By Akanimo Sampson
Construction work has begun on a 330,000-square foot orthopedic center of the University of Rochester at The Marketplace Mall, New York, USA..
The project, expected to cost $240 million, will take up an entire wing of the facility formerly anchored by Sears.
The project will open in phases. The first phase includes office space and will open this summer. Everything else will be completed by the end of 2022.
The project will create 300 construction jobs. Patients would be treated for orthopedic surgery and outpatient care, including operating rooms and procedure rooms.
The center will be nearly three times the size of UR Medicine’s largest orthopedic outpatient facility at Clinton Crossings, which is 120,000 square feet and sees 17,000 patients a month.
Vice President of Leasing for Wilmorite, Jonathan Dower, says “originally you build traditional anchors, your Macy’s, your JC Penney, and you put them in a project just how Marketplace was built and you put the small shops between the mall and they create the traffic and everything flows well. The only thing that’s changed is the definition of what those anchors are.”
He said the new orthopedic center will complement the existing stores in the mall and generate traffic with the new patients, families, and employees.
“Depending what uses they have closest to the mall we’ll have like retail tenants. So if their patients are in for a procedure say it’s sports-related we’ll have a Foot Locker close to that space.”
He said they’re also in the process of finding unique food, entertainment, and lodging tenants for the new area and the Macy’s wing.
“Not just ones that have seven locations in Rochester things that will be unique to this area”, said Dower, adding, ”one of them you might see a very large entrainment concept that could be going in.”
