St. David’s HealthCare advanced in its quest to quadruple its square footage in South Austin Tuesday, with a unanimous Planning Commission approval of its rezoning request to allow redevelopment of its medical office complex at 4007 James Casey Street.
St. David’s wants to add 136,000 square feet to the existing two-story, 58,205-square-foot facility, built in the 1980s. St. David’s owns 51 percent of the property on a 6.3-acre site and leases space to health care specialists including the Southwest Regional Cancer Center and Texas Heart and Vascular.
The building is currently zoned as vertical mixed-use, meaning it could be used for both residential and commercial purposes. The requested rezoning, suggested by city staff, would designate it as Commercial Highway Services-Planned Development Area-Neighborhood Plan (CH-PDA-NP).
Under the special district’s zoning allowances for the hospital district it's located in, St. David’s would be able to build up to a height of 120 feet — double the amount allowed by its current zoning.
Neighborhood representatives had proposed postponing the vote several times, saying that St. David’s had ignored his requested community benefits, including funding an engineering survey for a bike lane, providing free bus passes to St. David’s employees, and improvements to nearby St. Elmo’s Elementary School.
The neighborhood, along with one commissioner, also expressed that St. David’s discharges unhoused patients into the neighborhood. The neighborhood planning group proposed that St. David’s provide free X-ray and other lab services to nearby clinic Lirios Pediatrics, as well as nonprofit medical offices and respite care for homeless patients at below-market rents in the office building.
