The way Charlie Salvo describes it, he woke up one morning and realized he owned five acres within the Springfield Medical District. Now he’s planning to build a state-of-the-art, 50,000-square-foot medical office complex on North Grand Avenue near Walnut Street.
Salvo, who owns the property with his brother Peter, says he expects to start demolishing an office building within the next 30 days; he used to lease the building to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, which moved its employees to new digs at the Illinois State Fairgrounds last year. By the time he’s finished, Salvo will have razed eight houses as well. Construction will begin, he says, when he’s leased half of the new complex. He claims to have already locked up 18,000 square feet. Salvo says he’s spoken with seven physicians and a “pharmaceutical” company interested in renting space, though he would not disclose anyone’s identity. He’s also trying to sign up bio-tech, research, and medical-device firms.
“I’ve been buying up property there for 22 years,” Salvo says. “I thought the state might want to expand someday, but always in the back of my mind was something related to the medical field. The medical district activated the plan.”
The medical district was created by the state earlier this year to develop the city’s medical industry. It encompasses about a square mile, bounded by North Grand, Madison, Walnut, and 11th. Large residential areas sit to the east and north of Memorial Medical Center and to the north of St. John’s Hospital. An appointed nine-member commission has the authority to purchase, build, and lease property as well as to impose a master plan for development. Salvo’s complex is one of several independent projects either announced or rumored for the district. Other plans include a group-practice building to be constructed just east of Memorial, a Southern Illinois University cancer-research institute, and a medical-related building just north of Carpenter between Fourth and Fifth streets.
Salvo is confident about his prospects. He’s read a city-funded study, released this April, showing how Springfield can benefit by developing 14 sectors in the medical industry. And despite a struggling economy, the medical industry in Springfield appears to be booming, according to Brad Warren, vice president of development and planning for the Greater Springfield Chamber of Commerce.
“In the past 13 years, one out of every three new jobs in the Springfield metro area has been in the healthcare industry,” Warren says. In the next decade, he says, the medical industry will create the most jobs here.
Salvo says when he talks to prospective tenants, many of them want to know how he can help them secure venture capital. “They’re more interested in green than they are in a trainable workforce or a community’s cost of living,” he says.
Salvo has a point, and it’s one of the biggest hurdles for Springfield’s medical district. According to a recent article in the Chicago Tribune,Illinois lags behind other Midwestern states in government-backed venture capital grants and loans, and it’s ranked lower than many other states regarding private entrepreneurial funding. The city’s April study mentions other competition–medical and scientific corridors across the country all going after the same types of businesses in order to boost local economies.
Springfield’s medical district has some catching up to do. Of the nine members on the district’s commission, only five have been appointed (picked earlier this year by former Springfield mayor Karen Hasara and Sangamon County board chair Andy Van Meter). Governor Rod Blagojevich still has to select his four appointments. Springfield Mayor Tim Davlin hasn’t selected an advisory council, to be made up of Enos Park and Oak Ridge neighborhood residents, that must, along with the Springfield City Council, approve of the master plan. And as far as the master plan goes, it’s at least a year away from completion, says Norm Sims, the city’s director of planning and economic development. “These things take time,” Sims says. “This isn’t going to happen overnight.” The state provided no funding for the district, which doesn’t even have money to hire planning consultants. Sims, who helped draft legislation creating the district, says he and others are still trying to locate government and private funding. The cost for creating the master plan alone could be in the six figures.
“Whoever does it, it will require expertise beyond what’s available in the city,” says Wally Henderson, the city’s interim city planner. “You need a firm with an understanding of socio-economic development: strong urban planning, and experience with residential redevelopment and medical-related facilities.”
In the meantime, Salvo and others are moving ahead with their projects. Should they wait to see how the district’s master plan shapes the area? Not according to Mike Boer, president of the medical district commission as well as head of local Chamber of Commerce.
“I’ve had a couple of other people ask me that,” Boer says. “So long as development
is consistent with the city’s comprehensive plan and zoning, I don’t think we
can tell the entire world to stop.”
This article appears in Jul 10-16, 2003.
