After a year of construction, a $15.3 million hospice facility is opening as part of Stadium Place in Baltimore.
Gilchrist Center Baltimore will hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Thursday starting at 5 p.m. to mark completion of a 30,000-square-foot building at 1060 E. 33rd Street.
This is the latest addition to Stadium Place, a 30-acre community that provides a mix of housing and long-term care options for more than 500 low- and moderate-income seniors and a YMCA branch on the former site of Memorial Stadium.
Designed by Moseley Architects, Gilchrist Center Baltimore contains 18 beds for adults and four beds for children. It is the only residential hospice center in Baltimore City. Southway Builders was the general contractor. Patients will begin moving to the center in late October or early November.
The center is an affiliate of Gilchrist, a nonprofit organization that was founded in 1994 and provides care, counseling and support to families throughout the Baltimore metropolitan area. Its mission is “to provide counseling, support and care to anyone with a serious illness, so they may live life to the fullest.”
Gilchrist began as a nonprofit home care hospice and was originally called Hospice of Baltimore. It opened its first inpatient hospice center in Towson in 1996 and changed its name to Gilchrist Hospice Care in 2008, in honor of benefactor Jeanne “Jinny” Gilchrist Vance.
In response to higher demand for inpatient hospice care, the organization expanded Gilchrist Center Towson from 24 to 34 beds in 2009 and opened its second inpatient facility in Columbia, called Gilchrist Center Howard County. In 2014, it began managing the only residential inpatient hospice center in Baltimore, the former Joseph Richey House at 828 N. Eutaw Street, and renamed it Gilchrist Center Baltimore. Today Gilchrist is the largest hospice provider in Maryland, caring for more than 900 terminally-ill individuals every day.
Construction began at Stadium Place last year, after Gilchrist decided to relocate its Baltimore City operations from Eutaw Street. The center’s official name is the William L. and Victorine Q. Adams Gilchrist Center Baltimore, in recognition of the philanthropic support by friends and former colleagues of the late co-founder of A&R Development and his late wife, the first African American woman elected to the Baltimore City Council.
According to its planners, the center will allow Gilchrist to continue providing care for adults and children at the end of life, regardless of ability to pay. Each patient will have access to the full spectrum of hospice care, including medical, emotional, spiritual and personal care, with a focus on quality of life. Music therapy, veteran salutes, counseling and bereavement services will also be available, free of charge.
Construction was funded by a $15.3 million capital campaign. It marks the first time that Gilchrist has received funding from the State of Maryland, which allocated $1.5 million.
Scheduled speakers at the ribbon-cutting ceremony include Mayor Brandon Scott; Catherine Hamel, Executive Vice President of Continuing Care and President of Gilchrist; Marjorie Rodgers Cheshire, President and Chief Operating Officer of A&R Development, and Tim Doran, Chair of Pediatrics at GBMC and Chair of the Gilchrist Center Baltimore Board of Directors.
Invited guests include Baltimore City Council member Odette Ramos; Maryland State Sens. Mary Washington and Guy Guzzone; and Nichole Doyle Battle, the CEO of GEDCO, the master developer of Stadium Place.
Sheppard Pratt, a Maryland-based health care provider, will take over the Gilchrist property on Eutaw Street to provide adult behavior health and emergency crisis services.
