NEW ORLEANS — The owners of the former Lindy Boggs Medical Center have put it up for sale.
They say it is a "backup plan" while they work to get federal funding to redevelop the site, which has sat abandoned since Hurricane Katrina.
Bill Hoffman and Paul Flower with the firm Woodward Design + Build bought the site in 2021. They planned to turn it into a continuum of care for elderly patients.
"One of the main reasons we got involved with this property was it’s right down the street from our office... we wanted to renovate it and take the blight out of the neighborhood," Hoffman told WWL-TV.
But that project has faced setbacks, according to Hoffman. The biggest has been a struggle to get funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, since the property sits in a flood zone. Hoffman says the plans cannot move forward without that money.
He says he and Flower put the property up for sale to see what other opportunities could be out there for the site. They think another developer with access to more funding could finally tackle the immense project.
The Lindy Boggs Medical Center is adjacent to the Lafitte Greenway. Formerly Mercy Hospital, it is one of many New Orleans buildings left to decay since Katrina.
When the levees broke, the basement of the hospital flooded and the generators failed. Facing sweltering heat and no electricity, doctors struggled to care for their patients. By the time everyone was evacuated, 45 people had died by some estimates.
Tenet Healthcare sold the site two years later. Since then, developers have announced plans to turn the site into a food retailer, a cardiovascular unit, and a memory center. None of the attempts have panned out.
Hoffman promises that he and Flower are still "aggressively pursuing HUD financing," and that it is a "slow and long process."
Real estate company The McEnry Group is managing the sale. The listing boasts that the building is in "one of the best locations in the City," with "one of the most accommodative zoning designations in the City of New Orleans." It also tells buyers of "historic tax credit equity potential."
So far, no developer has shown interest.
► Get breaking news from your neighborhood delivered directly to you by downloading the new FREE WWL-TV News app now in the IOS App Store or Google Play.