Regional One Health executives unveiled renderings Wednesday, Aug. 5, for a new 600,000-square-foot medical center, a $1 billion project they say will transform one of the city’s most visible corridors and build the local economy.
Demolition is underway and construction preparations have begun at the site of the former Commercial Appeal property at 495 Union Ave., where the new public healthcare facility is expected to improve emergency care, reconnect Downtown Memphis with the Medical District and expand opportunities for local and minority-owned businesses. According to project documents, the new facility also will feature a distinctive façade that reflects “the rhythm, movement and resilience of the city.”
The unveiling marked the latest milestone for a project years in the making. The new campus, designed to accommodate 315 beds for Tennessee’s oldest hospital system, chartered in 1829, will replace a collection of aging buildings located downtown at the medical center’s current campus that are operating beyond their intended capacity, said hospital leaders.
“This is what a promise looks like when someone keeps it,” said Regional One Health President and CEO Dr. Reginald Coopwood to those gathered to celebrate the unveiling. “Last fall, we stood together outside our hospital and told you who would design and build the new Regional One Health. That was a promise. Today, you’re standing on the ground where we keep it.”
For Coopwood, the afternoon represented the culmination of a vision he proposed shortly after arriving in 2010 at the acute care hospital and teaching site for the University of Tennessee Health Science Center.
“When I arrived in 2010, this facility was already 15 years past its useful life,” he said. “We’ve brought plans and concepts forward over the years, but to finally get to this point — after Mayor Harris really took the reins — it’s exciting. Personally, it’s incredibly exciting to see this come to fruition.”
A building designed around care
Coopwood described the facility as a “skyscraper turned on its side.” He explained the horizontal design is intended to place related departments together, instead of scattering them across multiple buildings.
Operating rooms currently spread across four separate buildings at the old campus will be consolidated onto a single floor. The neonatal intensive care unit will include private rooms large enough for parents to remain overnight with their babies. Trauma services will be sized for the number of patients the medical facility actually treats today, not patient volume projections made half a century ago.
The buildings’ vertical fins, a signature exterior feature, reflect purposeful design, Coopwood said. They will shape the overall visual style of the buildings while reducing glare and heat. And they will create shifting patterns of light for motorists traveling along Union Avenue.
“If that puts you in mind of a river, that’s the idea,” he said, “The building doesn’t just sit beside the street. It performs along it.”
The design also responds to the hospital’s role as one of the region’s most critical healthcare institutions.
Regional One hosts the only adult Level I trauma center within 150 miles of Memphis, drawing critically injured patients from across West Tennessee, eastern Arkansas and northern Mississippi. The new campus will include an expanded trauma and burn center and two helipads to receive patients whose emergencies leave little time to spare.
And the existing facility has long since outgrown the demand it was built to handle. The trauma center was designed for about 4,000 patients annually but now treats roughly 12,000, while maintaining a 97% survival rate. The new campus is intended to provide the space, technology and patient flow needed to match the level of care Regional One’s doctors and nurses already deliver.
Honoring the past while building the future
Before the renderings were unveiled, veteran newsman Otis Sanford reflected on the journalistic significance of the site, where generations of Memphians learned the day’s news.
For nearly a century, he said, 495 Union Avenue served as “ground zero for journalism in Memphis,” chronicling everything from Elvis Presley’s death to the election of Memphis’ first Black mayor and the nation’s first Black president.
“But now a new era will dawn at 495 Union,” Sanford said, “one dedicated to serving the community in a different way — by treating wounds and saving lives.”
Coopwood acknowledged that history.
“We knew we weren’t simply buying land,” he said. “We were becoming the next thing that happens on a corner that has meant something to this city for a very long time.”
More than a hospital
Mayor Lee Harris argued the project’s significance extends well beyond healthcare.
Standing beside construction equipment already at work on the site, Harris contrasted Wednesday’s ceremony with the countless civic announcements that never progress beyond conceptual drawings.
“In this county, we’re used to hearing about progress—announcements, plans, renderings, more plans, more announcements,” Harris said. “Today, you’re standing in the middle of progress.”
He defended the politically difficult wheel-tax increase that secured Shelby County’s $500 million investment in the new hospital, saying he would make the same decision again.
“I said at the time that it was the hard thing, but it was also the right thing,” Harris said. “Standing on this lot, watching this come down so that something extraordinary can go up, I would do it again tomorrow.”
He also pointed to the broader civic impact.
“This is not about what we give up to build a new campus,” Harris said. “It’s about what we gain because we have one.”
Healing communities, too
Similar to the contractor announcement made last fall, Wednesday’s ceremony repeated another promise: That the sweeping project should strengthen Memphis economically as well as medically.
Project leaders say the campus is expected to support nearly 10,000 jobs, generate more than $117 million in additional tax revenue and contribute an estimated $4.8 billion to the regional economy.
The project’s “Here for Life” website also includes a procurement portal inviting contractors, suppliers and consultants – businesses owned by minorities and women – to register for bidding opportunities as construction moves forward, reinforcing Regional One’s commitment to broad local participation.
Commissioner Miska Clay-Bibbs said the investment belongs to every resident of Shelby County.
“We’ve been asking extraordinary people to do extraordinary work inside a building that is falling apart around them,” she said. “Today, we’re standing on the answer to that.”
For Coopwood, that answer extends beyond bricks, glass and steel.
“Regional One Health has fought for everyone who has come through our doors for nearly two centuries,” he said. “In the good years, the lean years—and we are not finished.
“Here for the newborn who arrives too soon. Here for the family with nowhere else to turn. Here for every Memphian who hasn’t needed us yet.
“We are here for life.”
