The LSU Board of Supervisors is poised to give the last approval needed to clear the way for the redevelopment of Charity Hospital on Friday by signing off on a lease with developers who envision the building and surrounding sites as an "innovation hub" for downtown New Orleans.

The board's vote would clear the way for 1532 Tulane Partners to transform the 20-story former hospital into a mix of residential units, retail shops and office space with more unusual amenities, including a space for a high school and early learning center.

With board approval, the physical work on the project could begin later this fall, said Joseph Stebbins, one of the developers.

“LSU needs and the city needs to get this building that’s been vacant since Katrina back into commerce,” Stebbins said. “It’s obviously been a drain to this whole area since then, and I think it’ll be a benefit to get it back online.”

Charity and the other nearby associated buildings that could be wrapped into the development loom large both physically and spiritually over the downtown area.

The hospital itself is larger than most recent developments in the area, though it remains smaller than projects being considered by the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.

Officials for years have bemoaned the fact that the area around the former hospital remains stagnant and semi-deserted, even as the rest of Central Business District has seen a boom in new projects and development.

Kurt Weigle, president and CEO of the Downtown Development District, described the Charity effort as a crucial step in redeveloping the stretch between Loyola Avenue and South Claiborne Avenue.

“It’s a million square feet. Just by virtue of the size of the building, it’ll have a tremendous impact on everything around it,” Weigle said. “On top of that is the place that Charity Hospital holds in the imaginations of New Orleanians. So many stories of life that has entered this world, that has left this world in this building. That building has tremendous emotional pull on this community. For all those reasons it is critical.”

1532 Partners, a joint venture between New Orleans-based CCNO and the Israeli firm El Ad Group, was picked by LSU, which ran Charity Hospital and still owns it and surrounding buildings, last year during the latest in a series of efforts to find a developer for the building.

On Friday, after a year of due diligence by the developer, the LSU Board of Supervisors is expected to vote on whether to approve a lease agreement that would allow construction to begin.

+8 Possible layouts emerge for Charity Hospital redevelopment The 1 million-square-foot Charity Hospital is the subject of a sweeping redevelopment proposal aimed at breathing new life into a neglected ar…

The $300 million project, which will leave the buildings’ historic Art Deco exterior intact, could begin in earnest later this fall, Stebbins said. The first step would be demolition and abatement work at the site to prepare it to be built out for its new uses.

That would be the beginning of roughly three years of construction to transform the site, though some tenants may be able to move in before all that work is completed, Stebbins said.

A copy of the final lease agreement was not available on Wednesday. The deal 1532 Tulane proposed when it was vying for the project included an upfront payment of $11.85 million and $250,000 a year for the life of the 99-year lease.

That money will be divided up between LSU and the university’s Real Estate and Facilities Foundation, which was tapped with finding a developer in 2017 after several failed attempts to bring the property back in recent years.

Previous proposals for redevelopment included a plan by former Mayor Mitch Landrieu to turn the building into a municipal complex containing City Hall and the Civil District Court and a prior round of bidding overseen by former Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration.

On Tuesday night, Stebbins provided the LSU Board of Supervisors’ Properties and Facilities committee with a rundown on how the developers now envision the project, which is somewhat different from initial plans they unveiled last year.

The project remains a mix of residential, retail and office uses that will fill not only the former Charity building itself but also surrounding state-owned buildings that were associated with the former hospital.

Charity has been empty since it flooded during Katrina 14 years ago. Rather than restore the historic hospital, the state opted to build the new University Medical Center on the other side of Interstate 10 and Tulane Avenue, displacing a neighborhood in the process.

The details of the residential portion of the project are still being worked out. Plans initially called for more than 460 units, but the number within Charity itself has been scaled back to about 390 because of problems making units fit within the building’s floor plan, Stebbins said.

The units in Charity itself would be a mix of “workforce housing” and market-rate units, he said. The workforce housing, reserved for households making between 80% and 120% of the area's median income, would rent for between $900 and $1,100 a month, he said. The market-rate units would be more expensive, with luxury units and penthouse apartments available.

The former John Dibert Tuberculosis Hospital at Tulane and South Claiborne and an attached facility known as the L&M building, both of which are part of the cluster of state-owned facilities associated with Charity, would be set up to provide mental health facilities and services for the homeless, Stebbins said. Those buildings would also have “very low-income housing” and single-room occupancy units, he said.

The developers decided to move the low-income housing out of the main Charity building because the time needed to secure low-income housing tax credits to finance that portion of the project was too long for the schedule the 1532 Tulane Partners group is looking at, he said.

The company is in talks with Sonder, a short-term rental company, about renting some units to tourists rather than to long-term tenants, Stebbins said. An outline posted to the project’s website says an agreement is in place for Sonder to use 150 of the 390 units envisioned for Charity.

Charity Hospital development plans go before LSU board Friday for a preliminary vote The redevelopment of Charity Hospital will likely move one step closer to reality on Friday when the LSU Board of Supervisors is expected to v…

That would be about 50% higher than the number of units that would be allowed under short-term rental rules the New Orleans City Council passed earlier this year and which are set to take effect in December.

Short-term rentals typically are far more lucrative than long-term housing. Stebbins said income from those units would allow the company to charge lower rents for other units in the development.

Janet Hayes, an activist who was critical of the decision to shut down Charity and who has pushed for the site to be used as a mental health facility, said the developers need to include more psychiatric care in their plans. When it was a hospital, Charity had 150 mental health beds, about twice as many as UMC now has, she said.

“Where are the psychiatric beds? Where are the residential treatment facilities?” asked Hayes, who was the only member of the public to speak during Tuesday night’s meeting. “Is that going to be provided in this building and, if not, are you OK with the outdoor asylum you’ve created on the streets of downtown?”

“Why can’t we build structures and care facilities that can absorb this population that we say we can’t have on the street?” she said.

Stebbins said there is “a great need” to deal with both the homeless and the mentally ill, and the plans for the Dibert building are part of that.

“Is it going to be enough? No,” he said. “I think there’s going to be a need to deal with that across the city.”

“It’s going to take more than just us,” he added later.

The developers’ original proposal called for Tulane University to take up a significant portion of the Charity building for student or faculty housing plus offices and research labs.

The university was not mentioned during Tuesday’s discussion but Tulane Senior Vice President, Chief Operating Officer and Treasurer Patrick Norton said in an email Wednesday it remained "100% committed to the project."

The Charity redevelopment will also include retail space on the first two floors, co-working spaces, an early childhood education center and a high school, Stebbins said.