HCA Healthcare plans to demolish Mission Hospital’s St. Joseph’s campus, whose origins date back more than a century, Asheville Watchdog has learned.
Mission spokesperson Nancy Lindell said Thursday that a teardown was the only way forward after Tropical Storm Helene had compounded existing issues on the campus.
“Given current building codes and the deterioration of the facility exacerbated by the storm, the only real option for that campus is its eventual demolition,” Lindell said in a brief statement. “Plans will be made for demolition and future use of the site when appropriate.”
There have been rumblings about demolition of the campus for some time. Nurses told The Watchdog this week thatthey were informed of the eventual demolition by multiple members of leadership staff, including Mission CEO Greg Lowe at a recent employee town hall meeting.
Two main buildings make up the St. Joseph’s campus, located at 428 Biltmore Ave. These were built in 1960 and 1980, according to property records. The buildings and land combined are currently valued at $22 million. The $1.5 billion that HCA paid for the Mission Health system in 2019 included $547.8 for several facilities on the sprawling hospital campus In Asheville, including the St. Joseph’s land and buildings.
Records show nearly 30 permits for repairs and improvements on the nearly 12-acre property have been issued since 2015.
Dr. Scott Joslin served as medical director of Asheville Specialty Hospital, located on the St. Joseph’s campus, from January through September 2022 before he became head of Mission’s hospitalist program. Joslin told The Watchdog that Mission’s decision to build its North Tower facility in late 2019 was prompted partly by the recognition that the St. Joseph’s campus was nearing the end of its useful life.
Joslin, who now works at the Asheville VA Medical Center, described a range of issues facing St. Joseph’s at the time, including water leaks as well as electrical and infrastructure failures.
“I did know that at the time that the new North Tower was being built, that one of the drivers behind the decision … was that over time, the old St. Joseph’s Hospital was becoming more expensive to maintain,” Joslin said. “It was just going to be a question of time before the St. Joseph’s campus would be completely decommissioned.”
At the time of the opening of the North Tower, then-Mission CEO Chad Patrick noted that St. Joseph’s was “a very, very old building and very expensive to upkeep.”
A Mission Hospital map shows the St. Joseph’s Hospital campus (B). Its address is 428 Biltmore Ave.
Deep roots in Asheville
St. Joseph’s is an integral part of Asheville and Mission’s history. Its origins date to the beginning of the 20th century and a Catholic women’s organization dedicated to healthcare.
“On Nov. 23, 1900, the Sisters of Mercy arrived in the mountains of Western North Carolina, opening an 18-bed tuberculosis sanitarium on the corner of French Broad and Patton Avenues — the first iteration of St. Joseph’s Hospital,” the Mercy Urgent Care website says. “For nearly a century, Sisters of Mercy owned and operated Asheville’s St. Joseph’s Hospital, a 338-bed facility sold to Mission Hospitals in 1998. Mercy, however, retained and focused on its satellite urgent care facilities, expanding its network one community at a time.”
By the early 1990s, St. Joseph’s and Mission were the largest hospitals in western North Carolina.
“On Nov. 23, 1900, the Sisters of Mercy arrived in the mountains of Western North Carolina, opening an 18-bed tuberculosis sanitarium on the corner of French Broad and Patton Avenues — the first iteration of St. Joseph’s Hospital,” the Mercy Urgent Care website says. // Credit: Buncombe County Special Collections, Pack Memorial Public Library
Mission Hospital was created when St. Joseph’s Hospital and Memorial Mission Medical Center began an organizational partnership in 1996. They jointly operated a laundry and a child care center to achieve efficiencies, and they had substantially overlapping medical staffs, according to research conducted by the Urban Institute.
The hospitals merged two years later, when Memorial Mission purchased St. Joseph’s from the Sisters of Mercy for $90 million.
St. Joseph’s operations are mentioned in the Asset Purchase Agreement, the 2019 document defining the parameters of the sale to HCA. The APA prevented HCA from shutting down anything at the campus for two years following the sale.
“From and after such two (2)-year period, buyer shall have the right to discontinue any LTAC (Long-term Acute Care) Service at the St. Joseph campus of Mission Hospital (Asheville, North Carolina),” the APA states.
When the APA was being finalized, HCA didn’t have any plans to shutter St. Joseph’s or the care provided there.
“Buyer has no present intent to discontinue long-term acute care services at the St. Joseph campus of Mission Hospital, as described in Section 7.13(e), until those services can be provided at other Buyer facilities in Asheville, North Carolina,” the APA states.
In addition to Asheville Specialty Hospital, the campus also has housed inpatient and outpatient services for multiple departments, including the entirety of the behavioral health department — in a separate building — before it moved to its new Sweeten Creek facility.
In November, The Watchdog reported that Asheville Specialty, the only long-term acute care hospital in western North Carolina, would be shuttered.
Lindell said then that Mission Health made the decision because it “had to focus on prioritizing our resources during and after Hurricane Helene to care for the most urgent medical needs of our community.”
Asheville Watchdog is a nonprofit news team producing stories that matter to Asheville and Buncombe County. Andrew R. Jones is a Watchdog investigative reporter. Email arjones@avlwatchdog.org. The Watchdog’s local reporting during this crisis is made possible by donations from the community. To show your support for this vital public service go to avlwatchdog.org/support-our-publication/.
www.thecentersquare.com – By Alan Wooten | The Center Square – (The Center Square – ) 2025-04-01 13:32:00
(The Center Square) – Directions on curriculum measured age appropriate and access in public libraries to materials considered harmful to minors are in a proposal at the North Carolina House of Representatives.
Parental Rights for Curriculum and Books, also known as House Bill 595, adds to state law a section for age-appropriate instruction for students; a human growth and development program for fourth and fifth graders; and says reproductive health and safety education shall not happen before seventh grade.
Rep. John A. Torbett, R-Gaston
NCLeg.gov
The bill authored by Rep. John Torbett, R-Gaston, and filed Monday additionally has sections on instructional materials and clarification of “defenses for material harmful to minors.” Public library access for minors is in a fourth section.
Gender identity instruction, a buzzword of recent election cycles, is prohibited prior to students entering the fifth grade. The proposal extends that to prior to the entering seventh grade.
The bill would require parental consent to learn about some elements associated with sex education – infections, contraception, assault and human trafficking.
State law allows schools the option to adopt local policies on parental consent for the reproductive health education.
www.thecentersquare.com – By Alan Wooten | The Center Square – (The Center Square – ) 2025-03-31 16:37:00
(The Center Square) – Judicial warfare is eroding the confidence in Americans’ justice system leaving a blight on justice itself, says a North Carolina congresswoman who leads the Rules Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C, is speaking out against judges blocking the president’s decisions as granted in the Constitution ahead of a Tuesday congressional hearing.
“As of late, we have certainly seen a slew of rulings by rogue judges that surpass their own constitutional authority,” she said in a post to social media Monday afternoon. “This is judicial warfare in the flesh. If it is not remedied in a commonsense and expeditious fashion, these exercises in partisanship will do further irreparable damage to the nation and to the confidence of Americans in our justice system.”
More than a dozen orders from President Donald Trump – more than in the entire time Joe Biden, Barack Obama and George W. Bush served as presidents – have been thwarted or attempted to be blocked. Among the judges in the spotlight is U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, a pivotal figure in deportation of people accused of being in gangs in addition to just being named to preside in a case involving military operations and a messaging app.
Boasberg, appointed by Bush to the Superior Court of the District of Columbia in 2002, was nominated to the federal bench by Obama and confirmed in the Senate 96-0 in 2012.
Boasberg on Wednesday issued and on Friday extended a temporary restraining order that prevents Trump from using the Alien Enemies Act to deport people believed to be part of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. A hearing, Judicial Overreach and Constitutional Limits on the Federal Courts, is at 10 a.m. Tuesday to be conducted jointly by the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence and the Internet, and the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government from within the Judiciar Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives.
California Republican Darrell Issa is chairman of the former committee, Texas’ Chip Roy the latter. North Carolina Democrat Deborah Ross is a minority member of the former; North Carolina Republican Mark Harris is a majority member of the latter.
Witnesses scheduled include former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Cindy Romero, a victim of criminal activity believed perpetrated by Tren de Aragua in Aurora, Colo. Also on the invite list are witnesses from the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation.
Other federal judges drawing fire from supporters of the president include Biden appointees Amir Ali, Loren AliKhan, Deborah Boardman, Angel Kelley and Brendan Hurson; Obama appointees Paul Engelmayer, Amy Berman Jackson, John McConnell and Leo Sorokin; Bush appointee Joseph Laplante; Bill Clinton appointee William Alsup; and Ronald Reagan appointees John Coughenhour and Royce Lamberth.
“Without question,” Foxx said, “exceeding constitutional mandates as a matter of judicial philosophy does nothing more than blight justice itself.”
www.thecentersquare.com – By Alan Wooten | The Center Square – (The Center Square – ) 2025-03-31 15:21:00
(The Center Square) – Wildfires continued to burn Monday in the Carolinas, though a sign of optimism arose with a burning ban lifted in 41 South Carolina counties and measured rainfall in both states.
Largest of the fires is Table Rock in Pickens and Greenville counties of South Carolina. The Black Cove fire is burning in North Carolina’s Polk and Henderson counties, the Rattlesnake fire is burning Haywood County, and the Alarka 5 fire is in Swain County.
South Carolina’s Horry County at the Atlantic Ocean and North Carolina border, and the northwestern counties of Spartanburg, Greenville, Pickens and Oconee remain under a burning ban. In North Carolina, all 100 counties have a ban in effect.
The Table Rock fire size is about 13,191 acres in South Carolina and 574 in North Carolina, the Forestry Commission of the former said. Containment is about 30%.
The Persimmon Ridge fire is 2,078 acres in size with 64% containment. Rain Sunday into Monday measured nearly 1 inch.
The Covington Drive Fire in Myrtle Beach is about 85% contained and in mop-up and strengthened firebreaks stage.
In North Carolina, the Black Cove complex of fires are 7,672 acres in size. It includes the Black Cove (3,502 acres, 36% contained), Deep Woods (3,971 acres, 32% contained) and Fish Hook (199 acres, 100% contained) fires. Rainfall overnight into Monday helped the battle.
