What started with a bang ended with an expensive whimper.
Former vendors of the now-closed Homer G. Phillips Memorial Hospital are seeking millions of dollars for services provided during the emergency clinic’s brief operation.
In 2020, developer Paul McKee of NorthSide Regeneration announced he had secured financing for a $20 million urgent care facility to be built on the former Pruitt-Igoe public housing site, across from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency headquarters, then under construction.
At the time, McKee was pursuing more than $6 million in tax subsidies and had secured financing from the St. Louis-Kansas City Carpenters Regional Council, which had financed other NorthSide projects. The city had already approved a massive tax increment financing district in 2009 to support McKee’s broader vision of redeveloped land, new businesses and new homes in the area.
The decision to name the clinic after Homer G. Phillips Hospital — a historic institution in north St. Louis that trained generations of Black doctors and nurses from around the world — angered many Black residents. Some felt McKee was capitalizing on the legacy of a legendary civil rights attorney and equally famous hospital. By 2020, many had already soured on the developer, who had spent two decades acquiring hundreds of acres north of downtown, only to leave much of it vacant and crumbling — visible contributors to urban decay.
McKee and his investment partners announced the hospital’s completion in late 2022, but it didn’t officially open until January 2024.
“We’re very proud,” McKee told KMOX that year. “(We’ve) worked over 10 years to get it to this point.”
The hospital closed just 11 months later. It surrendered its state license after failing to submit a thorough correction plan for deficiencies. More than 80 employees were terminated.
“It saddens our heart that our legacy has been damaged, yet we are empathetic towards the employees that have lost their jobs,” Lois Collier Jackson, president of Homer G. Phillips Nurses Alumni, Inc., told The American in March.
Some former employees sued the hospital and McKee for back pay and financial and emotional pain and suffering.
Financial problems at the hospital began weeks after its opening, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. Since last December, medical providers and one construction contractor have filed eight lawsuits seeking more than $3.5 million.
California-based Vituity filed the largest lawsuit, seeking nearly $2.8 million for physician staffing, according to the Post-Dispatch. Additional companies are owed hundreds of thousands of dollars for medical services, supplies and construction work.
Following the closure, Dr. Matifadza Hlatshwayo Davis, former director of health for the city, told The American the hospital served as “a beacon of health equity, training, and excellence in serving marginalized communities during a time when segregation limited access to quality care.”
“It is a name that symbolizes advocacy for justice and equity in healthcare,” Hlatshwayo Davis continued. “That legacy makes (these) developments even more devastating, as they represent yet another missed opportunity to honor the name with the respect it deserves.”
Nearly 50 years after the original Homer G. Phillips Hospital closed in 1979, many believe its proud legacy of equity and excellence has been tarnished — this time by false promises, administrative failures and millions of dollars of unsatisfied debt.
Sylvester Brown Jr. is the Deaconess Foundation Community Advocacy Fellow.