Why did St. Luke’s decide to sell the Texas Medical Center’s most recognizable building?
Once the tower sale goes through, St. Luke’s — which plans to lease back its current space on floors nine through 12 for continued hospital operations — plans to extensively renovate and update the 27-story patient tower, which opened in 1971. The original seven-story hospital building, built in 1954 and now used for administrative functions, will be torn down, and new facilities will be built on that space as well as possibly on other nearby undeveloped land owned by St. Luke’s, according to [St. Luke’s senior vice president David] Koontz.
“That is the ‘why’ behind the move to sell this medical building,” he says.
For sale: The Madonna tower. Designed by Cesar Pelli. Officially named only a couple of years ago for donor and breast-implant litigator John O’Quinn.
After the jump, a picture-postcard-perfect view of the original 1954 St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital building, not long for this world.
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Yeah, it’s changed a little.
- Healthy market spurs hospitals to sell real estate [Houston Business Journal]
- St. Luke’s seeks buyer for medical tower [Houston Business Journal]
- St. Lukes Episcopal Hospital [TMC McGovern Library]
Photo of O’Quinn Medical Tower: Flickr user imagematters1. St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital postcard: courtesy John P. McGovern Historical Collections & Research Center
