs?

As it currently sits, Baptist hospital is landlocked on all sides. The river to the north, Henley St./Chapman Hwy. to the west, Gay St. and the associated redevelopment area to the east and Kerbela Temple/Mimosa Ave. to the south. Also, to expand to the south would require an inordinate amount of rock excavation as Kerbela sits on a ridge of practically solid rock.

St. Mary's in north Knoxville is not a whole lot better.

Yes, but wasn't St. Mary's fairly recently expanded into a large, modern facility? The news of it closing is what surprised me. Though maybe I don't understand the "inpatient" part. To me it means stay-over rooms, which is pretty much what a hospital is.

If there truly is, why close a facility where there is a market?

Actually, there is no market for a downtown hospital, the paying patients and the physicians are all located out west or up north, with a few smatterings down south, but there is no rational reason to go downtown for any degree of medical care whatsoever.

In my opinion, St. Mary's North will continue to be expanded and various services at the Broadway location will be trimmed and what can be profitably pushed north, will be pushed north.

How about Jerry Askew talking about how great a day yesterday was? Wonder what types of happy pills they dispense out at St. Mary's now?

For the so-called "minor" surgeries where the risk of complications is sufficiently low, recoverty time, patient comfort, and patient satisfaction are all enhanced by outpatient treatment. I can honestly say that, even if my insurance coverage provided 100% of the cost of an overnight stay, I'd go home if I had the option. Wouldn't you?

As for the main subject, I suspect there would be a fairly prohibitive cost of retrofitting either Baptist or St. Mary's with all the technological and comfort niceties that are going into newer facilities like St. Mary's North and Baptist West. Then, too, you have to look at the the cost of operating two completely separate and aging facilities located only a couple of miles from one another. Closing either one would mean significantly expanding the other as boomers continue to age, and neither location is conducive to that sort of growth. Finally, Baptist Hospital is occupying real estate that could provide a lovely return to its owners if the land is converted to other use. It could also be a boon to the community and facilitate tying the eastern and western portions of the South Knox Riverfront into a cohesive whole if Baptist wasn't sitting where it is. If you climbed into a way back machine, you might be surprised to learn that Baptist is sitting on land that used to be a public park, anyway.

I can't speak to the glories of more modern architecture. It all looks like big, boring concrete squares to me. I'm much more into the highly ornate, exquisitely detailed, and even ostentatiously overblown stuff that came out of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. So I'm not really qualified to put forward the "architectually interesting" argument to save big box Baptist Hospital. The oldest parts of St. Mary's, however, are quite beautiful to me and will be sorely missed by this Knox resident. Also, unlike with Baptist, I really don't know what could be done with the St. Mary's site. It would be unwise, unsightly, and unsafe to let something of that magnitude just sit there unoccupied next to a public high school. Any ideas?

because of the bond ratings and the credit crunch.

Debra London deceived the Baptist employees when St Mary's took over Baptist.I feel sorry for the rank and file employees but not for the corrupt managers especially those in the administration and HR there.

I believe the plan is to first consolidate their bed floors at the main St. Mary's campus, the St. Mary's North Campus, and the much underutilized Baptist West campus, and basically shut down many floors of the current main Baptist facility. There's an immediate savings in operating costs by doing that.

The "new downtown" hospital campus is still some time away. No site has been selected. No timetable has been established. I don't think the "credit crunch" will be a factor by the time they're finally ready start lining up the financing.

I'm also not sure how many people will be losing their jobs. Nurses (LPN's & RN's especially) have probably the best job to qualified applicant ratios in the nation right now. Locally, too, there's shortage of qualified nurses - especially ones willing to do "floor nursing." CNA's, orderlies, and lab techs are also probably pretty secure in terms of keeping their jobs. Many will be relocated, but I doubt there'll be any layoffs among the direct caregivers. It's really an applicant's market in most healthcare fields right now. There are bound to be more job losses amongst the support staff (payroll, IT, middle and upper management, etc.) but most of these would have occurred with or without the scaling back of the main Baptist campus. Wheneber you have consolidation, it's followed by a winnowing of duplicate services (hence, the local pro-Metro argument). There may or may not be some scaleback of maintenace personnel depending on how many systems they are able to shut off. Food service workers, of course, will be gone from Baptist. All in all, I doubt the payroll impact will be very significant in percentage terms. It will, needless to say, be very significant to those who are going to be losing their jobs. No, I'm not a spokesman for Mercy... I just realized I sound like one, though.

on camera and seemed to have some hesitation explaining why they were doing what they were doing, much, much sooner than they had indicated they would be doing something.

One has to wonder if the financial drag there and out west might just pull the Sisters of Mercy out of their rockers and back into the streets collecting for charitable purposes.

In my opinion, the talk and chatter about a new downtown hospital is just a deflection to get away from them actually doing something they said they would not do last year.